"We all have preconceptions, ideas about the world that determine our perception. The world is always as it appears to us. We have no access to an unmediated world. Also, the unmediated individual does not exist. We are, however, interested in the immediacy of the theatrical encounter, as we are interested in an unmediated experience of the world. Both function as a degree zero, as a reference, as a reminiscence that ideas float, that they spring from a world of possible ideas, from a source that we can refer to as the ‘beyond’.

We use form to lead our attention away from the world as we know it, away from the preconceived dancing body. One could use Zen meditation for that. As dancers with a touch of dr. Frankenstein, we dissect the body into it’s constituent parts, put it back together and invite it to dance.

We are inspired by budding ideas from science, from our occidental past, from other cultures etc. to explore the borders and the ideas of the dancing body, not to make it shine in a sporty way, but to augment its expressive qualities. The energy and skills of the dancer, shaped by deviant form and structure, should lead us beyond our perceptive horizon.

That’s why we are as much interested in moving in space as we are in making the space move, as much in choreography as in the folds of the performance: the gaps in the structure that cannot be choreographed but are the natural spaces for ‘the beyond’ to appear; the moments for an unmediated encounter between audience and performer."

Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana

Foto: Harijono Roebana and Andrea Leine. Photo by Leoni Ravestein.