dance − music  | grande salle | running time 1 hr 40 |
tuesday 15 december 2009 at 20 h 30

Koen Augustijnen – les ballets C de la B

This dance is part of the world and the world belongs to everyone. This is part of the mission statement of this Belgian dance company, the ballets C de la B. The company was founded in 1984, by Alain Platel, a gifted choreographer sought after by artistic programmers all over Europe. Ashes is a work created by Koen Augustijnen, a close collaborator of the company as well as a dancer in many of Platel’s works. It is based on various musical works by Handel. Onstage along with a group of dancers we find acrobats, a soprano, a countertenor and five musicians. The set is built on two levels whose deliberate greyness contrasts strongly with the colourful performers. Ashes is a work about the idea of elusiveness, the ephemeral, the perishable, choreographically translated into several male pas de deux, torn between the fact that things disappear, trickling through our fingers -- and our stubborn desire to hang onto things, to tie our belongings, like our certainties, to a permanency which nothing can undo. Ashes is a great escape from the everyday --- the intertwining of dance and music unfurls in free metaphors, open to many interpretations.

Meet the artists after the performance

choreography Koen Augustijnen/ musical direction WimSelles/ after original music by G.F. Handel/ dramaturgy Guy Cools/ movement counsel Florence Augendre/ set Jean Bernard Koeman/ lighting Kurt Lefevre/ sound Sam Serruys/ costumes Dorothée Catry assisted by Pauline Picry/ lighting direction Kurt Lefevre, Jan Vereecken/ sound engineers Sam Serruys, Bart Uyttersprot/ stage management Wim Van de Cappelle/ set construction Peter Braet, Winne Clément, Wim Van de Cappelle, Jules Fabry, Hilde Geerts, Stéphane Mandeville, Koen Mortier, Nick Mortier, Koen Raes, Nicolas Vladyslav/ soprano Amaryllis Dieltiens or Irene Carpentier/ countertenor Steve Dugardin/ violin Aurélie Dorzée or Barbara Erdner/ accordion Gwen Cresens or Otine van Erp/ lute Jurgen De Bruyn or Pieter Theuns/ marimba, percussion Mattijs Vanderleen/ cello Saartje Van Camp or Nina Hitz/ dance by and with Beniamin Boar, Grégory Edelein, Sung-Im Her, Athanasia Kanellopoulou, Ligia Manuela Lewis, Chantal Loïal, Gaël Santisteva, Jakub Truszkowski
Production les ballets C de la B. Coproduction Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, Zürich/ La Rose des Vents, Villeneuve-d’Ascq/ Théâtre de la Ville, Paris/ Brighton Festival/ Theater Bonn/ Torinodanza KVS, Brussels/ Theaterfestival Boulevard (’s-Hertogenbosch) in collaboration with the Theater aan de Parade. With support from the city of Ghent / the province of Western Flandres
Creation in February 2009.