Going over the edge, exploring and pushing boundaries, pushing the limits of bystanders' comprehension, performing feats no one expects. And seeing gnomes walking through a forest. Or reading things in water. Seeing half a boy save the world. The first 11 days of August 2024 were legendary, never to be forgotten. And all in the cultural capital of the South: Den Bosch.
On Friday afternoon, I watched eight Flemish young people win a victory over fate together. Being young and growing up often means insecurity, exclusion and cut-throat competition. We have made life a constant competition where you always have only one chance at love, a career or a house.
Voorbij het randje
What I saw at four o'clock that afternoon at Bossche Verkadefabriek made it clear exactly why that thinking in winners and losers is too limited.
‘Beyond the Edge’ (voorbij het randje), waar 8 jongeren en 8 instellingen aan meewerkten (fABULEUS, HET LAB & 6 Limburgse Cultuurcentra) is het nieuwste werk van Piet Van Dycke, een choreograaf die circus maakt zoals alleen choreografen circus kunnen maken. Wat hij nu met deze 8 jongeren voor elkaar heeft gekregen is diep ontroerend en overdonderend goed tegelijk. In een voorstelling waarin de spelers verkennen wat je allemaal met ladders voor elkaar kunt krijgen, laten ze vooral ook dát zien: dingen voor each other .
It starts very subtly as a competition, in which the ladders serve as divisions, but increasingly the kids seek each other out in what ends up as a dazzling sequence of highlights. Here, it is not a few who shine thanks to the others, but it is always the group that shows that you shine best on your own when you shine together.
Continuous motion
Van Dycke's trademark is full-continuous movement. He showed this earlier in Exit and Glorious Bodies, projecten die al even overtuigend een nieuwe richting insloegen voor het circus. In Beyond The Edge overtreft Van Dycke zichzelf. De voorstelling is een uur lang één doorgaande beweging waar je wel zou willen klappen voor elk nieuw wonder dat de kids laten zien, maar ze je de kans niet geven.
Where traditional acts still sometimes go from applause moment to applause moment, these kids flow at a pace that looks convivial, but is top-class sport. You can see them enjoying every moment when they outwit the enthusiastic spectators again. Sport can be so much more enjoyable when you turn it into art!
Loyal and eager
The 11 days of Theatre Festival Boulevard, ending today, Sunday 11 August, were legendary for more reasons. The 40-year-old festival returned to the square below St John's, De Parade, after a three-year absence. The decor had been changed, the view of the grand basilica could remind you of southern French festivals with many millions more budget and the weather was nicer than in previous years.
Attendance will again exceed 100,000. Audiences mainly from Brabant are loyal and eager, and glorious performances such as Tortot of Laika and Froefroe rightly find a grateful audience there. The show, which stars larger-than-life puppets, also finds fertile soil there. The food served by the makers is not only incredibly creative, but also delicious, healthy and good.
Sport cannot exist without art
Seeing great men and women cry with emotion at the fate of a little boy with half a body made of rags: that's what theatre can do to you. And it gives you something to talk about at the long tables afterwards.
About that little boy, for example, who lost everything, but managed to tell us that fish can cry. Even though war never ends, because someone always rises again who really wants to fight the last war now.
The Olympics were once meant to make war obsolete. At one time, they were also about the arts, but those have slowly but surely leaked out, until only the opening and closing ceremonies remained. Sport at those Games is now about winning, while arts are also about gloriously losing. And at the Games, many more people still lose than bring home medals. For the losers, there is comfort in beauty.
Theatre Festival Boulevard shows, and especially feels, how badly we need it.
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