BURNT [ the eternal long now ]
In Burnt [ the eternal long now ], LEE\VAKULYA choreographically explores burnout as a collective, social phenomenon. In a relentless drive of action and effort, three dancers burn their energy into a danced rat race—a dance that mirrors a widely shared feeling of unrest and exhaustion.
Although a very lonely experience, burnout is a social phenomenon that we collectively endure, but also unwillingly allow and sustain. Burnt brings it to the foreground as a shared problem that shouldn’t remain confined to private spheres, as if taboo. We don’t burnout en masse because of personal flaws, kids, or an unexpected loss, but because overwork, overwhelm and anxiety are structural to how our lives are built.
We have never been so busy, nor has our future been more hopeless. When left unleashed by politics, the capitalist economy generates a systemic overdrive that not only pushes social bonds and mental health toward disintegration, but also atrophies our imagination, and destroys natural environments.
Taking this reality as a point of departure, Zoltan Vakulya and Chen-Wei Lee created a dance that explores extreme fatigue with others. Chen-Wei Lee, Charlotte Petersen, and Esse Vanderbruggen drive themselves into exhaustion, both together and alone. Sweat and determination are shared, and eagerness feeds even more eagerness and drives their common motor into overheating. The question we are left with is if the beauty of their efforts to support each other doesn’t tragically trigger their collective downfall.
PRESS
"A breathtaking choreography by Zoltán Vakulya and Chen-Wei Lee leads the dancers and the audience in a war of attrition through an intriguing course. "
cultural journalist Viviane Redant
" Dance work as material and metaphor for body labor and physical burnout. The bodies become one engine, larger and more efficient. Movements of precise handicrafts evolve into the sturdy jerking of heavy machinery. "
Jonas Schidermans, Springback Magazine
" Burnt [ the eternal long now] is an excellent demonstration, using dance to directly point to the current situation of contemporary people's physical and mental exhaustion, showing the advantages of dance as an art medium, and also showing the excellent ability of choreographers and dancers. It's a dance piece with powerful impact. "
- ARTalks Taiwan
" Through the topic of Burnout, LEE\VAKULYA proposed another kind of extreme dance body expression, bringing the viewer to a continuous bombardment of body and sounds, a special experience of visual, auditory and fatigue processes is created through choreography, which subtly and profoundly points to various problems in modern society. "
-Taishin Arts prize nomination
CAST
CHOREOGRAPHY:
LEE\VAKULYA
PERFORMANCE:
Chen-Wei Lee, Esse Vanderbruggen, Charlotte Petersen / Jessica Simet
MUSIC:
Gryllus Abris
DRAMATURGY:
Alice Van der Wielen-Honinckx, Zoltán Vakulya
LIGHT DESIGN:
Bert Van Dijck, Xavi Moreno
STAGE DESIGN ADVICE:
Ding-Yeh Wang
COSTUME ADVICE:
Eric Tsai
PRODUCTION:
kunstencentrum nona
CO-PRODUCTION:
STUK (Leuven),
CCNR (Lyon),
Tanzplattform Rhein Main (Wiesbaden),
NTCH (Taipei)
RESIDENCIES:
kunstencentrum nona, VIERNULVIER Ghent, Thor Brussels, L'animal a L'esquena Celra, State Theater Darmstadt. Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture.
WITH THE SUPPORT:
OFFlemish Culture Ministry of Belgium,
Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation.