Like hearing the bones break

Interview with Anthony van Gog for PLAN Talent Development Brabant.
Text: Mina Etemad

Biskas proved the perfect dancer for Van Gog's new show crowdkill. With the performance, Van Gog wants to look for a way to let the materiality of the body speak again. That sounds vague, but it is hard to put into words what a body does or feels. This is clearly a performance you have to experience.

Sitting in the auditorium, you move into a circle, with a number of speakers around you. Through these, bass tones in particular can be heard clearly and you, the audience, are in the middle of the sound. In the middle, where Biskas dances, there are four microphones, which pick up the sounds of his movements. Van Gog: 'We try to make his presence felt by the audience in sound. So that you almost dive into his body and thus end up in a kind of ambiguity. Are you inside his body, or outside it? Are you watching someone or feeling something in your own body?'

Bastones
In one scene, for instance, Biskas drops his limbs on the floor. Through the carefully placed speakers and Boris de Klerk's sound design, the room fills with the sounds and vibrates completely. Slowly, you can hear the sounds Biskas' body makes intensify. 'This makes it seem as if all the bones in that body are superimposed,' Van Gog explains. 'As if you can almost hear them breaking. In a way, you are thus thrown back on your own materiality.'

The speakers especially turn up the bass tones strongly, which can be intense for your body, but also pleasant or meditative, Van Gog said. At a research presentation in May, audience reactions therefore varied. Some found it soothing; one woman said it felt like having her baby back in her belly. Others found it terrible, too violent even, and almost wanted to flee the room. Van Gog finds both reactions interesting: 'We don't have to see something boring as bad. It is also good to stay in the unpleasant.'

Hyperventilation
For crowdkill Van Gog also drew on his own body when he was in the studio by himself during the preliminary research. He moved and filmed that, then watched the footage. In doing so, he noted that he often tensed his muscles; his body was reacting to something. That reaction is reflected in the performance: 'Besides fluid movements, Evangelos also works a lot with muscle tension.'