About the production
Invited draws material from intensive research into (stage) space and co-authorship in contemporary dance. In his new production, Seppe Baeyens formulates his artistic response to the question of how the audience can help write the choreography of a performance. Using dance as a common language, in the space of one hour he wants to look for an alternative way of living together and thereby establish a community embracing the cast and the audience.
Invited consists of a varied intergenerational group of performers who reflect society. The audience plays an important part. The stage design is an essential part of Invited. It reduces the distance between the performers and the audience by making them jointly a part of a single clear (democratic) form.
Authors
SEPPE BAEYENS (b. 1981) started out as a young dancer with fABULEUS and later turned up as a performer with the Kopergietery, Kabinet k, Productiehuis Brabant, Ontroerend Goed, Miet Warlop and others. Since the start of his career as a performing artist, Baeyens has seen intergenerational work as being essential to showing the most human and vulnerable form of dance. The imperfection of dance and the way different generations relate to it are inseparably linked to his artistic creations. For instance, in 2015 he created his first large-scale dance production, Tornar, in association with Ultima Vez and Wim Vandekeybus. In this piece he established interaction among an intergenerational cast of professional and non-professional dancers. He chose the members of this varied group in the course of a long process of workshops and encounters at the Ultima Vez studio in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. Tornar was selected for the Theatre Festival and has been widely praised at home and abroad. In 2017, Seppe Baeyens received a grant from the Flemish Community to carry out research into performance space (and other spaces) and co-authorship in contemporary dance. The results of this study are now put to use in the creation of Invited, Baeyens’ new dance production.
KRISTIN ROGGHE (b. 1983) has since 2016 been engaged as city dramaturge at KVS. She studied philosophy at the universities of Leuven and Lisbon and obtained her Master after Master in Transmedia at the Kunsthogeschool St-Lukas in Brussels. In 2010 she started work as a dramaturge with the theatre company 't Arsenaal in Mechelen, and worked with directors including Michael De Cock, Mesut Arslan, Frédérique Lecomte and Jaouad Essounani, and from 2011to 2015 led the GEN2020 project, in which she focused on introducing intercultural element to the Flemish theatre sector. At KVS she been a dramaturge on a number of performances, including Invited.
STEF HEEREN (b. 1976) is a musician, composer, the driving force behind the alternative band Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat. He graduated with a degree in ‘Instrument Making’ from Ghent Conservatory in 2007 and subsequently focused on composing. Meanwhile, as the band leader of KTAOABC, he has released six studio albums. Stef also creates compositions (performed live) for theatre and dance projects, and he has worked with Kabinet K, Kopergietery, Victoria Deluxe and Ultima Vez, among others.
KWINTEN MORDIJCK (b. 1988) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, noisemaker and producer. Kwinten makes music for theatre, dance, performance, installations, games, films. He has worked at NTGent, Toneelgroep Maastricht, Ultima Vez, cie COVAR and Het Laagland, and with the directors and choreographers Servé Hermans, Els Roobroeck, Seppe Baeyens, Inaki Azpillaga, Loek de Bakker and Steven Heene. As a musician, he plays synths and/or baritone sax with a variety of groups, ranging from psychedelic post-punk (Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat), psychedelic krautpunk (Manngold) and slumjunglevoodootronicalia (The Golden Tieger), to improvised music that can move in any direction. He has also released a number of albums and EPs.
KAREN WILLEMS (b. 1979) began her career as a percussionist with the brass band Nooit Gedacht from Sint-Jan-Bentille and studied classical percussion at the Eeklo Academy. She subsequently shifted her focus to jazz at the academies of jazz and light music in Ghent and Knokke, and performed as a drummer in The Saint Michael’s big band. She was a member of the experimental indie band Yuko, with which she made three albums and toured all over Europe. Karen is famous for her artistic and highly physical style of drumming, which has made her a respected musician in high demand. She has played with Silver Junkie and Kaboom Karavan.
From the reviews
In a pleasant and carefully thought-out meeting with the audience, Baeyens makes the power of the collective action tangible.
Moos van den Broek, www.theaterkrant.nl
Either you have always regarded it as a weak point of dance performances that you weren’t allowed to join in the dancing yourself, or else you are scared to death of stage creations in which spectators are obliged to participate. The choreographer Seppe Baeyens expertly succeeds in combining the two. He is brilliantly successful at gently bringing about a symbiosis between the dancers and the audience, between the irrepressible party animals and the wallflowers of this world.
Michaël Bellon, www.bruzz.be
The boundaries between the players and the audience are broken. Who are the dancers and where are the spectators? In the long run, nobody knows. What is the purpose of Invited? "It's an invitation to be together," the choreographer explains.
www.tijd.be
Seppe Baeyens manages to remove borders, hierarchies and differences. A generous show, from which we come out refreshed.
Estelle Spoto, focus.levif.be
