Michiel Vandevelde

But we never permitted the birth of logic among us.
—Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto Antropófago

         In 1928 the Brazilian artist and theorist Oswald de Andrade wrote his famous Manifesto Antropofago. This manifesto advocates to not reject the culture of those that colonised Brazil, but rather to eat this culture, digest it and shit it out in a different version. Europe has always been colonizing. Yet, Vandevelde, inspired by the work of Andrade, asks: what could we, as citizens, consider invasive in the western public space?

Through different performances Vandevelde has been cannibalizing (or reappropriating) dancematerials from popular videoclips. He places this vocabulary in juxtaposition with appropriated texts. It started with Love songs (veldeke) (2013, fABULEUS), where, together with a group of nine youngsters the foundation for the dance vocabulary (based on reappropriation) was made. In the solo Antithesis, the future of the image (2015) Vandevelde went deeper into the vocabulary and its transformations and placed it in contrast with projected texts about the relation between the image, technology and ideology. In Our times (2016) the superficiality of the same dance vocabulary is explored while the performers reflect on the status of thought in our contemporary societies.

In the solo, Andrade, danced by Bryana Fritz, only the cannibalized dance remains. The vocabulary is explored in its abstraction. The duet will be a synthesis of the dance materials, and the different music being used in the performances mentioned before. A total remix in order to arrive at an illogic, bizarre, unnameable dance belonging to a culture yet to be discovered.

Teaser



Presentations:

— 31 January and 1 February 2020, Side Step Festival, Zodiak, Helsinki (FI)

— 10 December 2019, Boska Komedia Festival, Kraków (PL)

— 15 & 17 July 2019, Impulstanz, Vienna (AU)

— 28 March 2019, Schouwburg Kortrijk, Kortrijk (BE)
Info & tickets

— 11 & 12 December 2018, De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
Info & tickets

— 14 November 2018, Vooruit, Ghent (BE)
Info & tickets

— 18 & 19 August 2018, Far Festival, Nyon (CH)
Info & tickets

— 29 April 2018, PACT Zollverein, Essen (DE)
Info & tickets

— 26 April 2018, DeSingel, Antwerp (BE)
(Site specific version)
Info & tickets

— 6 February 2018, 20h30, Grand Theatre, Groningen (NL)
Info & tickets

— 18 January 2018, 20h30, STUK, Leuven (BE)
Info & tickets

— 29 & 30 November 2017, 20h30, Kaaitheater, Brussels
Info & tickets