Merel Severs

Merel Severs & Milou van Duijnhoven

Jaarlijks nodigt Theater a/d Rijn enkele theater- en dansmakers uit voor een residentie in ons huis. In deze periode kunnen de makers onderzoeken, experimenteren en uitproberen onder begeleiding van het Theater a/d Rijn team.

Van 13 t/m 24 maart ging onze vaste maker Merel Severs samen met Milou van Duijnhoven in residentie. Ze sloten zichzelf twee weken op, samen met een bokszak, springtouwen, bokshandschoenen, hun stemmen en lijven.

‘I want to feel empowered but I’m also a vehicle of violence’

Over de residentie

Merel en Milou onderzochten met minimale middelen hoe de materialen hun lichamen bewegen, en hoe hun lichamen de materialen bewegen. Welke choreografische keuzes komen voort uit deze ontmoeting? Verder onderzochten ze het werken met stem, klank en taal en hoe ze dit omzetten naar een sensationele beleving op het podium. Hoe zorg je ervoor dat de toeschouwer gesproken taal lichamelijk voelt?

Vanuit het startpunt kracht en kwetsbaarheid in combinatie met discipline en plezier, hebben Merel en Milou het Try Not To Know What You Know universum verder uitgebreid. Sounddesigner Mauro Casarini componeerde bijbehorende muziek, opgebouwd vanuit geluiden van de vloer: stoten op bokszakken, een verhoogde hartslag, versnelde ademhaling in combinatie met ritmische slagen van springtouwen.

Merel about her residency

How to bring Martial Arts in the performative space? And let the meeting with our bodies, the materials, space & time, sound & light create a new universe. A universe where we give space to our disciplined bodies and the desire for pleasure. A practice of pleasure through discipline and discipline ourselves to discover pleasure through the realm of Martial Arts. With a Boxing Timer implying a set and to everyone known regime of training and deviating from this regime — freeing ourselves and questioning, what is it that we need to train here? What is seen as “work” and can “breathing” and allowing our bodies to recover also count as work? How can we liberate ourselves from vast ideas about working hard and the focus on (over)producing? Where does training become playful? A skipping rope is both a tool for hard working boxers as it is used on the playground where children play.

With this material we explored dance dramaturgy, rhythm, sound and composition within a deep wish for creating a performative installation. A space where people can come and be witness to our practice. And through this shared space and time wondering: How are people moved by us? And we by them? How are we moved by the materials in our shared space? And how do we move them to create new images and therefore openings to other associations? Can a boxing bag, designed to receive punches, kicks aggression become our soft and intimate dance partner? And if it does, what associations arise?

We gave the audience the agency to choose their own perspectives. By doing so, raising the awareness of that choice at any time at any place. The perspective you choose, the proximity you have matters for the experience. How does proximity bring risk into the performative space? We researched the simultaneous existence of different realities in the performative space through use of sound, our bodies, choreography and building installations from the objects in the space. How to layer and play with these materials by the use of circular dramaturgy in light, sound and performance?

It was a rich, overwhelming and informative residency and I can’t wait to put it into practice in my next performance in which I will use these methodologies to create a piece where I will work around RESISTANCE.