HITTING THE STAGE HARD

30 September 2021

There ain’t no month like October 2021 to discover the diversity of dramaturg Sara Vanderieck‘s work.

Do you prefer discovering an inclusive performance for children (6+)? Go and discover the final performances of Lola Bogaerts’ VRETEN!.

Or you are ‘more of a theatre’s person’? Kristien De Proost & Bwanga Pilipili are performing Simon, Grafunkel, My Sister and Me all over the place and Sanja Mitrović’ Demeter Calling will have its première on October 14th.

But isn’t Sara Vanderieck a “dance dramaturg”? Yes she is – also. Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s Wakatt will be shared with Athen’s audiences tonight. Lisi Estaras and Ido Batash’ Sonico – the heart is the muscle we like to work out can be discovered in Evergem this month and last but not least: Louise Vanneste’s EARTHS will finally find its audience during the première on October 22nd.

Prefer to see all this information in a calendar layout? Take your eyes here.

Looking forward to share all these worlds with you!

SONICO – the heart is the muscle we like to work out. hits Ghent’s stage next week.

19 August 2021

After the long break COVID imposed on us we are very happy and grateful to announce the return of SONICO – the heart is a muscle we like to work out. to the theatre. What makes it even more special: to Monkey Mind Company‘s hometown Ghent and it’s Minard Theatre!

This new dance and live music performance created by Lisi Estaras and Ido Batash in collaboration with musician Ariel Eberstein and his Brussels-based band by the same name, Sonico was inspired by the music of the avant-garde Argentinian composer Eduardo Rovira and the the connection between two people, dancing together, supporting and provoking each other.

Will you join us to discover this journey on August 30th? Get your tickets here.

Summer is for: announcing beautiful collaborations.

13 July 2021

Not all has been hard during this past strange season ’20/’21. Behind those closed theatre doors artists continued to research and create. These specific times have created the context for a nourishing and inspiring new collaboration between choreographer Louise Vanneste and dramaturg Sara Vanderieck. We are very happy to finally announce Earths‘ première on October 22nd in Charleroi (BE).

Get your tickets to discover our work here.

Midsummer Souvenirs

5 July 2021

While the belgian summer is struggling to break through, let’s have a look back at that beautiful midsummer evening in Leuven’s Botanical Garden on June 23rd. Join photographer Maya Wilsens‘ gaze at performers Kristien De Proost, Lisi Estaras, Mirko Banovic, Sara Vanderieck, Sayouba Sigué, Toon Walgrave and Rahmat Emonds in When I look at a Strawberry, I think of a Tongue.

A new collaboration to look forward to: DEMETER CALLING

29 June 2021

‘One day they will listen to me, a woman’

Before diving into summer, let me announce this new exciting collaboration as a dramaturg with Sanja Mitrović and Stand Up Tall Productions for their creation Demeter Calling. Co-produced with the Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS), it will premiere on the 14th of October 2021, with further dates in Brussels, a Belgian tour in October and November, and an international tour to follow.

Demeter Calling is a concert performance in which an all-female cast mobilises the high energy and sensuality of the singing body to draw attention to the gap between the lives of women as prescribed by others and the lives they demand for themselves.

​Stories of women from different parts of the world are turned into songs that question the notion of motherhood as the sole focus of female identity. The performers from diverse backgrounds, including Mitrović herself, act as mediums attuning to and channeling voices of sisters dispersed across the gulfs of geography, ethnicity and culture. In the liminal space between a world which has already ended and another yet to begin, they are an unlikely girl band celebrating female strength, resilience, determination, and guts to speak – and sing – one’s own pain. 

New original music by Belgrade-based composer Marija Balubdžić binds together a multitude of individual perspectives. Taking as inspiration music from various Balkan regions, she leaps off the signature elements of such traditional styles to forge them into slivers of glistening electronic avant-pop, broadcast from somewhere decidedly off the radar, otherworldly and resistant to categorisation.

Through the form of performative practice as communal and immediate as a music concert, Demeter Calling summons up the corporeal, the sensual and the affective, foregrounding nuances of the relationship between mother and child, and, in a wider sense, the perils of female survival.

For further information and advance tickets visit KVS website.

You can watch a preliminary teaser here, with further updates following from September.

When I look at a Strawberry, I think of a Tongue. – coming back to you!

29 May 2021

What better way to return to meeting each other live and celebrate this year’s midsummer’s night than a unique performance of When I look at a Strawberry, I think of a Tongue ?

Each performance is unique, because the narrative varies according to the location, the day on the calendar and the audience in the room.

In When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue, dancer Lisi Estaras, musician Mirko Banovic, theatre maker Kristien De Proost and dramaturge Sara Vanderieck combine their disciplines and are inspired by The Art of Joy, the great novel in which Goliarda Sapienza explores the concept of what it means to be ‘free’.

For this unique edition at the invitation of 30CC, the makers are not only joined by guests Toon Walgrave and Sayouba Sigué, but they also transform the performance for a beautiful location: the Botanical Garden in Leuven.

