© Luc Depreitere

AH | HA

Lisbeth Gruwez & Maarten Van Cauwenberghe
2014

Five bodies meet at a locale without a name, perhaps even in the middle of the night. On the rhythm of the circumstances they slowly grow towards one another, the way trash sometimes gathers in a deserted street. But their synergy confers unexpected power on them. They coalesce in one of the most expressive manifestations of humankind: laughter. Resulting in an encounter that becomes a dangerous feast of shared ecstacy.

With AH|HA, Voetvolk moves on to the cutting edge of its investigation of the ecstatic body. The performance explores the wealth of plastic variations of the laughing body, making its physical and psychic impact tangible for the viewer.

AH|HA is the first group performance of Voetvolk.

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Yet another gem of a masterpiece by the duo Gruwez & Van Cauwenberghe. This creation, too, impresses with the sizzling dialogue between the dancers and the sound artist. First, you experience the dialogue like you watch a sunset. You gaze, you see and hear more and more, while concurrently being wrapped up by the intoxicating soundscape, together with the dancers. Until the dancers laugh you out of that trance. Then this liberating AH/HA, brilliantly danced with brutal movements, reveals itself as a portrait, built up by pieces of laughter, of the human being grabbing, searching, dancing, fucking, wounding and laughing until the existential void is turned into love. ****

– Els Van Steenberghe - Knack

Gruwez triggers. While others remain stuck in a concept or a gimmick, she manages to drive home a simple and clear idea to the extreme, lifting it up to the point where you do not recognize it anymore as such, but evoking free-floating associations. (…) And her feeling for timing is unequalled: not one single scene, not one second too many or too few. The same holds true for the ingenious soundscape which, like the movements, knows subtle variations and follows the pattern of building up, climax and silence. AH/HA is the perfect symbiosis of soundscape and movement. A performance about loss of control that shows perfect command.

– Lene Van Langenhove - Etcetera

AH/HA, a truly choreographic trip, leads its actors into hypersensitive and precarious spaces. This piece amounts to nothing less than a fierce and deeply affecting saga. 

– Wilson Le Personnic - Paris Danse

Simultaneously funny, intelligent, delicious in its most minute detail, AH/HA is a meditation on the body, driven and affected by a transcending energy. In other words, it’s exactly the opposite of what a dance performance “should be”, regardless of its style, and a radical departure from the dancer’s viewpoint. The tour de force of this piece, without a shadow of a doubt, is the “double bind” which requires absolute mastery of motion, in order to emphasize that which the body cannot control. Magnificent!

– Agnès Izrine - Dansercanalhistorique

The quality and fluidity that allow the emotions and sensations to merge seamlessly throughout this piece owe as much to the presence of the dancers as to the musical accompaniment, which is equally infused by the tone and its multitude of hues. Laughter, the main character in this piece, if shared, is after all the creator of a jubilant dance, which vacillates between the barely perceptible and the grossly exaggerated. A brilliant success…

– Louise Duterte - Umoove.fr

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CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY
Lisbeth Gruwez

COMPOSITION, SOUND DESIGN & ASSISTANCE
Maarten Van Cauwenberghe

PERFORMANCE
Mercedes Dassy, Anne-Charlotte Bisoux, Vicente Arlandis Recuerda, Lucius Romeo-Fromm & Lisbeth Gruwez

STYLING
Catherine Van Bree

ARTISTIC ADVISOR
Bart Meuleman

LIGHT DESIGN
Harry Cole & Caroline Mathieu

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Gilles Roosen

PRODUCTION
Voetvolk vzw

COPRODUCTION
Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Next Festival, Theater Im Pumpenhaus, Théâtre d’Arras / Tandem Arras-Douai, Dampfzentrale, Le Triangle – Cité de la danse de Rennes, Théâtre La Bastille, Les Brigittines, AndWhatBeside(s)Death, MA scène nationale – Pays de Montbéliard & Troubleyn | Jan Fabre.

SUPPORTED BY
NONA, the Flemish Community, the Province of Antwerp & Arcadi Île-de-France/Dispositif d’accompagnements

DISTRIBUTION IN COLLABORATION WITH
Key Performance

Luc Depreitere

Luc Depreitere

Luc Depreitere

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