DANNY WILLEMS

TrapTown, takes you to a parallel universe, free from defined time and space. Conflicts from the early days and curious strange catastrophes dominate the relationships between the people. The necessity and apparent possibility of emancipation rise to the surface.

We are in the distant future. A turning point in the history of mankind has been reached. A devastating force is engaged in utterly destroying all life on earth. With the aid of a child, a few people have nonetheless succeeded in reaching a place of safety. But life in this safe room is far from easy. The survivors, being human, are constantly at odds with one another. On top of all this is the fact that the chosen ones cannot escape life. Immortality prevails, and suicide doesn’t offer any way out.
In the theatre and dance performance Mockumentary of a Contemporary Saviour, Wim Vandekeybus, through the medium of seven characters, presents an incisive portrait of a messiah as an imaginary figure. Utopia and dystopia at a single glance. Nothing is what it seems in this futuristic realityion

In 1999, In Spite of Wishing and Wanting caused a huge stir. For the first time, Wim Vandekeybus created a performance not about the chemistry between men and women, but a primal desire in a world of men alone – fierce, wild, naive and playful. Spellbinding footage and dance sequences, supported by David Byrne’s sensual soundtrack, flow into monologues about fear, a desire for security and the magic of sleep. In 2016 a completely new cast takes on the challenge of this world hit.

For Wim Vandekeybus love is perhaps the most intangible and capricious of all our inner states of mind: it moves mountains, and creates immeasurable heights and depths. It gives strength, but causes devastating pain when it turns against you. Love inspires poetry: it is exalted and cursed.

The dancer and choreographer Seppe Baeyens has been closely involved in the activities for children and adolescents at Ultima Vez since 2011. He opts expressly to enter into dialogue with these children and adolescents, as well as with adults. His initial productions, including We, House (Hartbeats) and The (Im)possible Friendship of Stef and Augustijn (Kopergietery) were much acclaimed in Belgium and abroad.

Under the wing of Ultima Vez and Wim Vandekeybus, Seppe Baeyens is now creating his first large-scale dance production. It is called Tornar and tells the story of people left after the passage of a tornado who are trying to rebuild a community. The movement of the devastating tornado is a metaphor for the crumbling solidarity between generations.

For booty Looting Wim Vandekeybus has composed a group of six performers, one musician and one photographer. Music, movement, spoken word and photography are on an equal footing with each other. Every medium adds something or erases something.

The title booty Looting is intended to point to this process of distorting the memory. booty Looting refers to a double form of plundering: the plundering of what has already been plundered, stealing what was already stolen, looting the booty. Wim Vandekeybus: “booty Looting is a highly individual piece. The audience will have to get involved and will have to imagine things. And who knows, it may itself occasionally feel it has been robbed.”

On stage we see the young performer Damien Chapelle. In an ingenious interaction with the film, he flits around, swinging between loneliness and happiness, in the process creating a world of his own. Sometimes it's manic-euphoric, sometimes vulnerable, helpless and questing, just like the characters projected over his head, with whom he vainly attempts to make contact.

For nieuwZwart (Dutch: new black) Wim Vandekeybus has composed a new group of seven young performers - four male and three female.

After earlier collaborations for Scratching the Inner Fields (2001), Blush (2002) and Sonic Boom (2003), the Flemish author Peter Verhelst takes up his pen for the texts. For the text interpretation born performers Kylie Walters and Gavin Webber join the dancers. The audience will be presented either a male or female version of the creation.

The eclectic and adventurous Belgian rock musician Mauro Pawlowski brings his universe into the creation process. Not only does he compose the original music, Mauro also accompanies the performances live on stage together with two other musicians Elko Blijweert and Jeroen Stevens.

The debut of Wim Vandekeybus and Ultima Vez in 1987 stunned the world of dance of the time. In New York Vandekeybus and composers Thierry de Mey and Peter Vermeersch received the prestigious Bessie Award for this ‘brutal confrontation of dance and music: the dangerous, combative landscape of What the Body Does Not Remember’. In 2013, 25 years later and with a new cast, the show once again goes on a world tour.
Live @ KVS Brussels 2013

Wim Vandekeybus: “They can all say it sucks! The rebellious spirit of teenagers means a lot more to me then the opinion of the establishment who tells them how it is done and what to think about it. In a sense RADICAL WRONG is a serious test for me. I destroy myself – it is a performance in which I no longer exist."

For Talk to the Demon, Wim Vandekeybus is working with a team of six performers and a child.

Vandekeybus: “We humans are desperately busy with giving sense to everything that happens between two mysteries - birth and death. That's the beautiful and dangerous side of our existence. We are inventive, we're gamblers and risk takers. We try to be what we are not. We like to suggest, to think in associations. Those are our instincts and impulses, but society creates rules, which suppress this in order to go against the chaos in our heads.
We all create demons inside ourselves to fight out our inner struggles - we just have to see them as a part of us, to make the darkness a part of what we are. Good can't exist without bad... It's just a question of balance.

n Oedipus / bêt noir Wim Vandekeybus is once again tackling Jan Decorte’s very personal and contrary 1999 version of Oedipus. An impressive cast of 16 actors, dancers and musicians present the tragic myth of this born anti-hero, who unknowingly murders his father and marries his mother.

Jan Decorte’s compact script gives Vandekeybus the opportunity to convert subconscious tensions into dance and music. The script starts at a point after the calamity has already taken place. Vandekeybus inserts wordless visual flashbacks between direct spoken passages. Vandekeybus: ‘It would be great to make a full-length film of Bêt noir one day. In fact it’s already a perfect film script. Bêt noir is a blast. It’s precisely because Jan writes so compactly that I have the time to do other things in the production; you can do what you like with it.

Vandekeybus himself plays the part of Oedipus, alongside the actors Cary Wijs, Guy Dermul and Willy Thomas. 

The debut of Wim Vandekeybus and Ultima Vez in 1987 stunned the world of dance of the time. In New York Vandekeybus and composers Thierry de Mey and Peter Vermeersch received the prestigious Bessie Award for this ‘brutal confrontation of dance and music: the dangerous, combative landscape of What the
Body Does Not Remember’. In 2013, 25 years later and with a new cast, the show once again goes on a world tour.

Vandekeybus’ first choreography balances on the razor edge of attraction and repulsion. Sometimes this results in a confrontation between two dancers, then between two groups, between dancers and music, and between dancers and a compelling set of lines. But throughout there is an explosion of aggression, fear and danger.

As from 2013 this pioneering dance piece is also being performed with live music played by the Brussels-based Ictus contemporary music ensemble. For both Ultima Vez and Ictus this collaboration is a long-awaited happy reunion. In 1990 Peter Vermeersch and Thierry De Mey brought a group of 12 musicians together for Le Poids de la Main, a performance that merged together the choreographic material from the first two Ultima Vez productions. This signalled the start of the fine career of this now well-established contemporary music ensemble.