27 june 2010
Tomorrow is our first rehearsal for the dance-film that I am working on in collaboration with Helena Muskens & Quirine Racké. It has the working title SkipSlapSlideSlow: we are working with about 40 elderly line-dancers from Utrecht on a choreography that they will perform in a public place. The film will be presented by the nps and Cinedance festival in december this year. We will be rehearsing through the summer with a three weeks break and then film in the middle of september.

June 2010
We performed RADIAL COURSES open air in the Citadelpark in Gent as part of the Festival Korte Metten organised by KC Vooruit on a beautiful summery day. Challenging it was, as the performers could not hear each other’s footsteps, so they had to keep counting for each other. Accepting this it was a good experience. Minimal choreography in a public space, an almost architectural proposal.

March 2010
Three more weeks until the premiere of 2: Dialogue with Lucinda during the COVER#2 festival on remakes in Amsterdam. We are rehearsing in the lovely ZIDtheater, which is spacious, and sunny as the first spring-sunrays come through.
One week ago Lucinda Childs came to visit us for two hours us during rehearsal and she seemed pleased with what she saw. She is an icon of what modern dance has become since the 60’s, so her coming made us/me a touch nervous, but turned out to be very pleasant as we encountered a light and humorous side of herself – she was pleased with how we had worked so far. Thanks to the thorough work of her ex dancer and my assistant Ty Boomershine, who taught the two pieces Radial Courses and Interior Drama to the dancers, we are dealing with her material and ideas quite indepth- manipulating and deconstructing it in a way that comes from within the work. (first performance 24 march, Frascati Amsterdam)

February 2010
With the assistance of Hester van Hasselt we have curated this year’s Something Raw festival, I made the daily tabloid my personal project – I worked on content, lay-out as main editor in collaboration with all the contributors, and Sarah van Lamsweerde, Minna Tiikkainen (drawings). At the same time rehearsals started for the work on remaking two pieces of Lucinda Childs.
In the end of February I found myself skiing on the bavarian alps together with my and another family…… what a reminder of my youth in Munich- to be repeated.

October- November 2009
The premiere of 1:songs went well, the piece is becoming Sanja’s more and more…

July-October 2009
The main rehearsal proces for my new project 1:songs takes place the whole month of July, thanks to Frascati in the beautiful studio of the old filmacademie. It is a project for the performer Sanja Mitrovic based on monologues of tragic heroines of the world repertory of theatre, in its form it will resemble a pop/rock-concert. In September we will work in the studio of my partner and composer Gary Shepherd to finalise the songs. Coproduced by the Beursschouwburg in Brussels we will do our montage partially there and in a big studio in Amsterdam. Our first performance week and premiere is 27-31 October in Frascati, Amsterdam. Secondly me and Tom Rummens and the rest of our two houses are preparing the second Something Raw Festival, with additional subsidy requests for the international guests and conceptual meetings. By the end of August we will continue discussions and research, as plans concretise.

March till June 2009

After I received funding for two years from the NFPK+ to develop my own work, I am now busy with setting up my own organisation nb, with a small team of three people: new manager and new producer, while touring Lost is my quiet forever and Les Sylphides to various festivals, and preparing the new solo-project for Sanja Mitrovic. In April I mentored together with Igor Dobricic the Europe in Motion talks with 12 choreographers from three countries for the Springdance Festival in Utrecht. An extremely inspiring encounter with 12 very articulate artists, we thoroughly enjoyed this perfect 2-week session of meeting and exchange. in the end of May I left for one month to Indonesia with my small family for our yearly withdrawal from the fast life. Furthermore, I was commissioned to make a performance for next year’s COVER Festival and am in the proces of trying to convince Lucinda Childs to lend me two of her projects for my translation…..

February 2009

23-28 February my first Something Raw Festival at Frascati and de Brakke Grond took place, co-curated with Tom Rummens from De Brakke Grond. A week of intense bath in meeting and talking and seeing works, we programmed, most of which we were very proud of and the reactions of the public and colleagues reflected these feelings. Alse one more time I was teaching a workshop in relation to the fluidsystem of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, where I focus on movement quality as quality of communication on stage, with fourth year students of the Mime department of the Theaterschool in Amsterdam.

