HUIS Conny Janssen Danst regularly welcomes guest makers in the studio. The young dance company ‘Lazy Susan & Co.’ will be our guests from March 25 to April 6. During this residency six of their dancers will work on a new project called ‘This is just a simple dance’ in collaboration with mime artist Gerben Vaillant. During this residency, the six dancers of the company – in collaboration with mime artist Gerben Vaillant – will work on a new project ‘This is just a simple dance’. On Saturday, April 6, they will conclude the residency at HUIS Conny Janssen Danst with a workshop and presentation.
The project: This is just a simple dance
‘’This is just a simple dance’’ is a collaboration between mime artist Gerben Vaillant and the dance company Lazy Susan & Co.:
Somewhere, a bit of a shabby place, a parking lot or somewhere with the kind of lights that make you look sick. They messed up the view with those fences. Behind them there are dunes. They are ugly as well, but at least they are dunes. On the left, another parking lot and on the right the snack bar and a bit further the wooden stairs that take you up on the dune. Up there, you can see the beach and the sea. You don’t need to go there. We have everything we need.
The physical and visual performance, set in a desolate village, forms the framework for the dancers and Gerben to explore several of their interests. The photographs of Alessandra Sanguinetti and Ton Grote, femininity as a sensibility, the voice of Sinead O’Connor and dance as a way to dig into physical sensations, are some of the starting points. The composition of chaos and randomness on stage searches to capture and display the beauty in simplicity and the touching dreams and fantasies of the performers on stage.
“This is just a simple dance” is the wrong place for something beautiful. Somewhere in between a painting, theater and dance. We like to get lost in the beautiful simplicity of not having a better option.
The residency opportunity allows us to kick off our new project in a creative and welcoming environment. We are excited and looking forward to ‘’simply dancing’’ in the studios of HUIS Conny Janssen Danst. Lazy Susan & Co.
About Lazy Susan & Co.
Lazy Susan & Co. is a young dance company based in Rotterdam. The company consists of 6 dance artists with 8 different nationalities: Alice Gioria (IT), Catarina Ribeiro (PT), Sebastian Pickering Pedersen (DK/CA), Keren-or Ben Shachar (ISR), Hellen Boyko (ARG/RUS), and Iris Boer (NL). Lazy Susan & Co. was first established in 2020 in response to the limited opportunities for young creators caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Lazy Susan & Co. is a stichting that creates contemporary dance performances and organizes events. Lazy Susan functions as a rotating platform, like the eponymous object used for passing condiments or spices, and in our case: responsibilities. To keep the company in motion, members rotate creative and organizational tasks among themselves. “Co” primarily stands for company, but it can also be seen as collaboration, choreography, contribution, connection, collage, contradictions, cowbells – and so on. Lazy Susan & Co. continually pushes the boundaries of performance, frequently collaborating with artists from various disciplines and backgrounds, outside of their expertise.
About Gerben Vaillant
Gerben Vaillant (1994) is an interdisciplinary performance artist. During his studies at the mime course (AHK), he nourished a fascination for creating performances in which the distance between people and reality is central: Where people fail to be (part of) a whole. Both sensitive and radical, he works with different forms: text, image, dance, philosophy, trash, it can be anything, but usually the work is atmospheric and sometimes confusing in nature. Ultimately he hopes to contribute to a reality that suits us better.
