Lecture demonstration Pieter T'Jonck
And all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and their entrances.(1)
in collaboration with Janneke Raaphorst, Bojana Mladenovic, Noberto Llopis Degarra & Zhana Ivanov, Herman De Winné & Elke Van Campenhout presented on April 16, 2009, 8.30pm, in Kaaistudio's/Brussels (1) excerpt from William Shakespeare, 'As you like it' (II, 7, 138-141)
'There is an enormous confusion, I feel, about what theatre is or what it does. The more of it I see, the more I'm convinced that theatre or dance is less about a story or a message or whatever, but basically revolves around the question of how we see and approach each other, how we shape this in one way or another. The problem – because it is always a problem – is reflected in the moment of entering and leaving a stage. In real life this is a theatrical moment, and so in theatre it is even the most important moment. You could possibly derive the quality of a performance from the intelligence with which this problem was solved. It is this specific solution that generates the content, and not the text. Theatre criticism however mostly bases itself on the content, not the form or shape. I aspire a theatre criticism based on an analysis of the shape – the problem of entering and leaving being a pars pro toto of it.' (Pieter T’Jonck)
It’s with this intuition that Pieter T'Jonck invited 4 ex-students of DasArts to experiment with different forms of entering and leaving the stage. The results of this short labo will be shown in a borrowed light design of Etienne Guilloteau. The Lecture Demonstration continues with a simulated radio interview, a practice Pieter T'Jonck has been developing lately in addition to his newspaper reviews. This one-off performance is part of the online publication of a selection of T'Joncks texts about contemporary dance.