October-January 2008

These months were filled with organisational matters and a one week workshop with the students from Bochum for the frame of the ORBIS PICTUS conference of theatre science in October. As curator of dance and performance at theatre Frascati I am co-responsible for the programme of the next edition of the Something Raw Festival in collaboration with the programmer Tom Rummens from the flemish cultural institute de Brakke Grond here in Amsterdam. The festival will take place from 23-28 February 2009, its motto is the ‘Search for a contemporary spectacle’. Furthermore we managed to finalise the programme for the lecture series THE OLD BRAND NEW, the first lecture will take place on the 21st of January at the Stadsschouwburg. It was a long trajectory, we worked on it for almost two years! The curatorial team is Ann Demeester from Galerie De Appel, Marijke Hogeboom from the lectoraat for research and development at the AHK, Gabrielle Schleijpen from the DAI, Frederique Bergholtz from If I can’t dance… and myself. I was also engaged in writing a new subsidy-application for the period of two years, as well as in thinking and preparing for new projects for the next year. And the discussions started about the re-structuring of LISA without the 4 years-subsidy that we had been applying for.

Augustus/September 2008

The last weeks of work for my new project Lost is my quiet forever. The title is taken form a song composed by baroque-composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695). A personal re-interpretation of what a baroque-opera could be, I collaborate with a counter-tenor and a pop-soprano-singer, as well as five performers apart from the rest of the team. The premiere will take place on the 18th of September in Theater Frascati in Amsterdam, then followed by performances in Utrecht and Breda.

Augustus 2008

David Weber-Krebs, Igor Dobricic and me are leading a two-week workshop with eight students of theatre science from the University of Bochum at PACTZollverein in Essen. During this work-session we are attempting to map what we call the “movement of attention” in a performative situation. This workshop happens on invitation of the University of Amsterdam, its outcome will be presented during the conference Orbis Pictus – Theatrum Mundi that will take place from 23-26 october in Amsterdam: theatrummundi.com

May/June 2008

Rehearsals for my (still untitled) new project, which goes into premiere on the 18th of September 2008 at the Brakke Grond Expozaal, as part of the programme of Frascati Theater in Amsterdam: I have had many months of reading, preparing, two intensive research-moments- one in September last year- and one in the exciting week I spend in my residency at the AHK with students and teachers from the SNDO and the Dance Unlimited programme (which has now the name Master of Choreography). With this new work I investigate ideas of the baroque times in their relevance for theatre today. Theatricality, abundance, overflow, celebration, sorrow – the contradiction between reason and passion will be at the base of this work. I am looking for structures of performing as frames to be broken, by melting their edges and deviating beyond their rational boundaries. Together with five performers and two singers I will be searching for bodily forms in motion: instability, unpredictability, struggle, extremes and a proliferation of emotionality – in relation to their function and effect on both, performer and spectator.
In aesthetic terms, the baroque philosophy is signified by a movement on the base of and within form against and beyond a calculable harmonious composition, against and beyond a rational order against and beyond the humanistic ideal of beauty as it was upheld by the previous period of renaissance.

April 2008

One performance of Les Sylphides (work-in-progress) at Springdance Festival in Utrecht on 19th April at Huis a/d Werf in a double-bill with the turkish choreographer Ayse Orhon and then two performances of Enter Ghost at the Beursschouwburg in Brussels, on 23 and 24 April.

March 2008

In the first two weeks of March I will finish my remake of Les Sylphides (work-in-progress) at Dansateliers, Rotterdam and in a studio in Amsterdam. Then I will make my way to Dampfcentrale Bern, where I coach the final days of the making of Enter My Bubble by Katy Hernan and Chris Leuenberger. The piece will be premiered on the 26th of March in Bern, and also be performed in Het Veem Theater in Amsterdam in April.

February 2008

LISA-Residency at the AHK/SNDO in the first three weeks of February. I take charge of the first week, calling it OVERFLOW. We will research issues of representation and presence, Baroque-esthetics and philosophy, and visit the Something Raw Festival. The second and third week are organised by Ivana and Paz.

