About the performance

Lyubov (a Russian woman’s name meaning ‘love’) is an unpretentious attempt to fuse the traditions and aesthetics of dance and circus into a quirky new universe. As an audience member, you are plunged into a mad anti-heroic epos, a tragicomic jungle where judgement is out of the question. You get to know a glamorous, magnificent, brittle, dramatic, diabolical, extremely strong, but perhaps above all a recognisably ‘lonely’ person. Because in this life you have to build your own party.

Lyubov is a work that contains a lot of symbolism, a work that is made up of symbols but leaves the spectator free to choose whether or not to go along with it. The abundance of symbols shapes a performance which can also simply be fun to watch, which is fine, not everything has to be too serious.

Karlien creates a poetic and visual landscape based on winks at stereotypical elements from the ‘canon’ of circus and (contemporary) dance. The starting point of the creation is the desire and the conviction to present a character with whom everyone, sooner or later, is more or less connected – either emotionally, (kin)aesthetically, physically or simply because of a funny joke or an appealing image.

Thanks to an atypical artistic path, Karlien has gathered a great variety of movement and performance qualities over the years. For Lyubov, she uses all her skills, juggling the heavy human themes and freedom of movement of contemporary dance, the extra dimension of aerial circus and the heartfelt sincerity of classical clowning. Despite impressive technical feats, the aim is not sterile perfection, but rather a virtuoso code switching between physical languages.

You can expect raw beauty, or beautiful rawness, plenty of muscle and hidden musical treasures.

Credits

Concept & performance: Karlien De Savoye

Live viola: Natalie Glas

Light design: Kurt Vandendriessche

Coaching: Bérengère Bodin, Ido Batash, Quan Bui Ngoc, Tijen Lawton

Coproduction: PERPLX

Residencies: Circusplaneet, Danspunt, Freefall vzw, laGeste, Miramiro, PERPLX, Stad Aalst