Jérôme Bel´s DISABLED THEATER arrives to Espoo
Choreographer Jérôme Bel has been interested since his early works in what stands beyond representation. In his choreographies, the rules of dance and theater are treated like the syntax of a language that is analyzed and eventually put into play.
Danced and spoken by professional as well as by amateur performers, his choreographies could also be seen as statements in favor of the democratization of dance, which he pursues by way of a non-virtuous approach.
For his performance Disabled Theater he has worked with the mentally disabled actors of the Theater HORA, based in Zürich. A source of distress for a society defining itself as essentially normal, disability constitutes the limit against which the category of normality runs up. Its intellectual declension — i.e. mental disability — is generally thought of in terms of complete otherness to the condition of the intellectually keen and cultivated public of experimental theater. Bel chooses to bring this handicap to the core of the attention of this public, adopting it as a key to the reading of what enables us to think of a common dimension.
What is at stake for Bel in working with the actors of Theater HORA is the opening up of a space where disability is not expelled from visual and discursive practices, nor hidden behind the screen of political correctness, but is instead internal to a discourse that has a bearing on both the aesthetic and political dimensions. With Disabled Theater, Bel sheds light on the dynamics of exclusion that leads to the marginalization of those who are considered unable to produce, exposing how, on the contrary, they are able to question the very mechanisms of representation, and to hint at existence as a non-partitioned mode of presence.
Performances at Espoo Cultural Center, Louhisali
2.11.2013 at 7pm
3.11.2013 at 3pm
Performance language: Swiss German, with English interpretation
The performance is part of Moving in November festival.
