Upcoming Event: Guest Speaker at SYMPOSIUM CHOREOGRAPHIC LEGACIES: SUSTAINING AND REVIVING DANCE REPERTOIRE

Le Sacre du printemps - ©Filip Van Roe

The life cycle of dance performances

📅 Date: September 17th, 2024
🕒 Time: 13:00 - 18:00
📍 Location: Lullyzaal, OBV Ghent
🔗 Registration: [Link to register]

I am honoured to be a guest on the panel of rehearsal directors for the upcoming symposium Choreographic Legacies: The Life Cycle of Dance Performances, where we will explore how existing dance pieces can be revived for new and older audiences.

Dance, an art form that lives through performance, often survives only through the dancers’ bodies and the spectators’ memories. The symposium will address how to breathe new life into these works and the challenges that arise when choreographers are no longer present, or dance companies disband.

This fascinating event will bring together an impressive lineup of experts from the Flemish and international dance sectors.

STUK, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and the University of Antwerp organise the event.

The programme and biographies of the speakers can be found on this webpage of STUK.

Revival PUUR (2005) Wim Vandekeybus for Ballet Vlaanderen

After 19 years PUUR is back on stage! and the original cast (2005) will still be present in the film that is part of the show. Past and present intermingle, both in the theme of the show and now in reality.

Let's go back, no!, let's go on...

Revival of PUUR directed by Wim Vandekeybus / Ultima Vez for the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, premier on MARCH 23rd, 2024.


Belgian all-around artist Wim Vandekeybus is among the internationally renowned choreographers and directors who formed the Flemish Wave in the 1980s. For the first time, Vandekeybus's work has become part of Ballet Vlaanderen's repertoire. This Opera Ballet is thus fully in keeping with the mission to continue to show and pass on important works by Flemish choreographers to a new generation of dancers and audiences. PUUR is an unmissable highlight of recent Flemish dance history.

«In his iconic performance PUUR, Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus explores extreme violence against innocents. Vandekeybus tells the story of a man who kills for fear of losing his power. For this, the choreographer was inspired not only by ancient mythologies and Herod's biblical infanticide, but also by contemporary genocides. In PUUR, Vandekeybus created deeply human character studies of epic proportions. In this hybrid performance, dance, theatre and film come together in a dark universe in which Vandekeybus' swirling movement language and sensual images never lose their poetic power.»

The images of this post are from Hereafter (the film version of PUUR), originally created and performed by Laura Arís, Tone Brulin, Elena Fokina, Robert M. Hayden, Krijn Hermans, Milan Herich, Germán Jauregui All, Jorge Jauregui Allue, Linda Kapetanea, Thi-Mai Nguyen, Manuel Ronda, Helder Seabra, Won-Myeong Won. Music: David Eugene Edwards

Thanks to the young, talented and super committed new cast of Ballet Vlaanderen: Jasmine Achtari, Tiemen Bormans, Anaïs De Caster, Yaiza Davilla Gómez, Lara Fransen, Mathew Johnson, Aleix Lacara I Server, David Ledger, Allison McGuire, Claudia Ortiz Arraiza, Taichi Sakai, Willem-Jan Sas, Rune Verbilt, Brent Daneels, Shane Upton, and their amazing rehersal director Ana Maria Lucaciu.

More info at https://www.operaballet.be/.../pro.../seizoen-2023-2024/puur

DANTE - Coming Soon!

DANTE - MOTIONHOUSE & ECHO COLLECTIVE

-COMING SOON-
JANUARY 2024

We are transported into a dream-like state in which we do not run, but dance. The original music composed by Echo Collective takes us on a journey through landscapes where time disappears and we are drawn into nature.

By Motionhouse / Jamie Lee & Stanislav Dobak

Directed by Jamie Lee

Director of Photography by Stanislav Dobak 

Music by Echo Collective

Starring Laura Aris

Production assistant Louise Tanoto

Camera assistant Kevin Tieku

Special thanks to La Ferme du Château de Corroy


Noche Barroca

Premier on OCTUBRE 27th at Museo Universidad de Navarra, in Pamplona (ES).

A performance where improvisation marks the point of union between three dancers, and baroque music is the common thread and the main reason for this friendly encounter.

Noche Barroca is a collaborative project conceived by Marta Coronado in which the performer and choreographer share the stage with dancers of different ages and artistic paths. This time, the guests are Laura Aris (1977) and Clarissa Costagliola (1997). Each performer will bring her vision of movement giving rise to a conversation and sharing where the individual dance language is represented.

© Beniamir Boar

Premier of Geometry of Breath

Zagreb Dance Company/ ZKM & Laura Arís Álvarez

I'm in the postpartum mood...still echoing the intensity of the last few weeks, grateful for the human and artistic encounters and blissful to have opportunities to create my own stage work.
Long live to Geometry of Breath!

"The final piece that they showed to the Zagreb audience can be "read" on countless different levels, from the fact that geometry is literally present in everything, which is a clear reminded of the light created by Saša Fistrić all the way to which human emotions intertwine and melt, which is excellently shown by the stage use of costumes of the dancers, the costume designer Ana Fucijaš created hoodies in which two moving bodies fit at the same time. And just like in dramatic performances, for which the old Chekhov rule applies, "the gun that hangs on the wall in the first act must fire in the last”, here too, the stones that the dancer throws on the stage in the first scene of the work at its end offers interesting scenes in which the arrangement of the stones that the dancers place around the stage recalls rows of soldiers, but also children in a joyful procession of flowers, showing that everything in life is limited by the way we humans use it, just as the associations to what we see are conditioned by our experiences, but also by the moment in which we live."

Bojana Radovič- 12/09/2022