In this breakthrough piece for Jan Martens, VOICE NOISE  brings together six dancers to shape a soundscape comprising some of  the great female performers and composers of our time. In his own  pop-inspired and precise way, the choreographer questions a very  contemporary story, and in doing so raises the question of how some of  these voices were silenced. 

“Silence is the woman’s cosmos". In her essay, The Gender of Sound (1992),  the author Anne Carson uses this affirmation by Sophocles as one of its  main axes. She seeks to understand how, “by ideologically associating  the sound of women with monstrosity, disorder and death”, patriarchal  culture has reduced women to silence. Jan Martens, leading choreographer  on the new Flemish scene, tackles this state of affairs, inviting to  the stage the voices of unknown or forgotten innovative women from the  last one hundred years of music history. Put into movement by six  performers, the dance thus becomes the vehicle for these life stories, a  human voice at the crossroads between a cry, whisper, song and protest.  In VOICE NOISE, Jan Martens turns away from large ensembles,  and gets back to basics, namely that of movement in sharing. Together  with Sue-Yeon Youn, Elisha Mercelina and Mamadou Wagué, he draws upon  lifelong accomplices Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson and Loeka  Willems in this restorative odyssey.

Jan Martens (° 1984, Belgium) studied at  the Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg and graduated in 2006 from the dance  department of the Artesis Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. Since 2010 he  has been making his own choreographic work which, over the years, has  been performed with increasing regularity before a national and  international audience.    

The work of Martens is nurtured by the belief that each body can  communicate, that each body has something to say. That direct  communication expresses itself in transparent forms. His work is a  sanctuary in which the notion of time becomes tangible again and in  which there is room for observation and emotion as well as reflection.  To achieve this result he creates not so much a movement language of his  own, but shapes and reuses existing idioms in a different context so  that new ideas emerge. In each new work he tries to redraw the relation  between public and performer.

Martens’ first production I CAN RIDE A HORSE WHILST JUGGLING SO MARRY ME (2010)  was a portrait of a generation of young women in a society dominated by  social networks. It was followed by two love duets that he made at  Frascati Amsterdam. A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION (2011) was selected for Aerowaves 2011 and SWEAT BABY SWEAT (2011) for the Dutch Dance Festival 2012 and Circuit X 2013. He then created three shows about unconventional beauty, with  performers whose bodies you do not expect in the context of contemporary  dance: BIS (2012) for the then 62-year-old Truus Bronkhorst, LA BETE (2013) for the young actress Joke Emmers, and VICTOR (2013), a duet for a boy and a grown man that Martens created with director Peter Seynaeve.

In 2014 Martens focused attention on the jump as movement in the group performance THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER (2014). The production was selected for the Flanders Theatre Festival and is still touring, just like Martens’ solo ODE TO THE ATTEMPT (2014) and the project THE COMMON PEOPLE (2016),  a performance, social experiment and workshop in one, created in  collaboration with film director Lukas Dhont. Martens’ show RULE OF THREE (2017)  was a collaboration with the American sound artist NAH, and had its  premiere at deSingel in Antwerp where Martens started his trajectory as creative associate in  2017. The performance got nominated for a Zwaan (Swan) in the category  ‘most impressive dance production 2018.’ De Zwanen are seen as the most  prestigious dance prize within the Dutch performing arts field.

In the 18/19 season, Martens engaged in three collaborations. Together with 13 youths and fABULEUS, he created PASSING THE BECHDEL TEST, a theatrical production in which the voices of the youths are interwoven with  the voices of famous and less famous women from the present and the  past. He also revised the successful 2011 production A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION with two new dancers under the title PAULINE THOMAS as commissioned by CDCN Le Gymnase in Roubaix. In January 2019, Martens himself took the stage again in the solo lostmovements,  in which he plunges into the universe of choreographer and friend Marc  Vanrunxt (Kunst/Werk). In 19/20 Martens’ focus is on the premiere of any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones.  A work for seventeen dancers between the ages of 15 and 68. The  premiere – scheduled for April 24, 2020 at DE SINGEL (Antwerp, BE) was  postponed due to the corona crisis and took in the end place on July 18  at Festival d’Avignon. On July 12, 2021 ELISABETH GETS HER WAY premiered  at Julidans (Amsterdam, NL). This solo created and performed by Jan  Martens is a danced portrait of the Polish-born Elisabeth Chojnacka  (1939–2017), an exceptionally talented and passionate musician who  contributed to the revival of harpsichord music in the middle of the  twentieth century.

In 2014 Jan Martens founded, together with business manager  Klaartje Oerlemans, the choreographic platform GRIP in Antwerp /  Rotterdam, from where they jointly produce and distribute his work as  well as support the work of Cherish Menzo and Steven Michel.

Source : https://www.grip.house/ 

Born in 1977, Fabien Plasson is a video director specialized in the field of performing arts (dance , music, etc).

During his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (joined in 1995) Fabien discovered video art. He was trained by various video artists (Joel Bartoloméo Pascal Nottoli , Eric Duyckaerts , etc).
He first experimented with the creation of installations and cinematic objects.

From 2001 to 2011, he was in charge of Ginger & Fred video Bar’s programming at La Maison de la Danse in Lyon. He discovered the choreographic field and the importance of this medium in the dissemination, mediation and pedagogical approach to dance alongside Charles Picq, who was a brilliant video director and the director of the video department at that time.

Today, Fabien Plasson is the video director at La Maison de la Danse and in charge of the video section of Numeridanse.tv, an online international  video library, and continues his creative activities, making videos of concerts, performances and also creating video sets for live performances.

Sources: Maison de la Danse ; Fabien Plasson website

More information: fabione.fr