Robert Steijn: Deer Dance – 22 and 23 february

Deer Dance – allowing myself to get high in the clouds of imagination
By and with Robert Steijn (NL)

Robert Steijn presents his magical way of thinking in a solo, called the Deer Dance. He invites you to question the existence of invisible energies and realities, he dances with absent people, and channels the energy of a deer through his movements to soften the division between him and the audience. Most of the time we are witness to an impossible event. Still, his attempt is charming and attractive, and jumpstarts our power of imagination and puts the rational explanations of the sceptic in doubt, and vice versa.

Already as a child Robert studied the deer in the forest at home in Holland. His interest in deer and other animals has not diminished over the years, rather the opposite, and his attempt at animal transformation offers him the opportunity to approach pertinent questions from angles generating new insight. Robert started his career as a critic, moving into the realm of choreography. Today he is director, choreographer and dancer. Over the last few years he has developed a transparent stage presence that doesn't allow him to pretend or lie. Or is he a trickster?

Robert Steijn founded together with Frans Poelstra the company united sorry, based in vienna, they make work for theatres, galleries and the public space. Their latest project(2012) is the year long event Green conversations in Vienna. In 2011 united sorry made the performance Propaganda for the performance group the Symptoms in Budapest. Robert collaborated also with choreographers as Latifa Labissi (Rennes), Anne Teresa de Keersemaeker (Brussels), Maria Hassabi ( New York), Georg Blaschke ( Vienna) and Christina Rizzo (Bologna). He directs and writes theatre-plays for Theater im Bahnhof in Graz, Theater der Jungen Welt in Leipzig and works with the puppet-player and visual artist Stefanie Oberhoff in Stuttgart. With the french visual artist Christine Laquette in Nantes he just made a performance about art and shamanism, under the title "never forget the jungle" As a solo-artist he is a deer-dancer and he just started a new solo for galleries, called " it is in your hands stupid", which premiered in Helsinki, november 2012.

 

Interview with Robert Steijn
Homepage