With NEXT, Conny Janssen Danst adds yet another exciting project to the company’s activities. Every year, this project offers an opportunity to a young chorographer to create a compact performance with the dancers of the Rotterdam-based company. NEXT is a production radiating urban energy and emerging at unexpected venues throughout the city.
In the first episode of NEXT Antonin Comestaz takes on the challenge to create new work for seven dancers, to be seen throughout Rotterdam. Characteristic for the work of this French choreographer, residing in The Hague, is its playful tone and a personal, inventive, and detailed dance vocabulary with elements borrowed from folk, mime, breakdance, commercial dance, ballet, contemporary dance, and cartoons. Within a piece, drastic shifts of styles and genres may occur, knitted together by a refined sensibility for the absurd.
The dancers throw themselves with dedication and with visible pleasure into a forty-minute playful dance marathon that is captivating from start to finish. 8WEEKLY
For NEXT, I work with a diverse group of dancers. Four men, three women, with lots of energy. I want the characters of my dancers to be fully appreciated. They are not impersonal or abstract. My dancers never hide behind the choreographer. I enter the studio bringing pure, raw dance material; it is only through rehearsals that context emerges. In twosomes and threesomes, I confront the dancers with each other. Thus, the narratives and relations evolve naturally and the separate movements turn into a conversation. Antonin Comestaz
Première: March 1 at WORM
|For this new initiative, Conny Janssen Danst has entered into a partnership with the alternative venues in Rotterdam. Antonin Comestaz’ new work premieres at WORM on Friday, March 1; it can also be seen there during Museumnacht10 on Saturday, March 2. After that, the dancers take NEXT to various locations, including their own studio HUIS Conny Janssen Danst in the Katendrecht area and the campus of Erasmus University.
Presenting a dance work in different locations and for different occasions teaches a maker to think flexibly. It breaks through fixed patterns, allowing makers to develop a new perspective on their work. Not only does NEXT provide a platform for creativity and innovation, but also pushes the boundaries of the traditional places of performance. We are convinced that, with Antonin Comestaz as the choreographer of this first edition, the audience will enjoy a dynamic, urban dance adventure. Conny Janssen