Make sure to be there!

tickets

Cliniques Dramaturgiques: a Quebec-Flanders bilateral cooperation

29 April 2021

I am proud to announce that les enfants du garage‘s new dramaturgical collaborative project Cliniques Dramaturgiques – an intercontinental artistic pollination has been rewarded with the support of the Flemish and Québécois authorities within the Quebec-Flanders bilateral cooperation.

The Cliniques Dramaturgiques, originally developed by Jessie Mill within the framework of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA) as a basis for inspiring support for local arts practices on the one hand and the development of an open dramaturgical platform on the other, are evolving into an intercontinental durational collaboration.
Since 2016, the Cliniques Dramaturgiques have formed a support and exchange platform within the programming of the FTA between makers in the performing arts – choreographers, authors, directors, performers, etc. -. This unique context on the one hand stimulates encounters between guest dramaturges from different backgrounds and, on the other hand, offers local artists a form of one-off support.

In a collaboration with CAMPO (BE), Kunstencentrum Nona (BE) and LA SERRE- arts vivants (CA), les enfants du garage (BE) and Festival TransAmériques (CA) will bring the practice of the Cliniques Dramaturgiques to Flanders and share the Belgian dramaturgical practice with the Québécois community.

Coming back to you with more news soon!

VRETEN! is on its way …

29 April 2021

Last season director Lola Bogaert and I were introduced to each other during her research residency at Ostend’s cultural centre De Grote Post. Programmer Liv Laveyne knew Lola’s work and saw a possible connection with my dramaturgical practice. What a matchmaker she is!

After Monkey Mind, Lisi Estaras‘ inclusive dance performance, VRETEN! is my second experience in collaborating with a performer with Down’s Syndrome. A second research into a dramaturgy on how to share thoughts and questions about an inclusive society. VRETEN! is also a first: my first dramaturgy for an all ages performance (6+).

As we are going into our final week of creation, I can only share my huge enthusiasm about the work Lola is creating together with performers Sophia Rodríguez, Adnane Lamarti and Giel Roels, set designer Anouk van Kolfschoten, figures creator Paul Contryn and last but definitely not least soundscape-composer Sam Serruys.

So I suggest: offer yourself and your kids an immersion into our imagination!

The gym looks like every other school gym. Dancers seem to be ordinary dancers. Feet look like normal feet. Hands resembling ordinary hands. Until: look at that tongue! It is very long, isn’t it? I’m sure you can gobble down a lot with it!

Bodies become different,  limb by limb. One body looks like a woman, the other one looks like a man, the next one is also a man, but different. Different from that first man. Different to that first man. Or to the other one. Who is who in VRETEN!?  Who is normal? And who decides? Can the differences be bridged?

PREMIERE:

30 November 2019, De Grote Post (Ostend, BE)

08 December 2019, De Maan (Mechelen,BE)

Tour schedule

Sharing the dramaturgical practice.

29 April 2021
© Yel Ratajczak/Sara Vanderieck

I am happy to announce that the Brussels based research centre La Bellone invites Alexandros Mistriotis (GR), Daniel Canty (CAN), Camille Louis (FR) and myself to each host one of the 4 ‘modules’ with a focus on exchanging our dramaturgical practice.

In French-speaking Belgium, dramaturgical practices are unknown. La Bellone notices a real lack of knowledge of this function, although essential in the field of the stage arts both within the venues and within creative teams. This is why the centre offers a cycle of modules combining theory and practice that meet the needs of both students and (self-taught) practitioners.

The modules are open to anyone with experience in watching stage arts, providing artistic advise, participating in a creation process as ‘outside eye’ or playwright.

You can find all information here.

I will be very happy to share my practice and research around an intuitive dramaturgy with you from March 16th to March 20th!

📅 Application deadline: December 13, 2019

Simon, Garfunkel, my Sister and Me kick-off.

29 April 2021
© Kristien De Proost

Today I am joining Kristien De Proost and Bwanga Pilipili in C-Takt for their first residency in the process of creating Simon, Garfunkel, my Sister and Me. Excited doesn’t begin to describe the energy this project awakens in my dramaturg’s mind and being!

2019: Simon, Garfunkel, my Sister and Me. : white theater maker and actress Kristien De Proost invites black theater maker and actress Bwanga Pilipili for an ultimate reenactment of Simon & Garfunkels live concert in Central Park.

Who interprets Art and who interprets Paul? Will Bwanga and Kristien survive the confrontation with these two immortal musicians? With each other? Will they stay upright? Will the public get value for their money? Will we all make it to the last song? And are there winners and / or losers at the end? Simon, Garfunkel, My Sister and Me will be a performance about rivalry in all its forms. Live versus tape, female versus male, black versus white, Europe versus America. Over bridges and turbulent water. About feelin’groovy. About boxers, hometowns, old friends and the 50 ways to leave your lover. But especially about the right to keep singing what you want to sing.

Simon, Garfunkel, my Sister and Me will première at Kunstencentrum NONA on April 22nd 2020.