Jan Martens / GRIP & Dance On Ensemble
any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shatter

  • Dance

“Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars and molecules all come in communities. The singular cannot really exist.” Paula Gunn Allen in Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook

Jan Martens, who guested as a Factory Artist at tanzhaus nrw from 2014 until 2016, therefore being among the first generation of Factory Artists, has been working with many different dancers and (dance) communities since that time: Düsseldorf amateurs, ageing luminaries, a child growing up, trusty companions, and youthful feminists. They met in solos, duets, and group pieces, challenging each other.

any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones opens the Factory Finale. During the piece, dancers from across generations enter the stage together, encountering the audience as an atypical, 17-piece corps de ballet comprised of unique personalities, ranging in age from 17 to 70 years. This brings about a performance about the power of dancing out of step. Searching for their own voices and an individual manner of expression, the dancers claim their respective spaces on the stage without ostracising the others, leaving needed room for each other. The group consciously puts social dogma aside in times of extreme polarization, to acknowledge different identities and to accept individual personalities in their idiosyncrasies. The performers are unrestrained in showing their self on stage, utilising the boards as an ideological testbed. A soundtrack compiled from protest songs plucked from different eras, by Henryk Górecki, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln and Kate Tempest, accompanies the performance.

Part of the Factory Finale

Choreography: Jan Martens; Dance: Ty Boomershine, Truus Bronkhorst, Jim Buskens, Baptiste Cazaux, Zoë Chungong, Piet Defrancq, Naomi Gibson, Steven Michel, Gesine Moog, Dan Mussett, Wolf Overmeire, Tim Persent, Courtney May Robertson, Laura Vanborm, Loeka Willems; Understudies: Pierre Bastin, Georgia Boddez, Zora Westbroek, Lia Witjes-Poole, Abigail Aleksander, Maisie Woodford, Simon Lelievre, Solal Mariotte; Artistic assistance: Anne-Lise Brevers; Lichting design: Jan Fedinger; Assistance lighting design: Vito Walter; Costume design: Cédric Charlier; Assistance costume design: Alexandra Sebbag, Thibault Kuhn.

Text excerpt from SPRING by Ali Smith. Copyright 2019, Ali Smith, used with permission from The Wylie Agency (UK). Music: Concerto pour Clavecin et Cordes Op 40, Réf Im: 108884 Musique de Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, PWM Editions represented by Alphonse Leduc Editions Musicales; People’s Faces written by Kae Tempest and Dan Carey, published by Domino Publishing Company Limited (50%) and MANATA LTD, managed by Warner/Chappell Music Belgium N.V. (50%) ; Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace written by Maxwell Roach, published by Milma Publishing Company, managed by Kobalt Music Publishing Limited.

A GRIP production in collaboration with Dance On Ensemble, co-produced by tanzhaus nrw, DE SINGEL, Theater Freiburg, Sadler’s Wells, Julidans, Festival d’Avignon, Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France, Norrlandsoperan, La Bâtie – Festival de Genève & l’ADC – Association pour la Danse Contemporaine Genève, Le Parvis Scène Nationale Tarbes-Pyrénéés, La Danse en grande forme (Cndc – Angers, Malandain Ballet Biarritz, La Manufacture – CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux – La Rochelle, CCN de Caen en Normandy, L’échangeur – CDCN Hauts-de-France, CCN de Nantes, CCN d’Orléans, Atelier de Paris / CDCN, Collectif Fair-e / CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne, Le Gymnase | CDCN Roubaix | Hauts-de- France, POLE-SUD CDCN / Strasbourg and La Place de La Danse – CDCN Toulouse Occitanie) and Perpodium; With the support of De Grote Post, Charleroi Danse, CCNO – Center Chorégraphique National d’Orléans and icw Théâtre d’Orléans and December Dance (Concertgebouw and CC Brugge).
With financial support from the Flemish Government, the City of Antwerp, Tax Shelter and Cronos Invest; With thanks to Mr. Jean Chabert (STANLEY/STELLA), Wannes Labath, Nadine Scheuer and de! art humaniora.