January 2008

Preparations for my new work.

December 2007

In the frame of the event LISA live(s) in Kikker I worked on a response to the first research of Hester van Hasselt when not evening night. The short piece is entitled The Uncertainty Principle and I presented it on December 21st at Theater Kikker. Les Sylphides (work-in-progress): I am continuing my work on the remake of Les Sylphides. With this project I would like to put into question the idea of the ‚new’: I want to look back and learn from old strategies, to learn about where dance came from and how it became what it is now. What were the strategies then and how can their essence be translated to be relevant for the theatre now. Dance for the stage as we know it now still uses the conventions and strategies as they were developped in the times of Louis XIV at the french court. I want to research the impact and fundamental function that ballet had on the development of dance as a stage-theatre form. Deviating from it and moving forward was necessary in order to move away from automatic conventions of beauty and perfection. But now, I find myself in a place where those conventions are no longer a trap, but a utility, a cultural phenomenon, that I would like to examine with this project. By remaking Les Sylphides I propose not a simple copy of the past, but a recalling of the essence and spirit of Les Sylphides in order to produce an event that can stand in its own right, resonating the past in a contemporary jacket.

There will be a second work-in-progress presentation in Utrecht during the LISA live(s) in Theater Kikker on the 20th of December. In March 2008 there will be another rehearsal period of three weeks, where we will finalise the material into a consequent whole.

November/December 2007

Once more I have been asked to teach a five weeks workshop entitled ‚Movement’ to the 4th year students at the Mime-department of the Theaterschool, AHK Amsterdam. The main focus lies on creating access to differing qualities of bodily movement, on creating a conscious awareness of the production of sense through movement and on articulating them precisely in relation to a spectator.

Apart from that I am advising the project Enter My Bubble by Katy Hernan and Chris Leuenberger, a duet that won a competition last year in Switzerland is now being worked out to a full evening piece. Its premiere will be on the 26th of March in Bern, Switzerland.

October 2007

We will perform Enter Ghost at the Chassé Theater in Breda, right after I will be on tour with Jérôme Bel and The Show Must Go on in Melbourne and Singapore.

September 2007

I did three weeks of research in the studio for my new project together with Hester van Hasselt, Katy Hernan and David Weber-Krebs.
And I was invited by Springdance and Theater Kikker to curate an event in Theater Kikker during the Utrecht Uitfeest on the 9th of September. I invited about 100 people from my surroundings to write down their ideas on paradise. In an installation of music and sound these are being read and become a soundscore and pamphlet for a better place.

I call the installation Reflections/The ideal place.

July, August 2007

Preparations for my new project which should have its Premiére in the spring/summer of 2008.
The Sensation is Real goes to Chemnitz. We will have to adapt the event to new spaces…

June 2007

Ballet, scratched: From 18th –30th of June I worked on a two week research and reflection on the ballet Les Sylphides, the first non-narrative, abstract ballet. I manipulated the original material with three ballerinas or ex-ballerinas (Charlotte van den Reek, Marta Reig Torres and Bojana Mladenovic). The results of that working period could be seen in the studios of Dansateliers on 30th of June and 1st of July.
composer: Gary Shepherd
assistant: Hester van Hasselt
artistic feedback: Igor Dobricic

Thursday 21st June 2007

Why Art?
The Old Brand New – The first lecture of this series that I have been planning together with several other art institutions took place at the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam during the Holland Festival.
The speakers were: Tim Etchells & Adrian Heathfield / Bazon Brock and the moderator of the aftertalk was: Karim Benammar
The series of lectures entitled THE OLD BRAND NEW kicked off with this first evening around the age-old and still highly topical question ‘Why Art?’; what value does art have within the contemporary order? Lack of interest is often the main response when discussion turns to art. What is still special, the notable thing, the thing that makes it worth our while to view it as an essential component of our daily lives? Advocates of its importance often speak in defensive terms pointing at its ‘instrumental value’. THE OLD BRAND NEW diverts from that and poses the rather agonistic question: ‘Is art necessary?’. THE OLD BRAND NEW intends to rescue ‘new’ from its tarnished image and illuminate it in all its complexity. This series is edited by Ann Demeester/de Appel arts centre, Marijke Hogeboom/AHK, Gabrielle Schleijpen/Dutch Art Institute, Nicole Beutler/ LISA, Frederique Bergholtz/If I Can’t Dance., Simon Dove/Springdance and the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam.

