ALICE DAVIES > JACQ PALINCKX
- Circus Kapel
- 25 mrt
- 2 minuten om te lezen
February 2025
ALICE DAVIES working with JACQ PALINCKX || ALICE DAVIES working with JACQ PALINCKX
About you/The performance: Circus is my way of working things out. Of expanding perspective and creating alternative possibilities as opposed to demonstrating spectacular virtuosity.
My main body of research is about sustainability inside circus practices, touching themes such as health, age, outlook, and visibility on stage, with a long-standing approach of intimate focus and attention to detail.
In this new body of research, that I began in the Circus Kapel in December 2024 and continued in February 2025, I was asking how we can find alternative expositions of classical circus elements such as virtuosity, ability, and spectacle, through the rather 'humble', often practical, and absolutely underappreciated process of adaptation; adaptation to another body, a body from a different background, profession, age, specifically. Goal of residency: I invited Jacq Palinckx into the studio with me, and onto the trapeze with me, with the goal of looking at how we can adapt to each other in this situation, and blur the idea that I am ‘able’ in this context and that he is not. We also wanted to test how to subvert expectations on both of our bodies by playing with focus.
Over 6 days of work together, 4 of which were physical, we were asking ourselves when it was possible for us to imitate the other, and when it was necessary for us to interpret the other and thus adapting to our different physical needs and bodily experience. We questioned performance even in this very unbridled way of working - when doing an exercise for the first time, the entire process was treated as something to watch; we questioned how we ourselves should be watched. How do we channel focus? What do we imply? What senses do we invite to be stimulated?
We were happy with the results of this time together, as we found that we had kind of ‘stripped back’ the circus room, revealing all of its elements in a play between clarity and serenity and slight discomfort. We took binaries that relate to circus/non-circus, and we managed to blur them: it is never as black and white as Youth or Age; as Outside the Comfort Zone or Inside the Comfort Zone; as Virtuosity or Ignorance. As Risk or Safety. It is not enough to just put age on stage, to just place alternative bodily experiences on stage, without exploring a meeting point with other bodies; if we don’t explore this meeting point, we risk engaging with a reinforcement of binaries, reinforcement of the archetypal narratives of bodies or bodily experiences. Jacq and I feel that we started to find this meeting point.
About the Circus Kapel:
The space itself is an inspiring point to work from, especially for us - it is a space that once existed as something else, and has been adapted. We felt very comfortable there, and the space has everything you need - a kitchen, a bedroom, a large workspace and a selection of other rooms to work from outside of the physical studio. The neighbours are also very friendly!
