Voice Noise
2024 - Director : Plasson, Fabien
Choreographer(s) : Martens, Jan (Belgium)
Present in collection(s): Maison de la danse , Saisons 2020 > 2024
Voice Noise
2024 - Director : Plasson, Fabien
Choreographer(s) : Martens, Jan (Belgium)
Present in collection(s): Maison de la danse , Saisons 2020 > 2024
Voice Noise
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.
Martens, Jan
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/
Plasson, Fabien
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
Voice Noise
Choreography : Jan Martens
Interpretation : Elisha Mercelina, Steven Michel, Courtney May Robertson, Mamadou Wagué, Loeka Willems, Sue-Yeon Youn
Set design : Joris van Oosterwijk
Lights : Jan Fedinger
Costumes : Sofie Durnez
Other collaborations : Regards extérieurs : Marc Vanrunxt, Rudi Meulemans et Femke Gyselinck
Production / Coproduction of the choreographic work : Production GRIP. Coproduction La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand ; Maison de la danse, Lyon – Pôle européen de production ; De Singel international arts center ; Théâtre de Liège ; Julidans ; Le Manège – scène nationale de Reims ; Romaeuropa festival ; Teatro Municipal do Porto ; Scène Nationale de Forbach ; Charleroi-Danse ; Festspielhaus St-Pölten. Résidences La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand ; DE SINGEL ; Charleroi Danse. Diffusion internationale: A Propic – Line Rousseau en Marion Gauvent. Avec le support financier de: le gouvernement Flamand, le Tax Shelter du gouvernement fédéral belge via BNPPFFF.
Aucun Résultat