Conny Janssen Danst To Perform At Jacob’s Pillow - July 17, 2008
 | | Photo Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow |
Becket – Dutch contemporary dance company, Conny Janssen Danst, makes its American East Coast debut at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Doris Duke Studio Theatre July 24 – 27. The show, REBOUND, plays out inside three ten-foot-tall white padded walls, where five male members of the company perform witty, energetic, and surprising moves and find themselves in a number of interesting situations. The work debuted in Holland in 2005, and the company has only visited the U.S. once, performing REBOUND in two West Coast cities in 2007. The Jacob’s Pillow performances will mark the East Coast debut of this internationally recognized company.
Theatrical, inventive, and moving, choreographer Conny Janssen combines her dance language with a refined choice of music, art direction, and lighting design. Janssen’s movement style melds with the personal qualities of her dancers, bringing them forth on stage as people, not just performers. She was awarded the Encouraging Award for Choreography in Europe in1994 for her artistic growth, originality of movement vocabulary, and balance between pure dance and theatrical aspects in her work. REBOUND reflects Janssen’s originality and is a study of camaraderie, confinement, power, and domination.
“I was immediately taken with this inventive show when I first saw it,” comments Ella Baff, Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow. “Conny Janssen has put together a remarkably interesting and accomplished ensemble that masters the physical demands of the dance, the acting ability required, and the delicate timing of the surprising things that occur - all with thrilling precision and infectious enthusiasm that draws the audience into their strange and witty world.”
REBOUND premiered at the Isala Theater in Holland in 2005 and is a powerfully physical performance, created for a small ensemble of male dancers. The stage set is a three-sided set of white padded walls, complete with a surprise trampoline that emerges from one wall halfway through the work. The men are trapped by these ten-foot walls, and are ultimately sentenced to interact with each other with no possible escape. As they intermingle, Janssen’s dancers are athletic, technically exquisite, funny, and real all the while tackling intricate contemporary movement with the grace and precision of ballet dancers. As the work develops, they explore all possible elements of partnering, including gravity, velocity, balance, and weight transfer.
REBOUND contains confrontation, interaction including one-on-one fights, comedic battles of wits, and even a boyish sense of play. The Oregonian wrote, “Vulnerability, interdependence, combat, intimacy, and resignation intertwine with humor and streamlined beauty, creating what might be one the of the most vivid snapshots contemporary dance has yet produced on men in the company of men.”
The 60-minute work features an eclectic score of an arrangement of sounds ranging from the noise of the human body impact to classical music to pop music. The score includes music by Israeli songwriter Keren Ann, Norwegian techno group Biosphere (with Deathprod), American rock band Tool, American avant-garde composer John Zorn, and others. Janssen incorporates sounds the human body makes as it bounds through space or bounces off the set, making them as much a part of the score as the music itself.
Conny Janssen began her career as a dancer and made her choreographic debut in 1988 with The Undertow. She continued to make her mark on Dutch dance with a series of striking contemporary dances and site-specific works. After achieving international recognition in 1991 with Elöi Elöi, she formed her own company, Conny Janssen Danst with producer Wim Visser in 1992. Janssen was awarded the Philip Morris Award for Dance in the U.S. for the work Mortar in 1998.
Janssen’s audience has continued to grow throughout Europe. The company has performed at renowned Dutch festivals, and toured extensively in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Morocco, Russia, and Canada. She is supported by The City of Rotterdam, where the company is based, and was awarded a Cultural Policy grant in 2001 by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science. The company tours extensively, with the Jacob’s Pillow performances marking its East Coast American debut.
In a preview presentation, Conny Janssen Danst will perform at Inside/Out on the Marcia & Seymour Simon Performance Space Wednesday, July 23 at 6:30pm. The performance is free and open to the public.
For more information on Conny Janssen Danst and Jacob’s Pillow, visit www.connyjanssendanst.nl/ and www.jacobspillow.org. |
