Afterwords: Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema: Weak Dance Strong Questions
Weak Dance Strong Questions is to be performed on location (so not in a traditional theatre), in this case a former casino. A place where one goes in with money to end up playing games, or sometimes to end up with tragedy – addiction or bankruptcy.
Money. Proposed is not an image or a story, rather a flux of movements, gestures, postures, sounds, noises, perceptions, questions,... a landscape based on exchange, a horizontal structure, a very economy so to speak.
Games. Weak Dance Strong Questions is not merely cerebral though; it is funny, its movements are as a game of hopscotch, or whatever kind of odd game. A "Caucus Race" maybe, to speak with Lewis Carroll: there are no clear rules, there are no winners or losers, it just starts and ends at a sudden point.
The addiction? Probably theatre.
The bankruptcy? Probably theatre.
The tragedy then? Being addicted to theatre, driven by the volition to speak about its bankruptcy?
This text is part of the project Afterwords, curated by Jeroen Peeters for the festival ImPulsTanz Vienna in summer 2002. Every night, three critics in residence shared their impressions and thoughts on the performances immediately after having seen them, in an act of instantaneous writing. During the process of writing, these comments were projected in the theatre lobby and later that night made available on the websites http://www.impulstanz.com and http://derstandard.at.
A selection of the texts by Jeroen Peeters is available on Sarma, in a slightly edited version, sometimes with a postscript. Two essays elucidate the project Afterwords and reflect on its poetical and political implications. To retrieve the material, search under: ‘Afterwords’.
©Jeroen Peeters