Three Quarters of a Human

I am a ballerina. I repeat steps, sequences and combinations. I am a choreographer. I am always producing, but I never get to the end. I am a performer. I turn my head, move my arms, legs and torso. I am a body. I am always working, but I never do enough. I am the author. I step out from the line. I don’t know if it’s okay that I stepped to the left first. I find more and more movement when standing still, but there are three other possibilities. Forwards, backwards. Or even to the right.
I am a dancer - three quarters of a human. I count to three. I keep deciding, even if the decision keeps escaping me. I lift myself onto my toes. I go all the way to the bottom. I fight for every direction of movement, yet I keep spinning around my own axis. I gasp for breath, losing my balance and my strength. I arrange my thoughts into sets, rows, columns, repetitions, canons, and pauses. Order calms me and unsettles me at the same time.
I am a person of discipline. In the pursuit of perfection, I chase the essence of my own imperfection, striving to catch the missing quarter.
I believe in tradition - rules that keep us together. That’s why I take eight liberated bodies and arrange them into sets, rows, columns, repetitions, canons, and pauses. I strip them of the superfluous and expose them to harmony. A living wall of equality creates a balance between order and chaos.
Together we count to three. One. Two. Three. We stumble at the thought of four. We bite again, and the thought always bites us back again. To blood and flesh.
Because a step is never just a step. Because dancing is never just dancing. And the body is always just a body.

Yvonne R. revisited her “No Manifesto” and adapted it after realising that its principles could obstruct the creative process. It was too radical - there should be no prohibitions in art. But the drive to achieve the impossible, to combine the incompatible and to represent the invisible is fundamental to creativity. And this tendency is inherently radical.
I respect anyone who is willing to admit that they no longer understand what they once thought was important; that is how we learn and evolve. As Walt Whitman said: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” The pervasive mediocrity in our everyday environment, culture and art calls for bold moves that push boundaries, even when these attempts seem impossible. Using the tools of pure dance and exploring the concept of choreography, the piece seeks to capture the beauty of radical thought through movement, exploring the constantly shifting boundary between the liberated and the constrained body.

2024, 50 min, no dialogues
on the 10th of October, the performance is followed by the Audience Council