[sold out] Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company, Annelies Van Parys, ICTUS & Muziektheater Transparant

A very warm welcome to Klarafestival!

Flanders Festival Brussels, Klara and our partners are delighted to greet you once again. “I believe audiences aren’t just listening. They are actively contributing”, festival artist Barbara Hannigan remarked in an interview. Concerts are an interaction between the audience, artists and anyone who is contributing to those magic moments in front of or behind the scenes. Together we ‘become’ music. 

As a conductor and soprano, Hannigan is a global reference point. With her, classical music becomes a contemporary and unique experience. This is an inspiration to Klarafestival as the largest broadcast festival in Belgium. Her versatile talent is sure to enrapture you, as is that of the many Belgian and international artists who connect past and present with musical stories.

Klarafestival opens in style with Hannigan as conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. After that, you will hear and see her with young musicians from her mentorship project Equilibrium Young Artists. In no fewer than 25 concerts, we present top talent including Les Talens Lyriques, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Vilde Frang, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with Víkingur Ólafsson. Klarafestival also treasures creation. The film concert Reich/Richter as a symbiosis of Gerhard Richter’s paintings and the music of Steve Reich; the creation Counterforces by composer Frederik Croene to text by poet Dominique de Groen; and the music theatre production Prey by Kris Verdonck with a composition by Annelies Van Parys will surprise you!

This and all other concerts are possible thanks to the collaboration with our cultural partners: Bozar, Flagey, Kaaitheater, Théâtre Varia, Muntpunt, Concertgebouw Brugge and DE SINGEL. Thanks to our private partners KPMG, Proximus, Brewery Omer Vander Ghinste, Belfius, Interparking and the players of Belgium’s National Lottery. We are grateful for the support of the Flemish Community and the Brussels Capital Region. And finally, thanks to Klara and VRT: there would be no broadcast festival without their valued collaboration.

Joost Fonteyne

Intendant Klarafestival

we are all food

interview with Kris Verdonck and Annelies Van Parys

25 March 2023 will see the premiere of the Belgian performance PREY. A musical theatre performance about the horrifying insight that we are all food. Dramaturge Lalina Goddard spoke to theatre maker Kris Verdonck and composer Annelies Van Parys about our place in the food chain, the role of art and Japanese Noh theatre. 

There is a common thread running through the performances that you have made in the past few years, Kris. I’m thinking of In Void, about the interchangeability of humans and machines, or Conversations at the end of the world, in which mankind is heading for an unavoidable catastrophe. PREY also puts an end to a world in which mankind takes centre stage. 

Kris Verdonck: Yes, if you put it like that, then I’ve been making the same thing for more than 20 years (laughs). Personally I’d prefer to describe it as a quest for our place in the world. For PREY I immersed myself in the ideas of the Australian ecofeminist Val Plumwood. According to her, we are unable to care for nature because we are no longer part of it. When we die, then we push the body into a coffin and don’t look at it again. But Ms Plumwood says: that’s where our adventure begins. The insects start to eat away at us. Ultimately we again become part of the landscape, of the food chain. 

A truly terrible event brought Val Plumwood to this conclusion…

Kris: One day Ms Plumwood was attacked in her canoe by one of the largest predators in the world, the saltwater crocodile. It pulled her under the water three times with its famous ‘death roll’. Afterwards she wrote that at that moment, she finally became at one with the world. The further the teeth sank into her body, the closer she felt to nature. When they shot the crocodile, she was vehemently opposed to it: “who was I to deny the crocodile its meal?” 

Finding the high point of life in death: not the kind of thought guaranteed to cheer you up. 

Kris: Ms Plumwood does indeed find the greatest positivity in death. It is only then that you are at one with the world. Then you understand how finite everything is. That you are a piece of meat, which serves to feed something else. In recent years, my performances have been subject to an interesting criticism: everything had become so dark that there was no longer any hope to be found. That is true, I have always very consciously brushed away all hope. Hope is easy, hope is an evasion to avoid confronting what is staring us in the face. We hope that everything will be all right, and while we are hoping, we do nothing. 

I see you nodding in agreement, Annelies. Do you share that opinion?

Annelies Van Parys: Yes, I can strongly relate to what Kris is saying. I have been closely following the news about the climate and politics for years. For me there is no hope. We never honour our agreements. We replace every problem with a new one. You constantly read that change is coming. Covid-19 was meant to be a big turning point. We were going to do things differently, but now we are seeing even more pollution. We are not going to solve the ecological crisis. 

