Programme - Days of Dutch Culture

 

Conny Janssen Danst Album Familiar and Troost

Date: 24 September

Time: 19.00 hrs

Location: Alexandrinsky Theatre

Conny Janssen Danst

 

With an impressive range of productions, Conny Janssen has secured herself a special place within the Dutch dance scene. After her surprising debut The Undertow in 1988, her real break-through came with the choreography Eloï Eloï in 1991. In 1992, Conny Janssen and Wim Visser (a former theatre agent) started modern dance company Conny Janssen Danst. From 2001 onwards, the company has been part of the Culture Plan of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. It also receives structural financial support from the city of Rotterdam. From Conny Janssen’s language of dance speaks a love of contrast. Deep emotions are sometimes overthrown by humour. The organic is opposed by the absurd, the soft by the edgy and the aesthetic by the mundane. The vulnerability of the individual as a contrast to the power of the group is another tension field that is always visible in her work. Conny Janssen aims to show the individuality of group members. Her dancers should not only be masters of their own body, they should also possess a characteristic personality that enables them to leave their mark on the choreography as an individual. In her choice of music Conny Janssen opposes classical fragments to pop music. In this way she creates an intricate play of dance, theatre, visual design, music and light that is both flowing and colliding.

Álbum Familiar

Álbum Familiar is a choreography for three women and four man, who meet in front of a portrait gallery. While they are ‘leafing through the portraits’ memories come back; fragments of personal and family histories. The music, which ranges from Medieval composers like Guillaume de Machaut to creaking old recordings of Carlos Cardel’s tangos, seems to have a special significance in the personal histories of the characters.

TROOST

Literature is a form of reflection. It researches how people react to the fact that they exist. The search, or the offering of comfort, is an important part of this. In TROOST (Comfort) Conny Janssen explores the situations in which the art of dance and the art of language can influence one another mutually. In this performance fragments of texts, from poetry to rap, and seven dancers, all with different temperaments, measure themselves against each other. In TROOST the dancers form a small world of their own with all the inherent underlying patterns. Without literally telling stories, Conny Janssen views the different characters in their attempts to give themselves meaning in relation to each other. This search is enabled by texts that are melancholic, disarming, direct and humorous. These texts stimulate confrontations and at the same time they put things in perspective. The work of the new generation poets who perform on the small and larger venues in the Netherlands will be part of the basis for TROOST.

 

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