Archa Theatre

Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus: What the Body does not remember (programme from the performance)

Dance "Eurocrash" in Archa (Lidové noviny)

The other performances of Ultima Vez in the Archa Theatre

Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus
What the Body does not remember

World dernier on April 26, 27, 28 1997 at the Archa Theatre

Choreography: Wim Vandekeybus
Assistant of choreographer: Eduardo Torroja
Music: Thierry De Mey a Peter Vermeersch

"If movement was to be only dance, it would not say anything to me. There are many various things in my mind, which are more interesting for me: a picture, a fragment of a text, a part of a film, everything that touches me and inspires me in some way...I am not interested performances which develop linear-like from A to Z. They only lie. Our mind doesn't work like this. I am fascinated by things that are "not right", things which do not match the rest of your life, things we don't want to show..."

Wim Vandekeybus

Ultima Vez presents the top of the contemporary world dance theatre based on the expressivity, dynamics, physical strength and energy reaching the border of human abilities.
          Wim Vandekeybus is a choreographer, dancer, photographer and film director. After a short cooperation with Jan Fabre, he founded a group of young artists, dancers, musicians and designers called Ultima Vez. The artists work with aggression, roughness, visual and sonic shock, insanity combined with technical meticulousness and perfection. The performances are impressive thanks to their complex effect of movement, image and music.
          In Prague, we had the opportunity to get to know the work of Wim Vandekeybus through the television medium. The video "Roseland", a video presentation of some of his choreographic works are situated in a dilapidated Brussels cinema, was awarded a prize in the television festival Zlatá Praha.
          In Spring 1995, the Archa Theatre staged the production of "Mountains made of Barking", which was originally created for the Flemish Royal Theatre.
          After successfully introducing "Mountains Made of Barking" to Prague, Ultima Vez chose the Archa theatre to complete the run of ten year's of successful performances of "
On the basis of this successful performance, Ultima Vez chose to close the ten year run of the performances of "What the Body does not remember" in the Archa Theatre.

What the Body does not remember

The performance "What the Body does not remember" originated already in 1987 as the first project of Wim Vandekeybus created for Ultima Vez. It deals with the instinctive reactions of the human body. There are stimuli which the body reacts on faster than the mind. And particularly the intensity of these moments, when we don't have the possibility to choose, when certain conditions decide instead of us, become suddenly more important than their meaning. Hallucinations, nightmares, moments when everything becomes a question of life or death. In the performance "What the Body does not remember", Wim Vandekeybus tries to confront the human body with moments of danger which wakes up energy and uses its tension.
The performance of "What the Body does not remember" was created in co-production with the Centro de Produzione Inteatro Polverigi, the Festival de Saint-Denis, the Festival D´Ete de Seine-Martime and Toneelschuur Haarlem. In 1988, this performance was awarded the Bessie Award for its' "brutal confrontation between music and dance".

Wim Vandekeybus

"Dreams disturb me because you cannot take them away. In one moment you are here, and in the next, you are somewhere else. You still have to adapt, again and again you lose clarity and the safety of normality.
          "The texts and authors who know me are paralyzed. As if they overflowing with meaning, I alone cannot give anything more. Nothing provokes me , nothing inside them is infinite, nothing is raw - something that you can use as a way out. Something that you can begin to peel and polish. Everything is solid, perfect and for that reason, dead.
          "I like to work with new people, very often untrained people and sometimes with people who I know absolutely nothing about. They open up my imagination. They have a definite lack of defense, women take me forward. I can grind my own imagination into powder. Much the same as with the text. Before this, I go onto the stage and read a lot and fly from the right and back from one side to the other. Later, I I sweep everything off the table. As soon as they start rehearsals, I start to dig inside myself, my own experiences creating many pictures. In the end, even Shakespeare only lived once."

Peter Vermeersch (1959)
Peter Vermeersch studied architecture, plays the clarinet, tenor saxophone and composes music for his band "X-Legged Sally". He used to collaborate with the dance group Rosas, and composed music for its performance "Rosas danst Rosas" (choreography by Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker).
          In 1988, together with Thierry De Mey, he composed music for Wim Vandekeybus's performance of "What the Body does not remember" and "The Weight of a Hand". His co-operation with Wim Vandekeybus has continued until now. In 1991, he composed music for the performance "Immer das Selbe gelogen", in 1993 music for the multimedia project "Her Body Doesn´t Fit Her Soul" and in 1994, he created the music arrangement for the performance "Mountains Made of Barking". Peter Vermeersch was one of the founders of the "Maximalists!" band.

These performances are realized with the support of the Flemish Representative for the Czech Republic and the Czech Ministry of Culture.

Dance "Eurocrash" in Archa

In Prague's Archa Theatre, there was an exclusive European derniere (closing night). Ultima Vez - the Belgian dance company of choreographer/dancer Wim Vandekeybus - presented the first and most successful performance in their ten year career What the Body Does Not Remember.

Wim Vandekeybus, declared as the top of the dance "Eurocrash movement", is not by any means a lyric poet. the movement in his choreographic pieces are self-preserved reactions, by which the body responds to danger. In the most expressive part of the performance, "Frisking", three girls are standing their arms spread out, widely straddled, as if they were being examined. At that moment, they remain stiff with the discipline of a sacrifice of repression, but what moment does their self-preservative instinct tear down their bodies to the instinctive and vehement reaction of resistance, escape and counter-attack. The instinct even leads the hands of their male counterparts, when their the movements of inspection emerge as erotic touches... Eroticism - and with this, also the dance - through Vandekeybus' eyes, appears as a mix of persecution and street fights.
The performance is composed by simply editing these "clips"- the choreographer places between the rough pieces, very humorous parts such as when the dancers steal each other's jackets and towels. The opening scene, "Hands", is magic. The parallel strips of hard light cut into the darkness. The seated girl, at the table in the background, strokes the tables with her bare hands producing a racket which controls the male bodies lying on the ground. They shoot up on command of the sounds, and then roll. This contains the accuracy of a dog's obedience, but also with the wild instinct; we are somewhere on the border between the tapping of the darkness and Catch 22. Also the finale makes reference to the ethnic dance, well as to passionate child's play. All dancers rotate within the resounding and noisy stamping - dangerous for the bodies of their partners who lay on the floor.
The performance, What the Body does not remember, began in 1987. Since that time, this training program of self-protection, in which Vandekeybus brings to European dance, has already been experienced. We return now to the greatest caution of the entire span of the performance, to a gesture of unity. That is what we miss today in this performance. However, it is still enough for the bitter applause, which thundered through the Archa.

Nina Vangeli, Lidové noviny 29. 4. 1997