Art can be a way of calling for action. But if all hope is gone, what about art?

Kris: For me the notion that art can save the world is a fallacy. But what art and in particular theatre can do is tell stories. A story can put things into perspective, offer insights, comfort. I believe that in this sense stories can trigger something. 

Annelies: I completely agree with Kris. It certainly may not become activist art. Activism wants to prick your conscience, but as an artist I would prefer to ask questions or offer insights. So what art can do is to create empathy. You empathise with a story or character with which you would never otherwise have come into contact. I do not believe in an immediate change, but I do think that you can make people look at things in a different way.

What message, what story do you want to impart with PREY?

Kris: That we do not occupy an exclusive position. Everyone can be reduced to hunter and prey, and this truth binds us. If we realise that, we would perhaps behave rather less pretentiously towards our fellow inhabitants on earth. Just as Ms Plumwood criticised our Western culture, in which we put ourselves at the centre of the world, it was important to us to use a non-classical narrative form for this performance. 

And this is how you arrived at Noh theatre?

Kris: Indeed. Noh theatre is a ritualistic Japanese theatre that developed in the fourteenth century and uses a fascinating form to tell stories. In fact, the same story is told from three different perspectives: first by the narrator, then by the I-figure, and finally in a dream. In the dream the I-figure takes off their mask, beneath which a different, monstrous mask appears that represents something abstract, such as revenge. At the end there is no catharsis, as is customary in Western stories. It is simply about what revenge is, without this being followed by a denouement or resolution. 

Annelies: thanks to the Flemish Community, I enjoyed a two-month residency in Japan last summer and I was able to study Noh theatre. In their scores everything is noted, right down to the finest details. That is pretty bizarre, because it all actually sounds very improvised. Sometimes I thought I’d ended up at some kind of free jazz evening. Absolutely fascinating. I discovered so much that I thought I’d be able to use. 

How did these experiences inspire you when composing?

Annelies: The nohkan (the Japanese Noh flute) has an exceptional timbre. I am also interested by the irregularity of the percussion score. The percussion is constantly in search of regularity but never quite achieves this. And in Noh they often use sliding pitches, microtonal melodies that I will explore with the electric guitar or viola. But to be absolutely clear: I do not want any kind of exoticism. I have been there, heard interesting things there, and am now trying to translate this into my own sound idiom. 

Kris: It is indeed not our intention to imitate Noh, but rather to take it as a blueprint. If a Noh master were to come and see the performance, then I hope they’d say: I don’t see Noh in this. 

In your piece, three women will take to the stage: actor Katelijne Damen, singer Anna Clare Hauf and dancer Mooni Van Tichel. 

Kris: Three fantastic performers, who tell the same story one after another with three different media: word, music and dance. I am really looking forward to collaborating with them. I have known Mooni for some time. She created a very energetic solo in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, in the face of all that depression. Anna Clare Hauf is an impressive singer, someone who is unafraid to test the limits. Katelijne and I have been planning to do something together for a long time. And of course there is also Ictus, who I have known for so long, but have never had the opportunity to work with before. Exciting.

Annelies: For me this is pretty special, because my career actually started with Ictus. During a masterclass with them in 2001, I wrote a work that won the Flanders-Québec Prize the following year. Then I was launched. A reunion after more than 20 years

Interview by Lalina Goddard

Kris Verdonck

The training Kris Verdonck (°1974) followed in the visual arts, architecture and theatre, is reflected in the work he makes. Verdonck often combines installations/performances in the form of VARIATIONS. The development of his oeuvre has been marked by projects such as UNTITLED (2014), a dance solo about a performer who is confined to the theatre. In 2020, Kris Verdonck collaborated again with Johan Leysen in a second co-production with Het Zuidelijk Toneel: ACT, delving deeper into the work of Samuel Beckett. The work is a continuation of Verdonck's fascination with a state of being between subject and object, between presence and absence.

