‘Showings’

For the Dag van de Dans (Day of Dance) BOZAR asked the Brussels dance company Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods to put a programme of her cinematic work together. The American choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart often works with visual artists and filmmakers. They created cinematic reinterpretations of choreographic works (Meg Stuart’s Alibi (2001) by Maarten Vanden Abeele, the invited (2003) by Jonathan Inksetter and Inflamável (2016) by Stephane Leonard) and video installations (The Only Possible City (2008, for Manifesta7)). On Saturday 29 April all of them will be on view in the Centre for Fine Arts.

Meg Stuart’s Alibi (2001) – 24 mins
The Belgian photographer Maarten Vanden Abeele made a personal impression of Meg Stuarts work Alibi (2001) and reworked this footage into a reflection on dance, movement, word and image. You find out how Meg Stuart uses the performance Alibi to create a theatrical environment in which she confronts physical and virtual reality.

the invited (2003) – 12 mins
The film the invited by the Canadian artist Jonathan Inksetter demonstrates his personal, visual interpretation of a specific scene from the performance Visitors Only (2003) by Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods. The characters in Visitors Only don’t have a memory. Their perception is distorted, broken up into visions and transient information. Their body is a sort of radio transmitter and receiver for fragments, gestures, image, energy and sound signals: a zone of transition somewhere between dream and reality.

Inflamável (2016) – 16 min BELGIAN PREMIERE
Along with costume designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard and performers Vânia Rovisco and Márcio Kerber Canabarro, in Inflamável Meg Stuart plays around with images of fame, risk and vulnerability. Two bodies wend their way through an apocalyptic landscape, a duet on the border between pride and loss, success and decline, disillusion and the lure of the unattainable. Stephane Leonard filmed the performance in an empty auditorium and accentuated the intense intimacy and cool tension.

The Only Possible City (2008) BELGIAN PREMIERE
“The face is at once the irreparable being-exposed of humans and the very opening in which they hide and stay hidden. The face is the only location of community, the only possible city.” - Giorgio Agamben
Upon the invitation of Manifesta7 in Bolzano, Italy, Meg Stuart made the video installation, The Only Possible City, inspired by face-to-face videos by the American artist Vito Acconci. There you discover time capsules of compressed existence, built up around simple actions and relations.