TOT

Lisbeth Gruwez | Voetvolk (Belgium) - Nomadics

Eight dancers give voice to nature: pre-eminently the place to unwind. But what do we give her in return? Footfall depicts how she watches us and undergoes our footsteps.

In Nomadics, the dancers form a (passing) raging landscape. Sometimes they are trees, sometimes they are grass. Sometimes they are rock, sometimes even human. The constant transformation results in beauty as well as friction: there is tension in the air. But as physics teaches us: friction eventually leads to warmth, slowing down or change. Through the friction, the dancers search for connection, both with nature and with each other.

In this, music is in symbiosis with dance, as always at Voetvolk. Maarten Van Cauwenberghe recorded sounds during preparatory walks - steps, water, wind in the trees, highways... - and brewed them into environmental techno.

Prior to the show, the dancers make a twelve-kilometre hike, the audience is warmly but non-committally invited to walk with them*. The dancers will appear at an agreed place and time and pick them up for a tour, which focuses on looking, experiencing and connecting with the landscape. In fields, along meadows and ditches, with Amsterdam as a vista. The tour ends on the Bellevue stage, where the paths separate again and the performance can begin. But the experience of the tour returns in intensified form.

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