www.atwodogscompany.org/en/kris-verdonck

Annelies Van Parys

Annelies Van Parys (°1975) is one of Belgium’s leading composers. She writes solo and chamber music works as well as large orchestral compositions with a great preference for music theatre. Since 2007, as a resident composer of Muziektheater Transparant, she wrote a lot of music theatrical works. Amongst them some remarkable pieces such as RUHE, An Oresteïa and Private View, her first opera that one no less than five prizes including the Fedora-Rolf Lieberman Prize. In 2022 Van Parys composed several works, including Eco... del vuoto, a commission by Royal Concertgebouworchestra Amsterdam, Concerto for piano and orchestra for Jan Michiels and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Notwehr, a music theatre production commissioned by the Biennale Musica di Venezia, and Shades of Light for cello and electronics performed by Séverine Ballon at Transit festival and Huddersfield Festival. 

www.anneliesvanparys.be

Katelijne Damen

Katelijne Damen (°1960) is a Belgian theatre, television and film actress. In the theatre she worked with a.o. Luk Perceval, Erik De Volder, Ivo van Hove and Guy Cassiers. For television she worked with Guido Henderickx, Frank Van Passel, Jan Mathys and others. She regularly appears in films, such as in Peter Monsaert’s Offline. She is one of the Toneelhuis’ permanent actors. In 1990 she won the Theo d’Or prize for her role in the stage play Strange Interlude; in 1996 she was awarded the Mary Dresselhuys prize for “her total commitment to theatre and her oeuvre”, and in 2006 she received a Colombina nomination for her role in Hersenschimmen.

Anna Clare Hauf

Anna Clare Hauf  was born in London and grew up in Vienna where she studied singing at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. Hauf has a special penchant for contemporary music, both in an operatic context and in concert performances. Her numerous collaborations in this field include productions by Neue Oper Wien and Klangforum Wien. She performed at/with Konzerthaus Vienna, Wien Modern Festival, Ruhrtriennale Festival, Niederösterreichische Tonkünstler, Camerata Salzburg, the ensemble PHACE, and the recorder collective Plenum. She sang in works by Christian Muthspiel, Otto M. Zykan, Pierluigi Billone, Bernhard Lang and Lothar Voigtländer. As a singing actress and performer Anna Hauf performs regularly at the Wiener Kabinetttheater.

www.annaclarehauf.at

Mooni Van Tichel 

Mooni Van Tichel (°1998) is a dancer and performer based in Brussels. She found her way into dance through hip hop and breakdance, soaking up as many elements of the dance and the culture as possible, always strongly in touch with the social aspect of dance. She later discovered contemporary dance, which eventually led her to P.A.R.T.S., where she completed the Training Cycle in 2016 and joined STUDIOS in 2019. Currently she is developing her role as performer as well as her own work. She has performed her own work in Tanzwerkstatt (2018), Open Your Mind (2019) and Platform 6a (2021). For her solo, she recently received the ‘De Troffel’ grant, to help develop her work further.

ICTUS ensemble

ICTUS is a Brussels-based contemporary music ensemble. Since 1994, it has shared the premises of the P.A.R.T.S dance school, and the Rosas company (headed by Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker) with which it has collaborated on fifteen productions. The ensemble examines formats and ways of listening: very short or very long concerts, mystery programmes, ‘Ictus Invites’ experimental series, large scale projects with Brussels Philharmonic, guided concerts, concerts-cum-festivals where the audience is free to roam between stages (the famous Liquid Room performed all over Europe). Ictus shares, and sometimes amplifies, current questions about the future of contemporary music. It is a multifaceted collective of creative musicians, dedicated to experimental music in the broadest sense. 

www.ictus.be

Muziektheater Transparant

Going from the artistic and social topicality, production house Muziektheater Transparant enters into an intensive dialogue with artists from various disciplines and wants to create, renew and present musical-theatre in its entire diversity for a wide audience. The voice is placed firmly at the centre of the projects, and it continually blends the old and the new. Also other disciplines like visual arts, film, video, graphics are integrated in the productions. The company pays particular attention to offering contemporary musicians the chance to develop and try new work. It works with composers like Wim Henderickx and Annelies Van Parys. 

www.transparant.be 

A Two Dogs Company

The artistic practice of Kris Verdonck has developed and expanded in a very fruitful way over the last few years. His projects have been presented on stages as well as in museums in Belgium and abroad. This growth can only be consolidated if a small flexible organisation can follow up and structure the work on a permanent basis. This growth can only be consolidated if a small flexible organisation can follow up and structure the work on a permanent basis. Theatre is never made alone: it is no longer the work of one dog, but about the practice of several dogs that play together. That’s why Kris Verdonck has chosen a name inspired by Friedrich Torberg’s poem, ‘Spleen’: A Two Dogs Company.