“When everyone supports each other, everyone is elevated.” A Performance-Installation as a Barricade for Connection
Bjarte Wildeman
Location: Thomaskerk, Theaterzaal
Dates:
- GENRE: Circus, Dance, Performance Art
- THEME: Collective work, Connection, Speaking Bodies
- LANGUAGE: Language No Problem
- Attention: a lot of sensory stimuli (light and/or sound)
- Toilet for wheelchair users: yes, Wheelchair accessible: yes
duration of the performance: 50 min
Impossible towers seem to float. Muscles hold the skeleton together. Intertwined arms of protesters. The safety net that catches you when you can’t go on.
STRIAE is a physical performance in which three performers move between and through large, movable structures, balancing between support and letting go. They build, interweave and catch each other, in a search for an alternative balance in the chaos, how we find resilience in connection, not in isolation.
Inspired by our anatomy and the unity of protest movements, STRIAE investigates how care and resistance fuse. Strength isn’t solo, it lives in the tension between together and alone.
What if barricades don’t just block, but lift us? What if softness is the ultimate power?
A raw, physical ode to togetherness, resilience, and the shared body.
You don’t have to do it alone.
It takes a village to support a person.
Biography
Interdisciplinary maker and performer Bjarte Wildeman (1998, NL) creates performances and unconventional choreographies that focus on the physical, conceptual and psycho-somatic mechanisms of the body. He investigates how the body relates to itself and its environment and develops choreographic and kinetic devices in order to experience this. His work is a form of on-stage research, aimed at inter- and intra-individual sensation, physical awareness and understanding.
Bjarte previously created the performance duet tens:ding [bending over backwards] about the dynamics between power and care and published Choreographing Sense: reflections on Movement as Sensemaking. In STRIAE he continues this research, now with a larger group of performers.
Fascinated by systems theory, biohacking and the manipulation of sensory and physiological perception, Wildeman explores the limits of physical experience. Working within performance, dance, circus and installations, he investigates how anatomy, movement systems and interdependence influence the body – physically, cognitively and in social relations.
In 2022 he graduated from the ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
Through his work, he challenges traditional perceptions of movement and physicality and develops new ways of understanding and redefining kinetic experiences.