April 2007

On the 18th of April I am presenting the last scene of Enter Ghost, the smoke scene in a reworked version during the opening night of the Springdance Festival in Utrecht. I called it: THE OPENING. The whole evening takes place at the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht.
On the 25th and 26th of April at 21.00 we perform the piece Enter Ghost vin Theater Kikker in Utrecht in its slightly reworked version.
The Sensation is Real: performative bookpresentation at De Appel in Amsterdam on 28th+29th April. I published the book THE SENSATION IS REAL parallel to the performance Enter Ghost. This little book forms the framework for an evening in the gallery spaces of De Appel, an event defying categorisation altering the spaces and their atmosphere as performance/guided tour/book presentation/afterparty.

March 2007

Rehearsals for Enter Ghost at the Springdance Festival in April, 25 and 26.

November, December 2006 and February 2007

There are several encounters in the studio with the Korean artist Seo Seonja, who invited me to make a solo for her in the frame of her final project for Das Arts in Amsterdam. My idea is based on a response to her proposal for a theme, its materialisation is developped in dialogue with Seonja as performer and thinker. The piece will consist of several short solos, developped with other theatermakers and choreographers, amongst which Paz Rojo, Jan Ritsema and Rob List, and will be presented in Amsterdam in the middle of March 2007.

January until half February 2007

Once more I will take my little family and withdraw from active production in the middle of winter by flying off to Thailand.

November/December 2006

Teaching a five weeks workshop entitled ‚Movement’ to the 4th year students at the Mime-department of the Theaterschool Amsterdam.
My main focus lies on creating access to differing qualities of bodily movement, on creating a conscious awareness of the production of sense through movement and on articulating their effect on the actual space and its perception.
Apart from this workshop I am also advisor for the duet of Marjolein Vogels (ex-MTD) and Laurens Oliveira, a second-year project of the Mimeschool.

August till October 2006

The second phase of rehearsals for Enter Ghost will happen in Amsterdam , with a two weeks residency at PACT Zollverein in Essen from 18 th September until the 3 rd of October. The Première will take place on the 12 th of October 2006, at the Brakke Grond, Rode Zaal in Amsterdam .

August 2006

LISA is invited with the Structure Multifonction to the 8tension Festival in Vienna. Unfortunately I will not be able to join as I will be renovating and moving into a new house with my little family.

June and July 2006

After long preparation the work on the new project Enter Ghost has started. The rehearsals begin in Amsterdam , then follows a two week residency at the wpZimmer in Antwerpen from the 3 rd till the 16 th of July.

March 2006

Performance Project at the Mimeschool in Amsterdam in collaboration with David Weber-Krebs. This project was performed on 6, 7, 8 April at the Theaterschool, with the title Something with a guardian angel and other attempts.

February 2006

The exact position of things tours in the Netherlands as part of the Serie Nieuwe Theatermakers, and is also performed at the Plateaux Festival in Frankfurt, the Bastard Festival in Trondheim, the Factory Season at the Tanzquartier in Vienna, LISA meets Sophie at the Sopiensaele in Berlin and the Festival In-Presentabile in Madrid .

January 2006

Thailand

November 2005

The ‘ghost-project’ is starting with four meetings with all of the team. We will accumulate material on ghosts, spirits, voodoo and alchemy, we will read, write and discuss on the possibility of invisible dimensions, we will gather a dense collection of material, we will hopefully get spooked and inspired.
From here starts the work on the new piece, which should premiere in October 2006.

October 2005

Two weeks in Leuven working on the second version of the Structure Multifonction for the Klapstuk Festival together with the other LISA ’s and Sophie.

July 2005

My daughter Sophie is born on the 20th of July. She is the most intense and the most emotional project I have ever committed to.