A thread runs through Lisbeth Gruwez’s work, of a body seeking liberation and a soul responding to the complexity of life in a violent world. Opening up the personal into the transpersonal and the abstract. Far from trying to make a point, but becoming a point—a single, glowing, energetic point.
Voetvolk’s new work is a solo by and with Lisbeth. An incantatory dance performance with its roots in the deeply human and primal emotion that is anger. Inviting anger in as an intimately known guest, while knowing it is a growing societal and political force in these times of polarisation.
A tempest may leave the landscape in devastation, but might it also refresh and cleanse it? Similarly, anger is a primal force that, if unchanneled, can drain the heart and consume the soul. But it is neither wholly destructive nor entirely malevolent. Essentially, anger speaks of a need, be it the desire for justice on a societal level or the interpersonal need for connection. Solitary, personal pain echoes the collective and the other way around. If anger speaks of desire, then it may also hold the seed for change. What is needed to awaken this seed of transformative force? And what would this awakening look like? The process of sorry, the process of falling and getting back up, again and again.
This solo will be a testament to the human capacity to harness the wild energy of anger, to mould it into a force for growth and renewal. It will explore what a transcendence of anger might look like in and around a singular, an individual body, on stage. A dance through the eye of the storm, or rather: a dance opening an eye in the storm.
Premiere: Autumn 2025