Bruises only during rehearsal period

> Tilburg based company T.r.a.s.h. makes blackandbluedancetheatre.
> New performance íSA premieres at Julidans, Amsterdam

photography : © Leo van Velzen

“Just take it from the solo Knuffelbeertje”, Kristel van Issum says in the dance studio in Tilburg.  Knuffelbeertje? Carebear? The small and dark performer Tegest Pecht Guido utters animalesque primal grunts from the depth of her throat. In between her physical cramps and convulsions she hardly has the chance o speak her lyrics. About how lonely she is. About how love just doesn’t seem to succeed. And about blood, her african blood being good.

This is the universe of T.r.a.s.h. company. Raw and dynamic punk dance, one might describe it as ‘blackbruisesdancetheatre’. In the new performance íSA the seven dancers drop mercilessly onto the floor, they throw and throw each others bodies all over the place. “Bruises only occur during rehearsals and ever so few”, says Van Issum, “it may seem like a fierce chaos on stage but every movement striking the audience as dangerous is actually directed up to the most minute detail. We are actually quite proud of never having injuries.”

The contast between this theatre maker, carefully looking for words, and her almost violent universe can’t be greater. She’d rather talk about her seventeen month old daughter Nina that about her werk. For Van Issums performances are about subjects that difficult to her to put into words, like the moral vacuüm in which she finds the society. “I keep looking for phisical risks. It has to do with the emptiness that forces itself onto mankind, I find that very violent. In our society values have lost their value. There is a moral coma, a moral silence. One push on the button and the world is blown into pieces. In our work that emptiness and fear comes back time and again. íSA is about the senseless and the unproductiveness but also about intoxication and extasy. “

The name of T.r.a.s.h. refers to the uselessness and the disposal culture that we live in according to the company. Coming from the underground rock scene of Tilburg, Kristel van Issum (who studied theatre sciences) started making performances with composer Arthur van der Kuip and set designer Paul van Weert in 2001. They were having experiments in an old factory, at first without an audience, but in 2005 their performance Pork-in-Loop became a hit. Just like To File For Chapter 11, one year later. The performances were so well received that T.R.A.S.H. is now internationally being co-produced by the Festival de Marseille and the new Festival Antartica of Provinciehuis Brabant.
Singlehandedly they built their spaceous studio and workshop at NS16, a Tilburg artists enclave along the railway that also houses pop group Krezip. While rehearsing in the white setting, dancers often change between identities and parts by continuously changing wigs. Lyrics (‘why am I not special for you?’) erupt from bodies like cries. In every corner, a dancer wriggles (or crashes down), changes outfit, stands still in order to explode, or encouters in a duet.

Ingrid van Frankenhuyzen - 01.07.2008