27.06.'22
Choreographers Joke Laureyns and Kwint Manshoven are looking for an intern/volunteer to document and archive a creation process of a new project produced by laGeste (= kabinet k & les ballets C de la B). The project, entitled someone will always be missing , involves a series of duets between professional dancers and children from Palestine or of Palestinian origin. The rehearsals take place alternately in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, Lebanon and Ghent. Tasks : writing, editing and archiving (online) interviews with the artists and artistic directors of the organisations involved and simple editing of video material before and during the creation process. These tasks are limited to the activities in Ghent. Profile : Journalism, political, communiation or theatre studies students. Fluent knowledge of English is required. An interest in the arts and knowledge of the political situation in Palestine are a plus. Period : as from 1 September '22. Ideally over a period of one year, on a regular but not daily basis. For more info about the work of kabinet k: https://www.kabinetk.be/en/kabinet Interested?: please contact Mieke Versyp – mieke@kabinetk.be
newsitem added on 27.06.'22
08.08.'22
les ballets C de la B & kabinet K merge to form laGeste les ballets C de la B and kabinet K have decided to work together in the future. The two dance companies from Ghent are jointly submitting a subsidy dossier for the period 2023-2027 under a new name: laGeste. The new organisation will work under the artistic direction of Joke Laureyns and Hildegard De Vuyst. laGeste focuses on the body, dance and inclusive physicality in the form of productions, residencies and workshops. In the coming years, new work is planned by Lisaboa Houbrechts, Alain Platel, Joke Laureyns & Kwint Manshoven and Andrew Graham, among others. laGeste chooses to work with different makers on creations that make a Big Gesture, to invest in the development of young and ambitious makers, to expand an intergenerational practice into an inclusive one.
newsitem added on 08.08.'22
Palestinian children in/around Ghent
06.07.'22
laGeste (kabinet k + les ballets C de la B), The Freedom Theatreand Douban Professional Dance are looking for Palestinian children for a new project. With Someone will always be missing , Belgian choreographers Kwint Manshoven and Joke Laureyns are making a physical performance that spans different generations of Palestinians. The makers will be working with Palestinians who all live in different places: on the West Bank,in Gaza, East Jerusalem, in the 48, in the camps of Lebanon or in Ghent. Each status hides a context, stories, tensions, sensibilities. Through images, movement and music, they will build a performance full of magic and poetry, in which children play along with adult dancers. Are you between 8 and 11 years old? Do you live near Ghent? And do you feel like performing on stage ? Technical background is not required: any child who likes movement is welcome to join for a playful movement-workshop.Please read the info below: P r a c t i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n When: Monday August 29 or Tuesday August 30 from 10am till 12pm or from 2pm till 4pm Where: Atelier laGeste, Nieuwevaart 118, 9000 Ghent More info & subscribing: Registration for this workshop is free and can be done by mail to marieke@lageste.be . After your registration you will receive a message from us with the exact time at which you are expected. You can register until August 22th. After this short workshop, some children will be selected for a 2-days intensive workshop in October. After that workshop a selection of children will be invited to continue in a small project with professional dancers and in a second phase the final performance will be elaborated during 2022 –2023, with a premiere in Belgium in August 2023 and subsequently a tour throughout Europe and the Middle-East in the months after.
newsitem added on 06.07.'22
Bijloke Wonderland is back!
05.07.'22
In August, the Bijloke site will again be the setting for the Bijloke Wonderland festival: stimulating concerts at sunrise, theatre and dance in all corners of the Ghent site, literature and summer bar concerts. This summer arts festival is an initiative of LOD music theatre, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, STAM and laGeste (= les ballets C de la B + kabinet k) in collaboration with Arts Center VIERNULVIER. The full programme is here: www.bijlokewonderland.be . But below we would like to highlight the performances programmed by laGeste and Arts Center VIERNULVIER: 7 Vies | Nach & Ruth Rosenthal Fr 19 + Sa 20 Aug (18:00), Bijlokesite KASK Café (terrace)Monstrare et/ou Monere | Milø Slayers Fr 19 + Sa 20 Aug (21:00), KraakhuisVanThorhout | Alexander Vantournhout Fr 26 + Sa 27 + Su 28 Aug (18:00), Studio laGeste (12+)UNRUHE | Groupe Crisis, Nolwenn Peterschmitt Sa 27 + Su 28 Aug (20:00), Tent Bijlokesite (15+)
newsitem added on 05.07.'22
06.07.'22
laGeste (kabinet k + les ballets C de la B), The Freedom Theatre and Douban Professional Dance are looking for dancers/performers for a new project. In Someone will always be missing , Belgian choreographers Kwint Manshoven and Joke Laureyns are making a physical performance that spans different generations of Palestinians. The makers will be working with Palestinians who all live in different places: on the West Bank, in Gaza, East Jerusalem, in the 48, in the camps of Lebanon or in Belgium. Each status hides a context, stories, tensions, sensibilities. Through images, movement and music, they will build a performance full of magic and poetry. Made out of duets, each with one adult performer and a young child. Each starting from an intense encounter between both protagonists. Child and adult in the duets are each other’s equal, regardless of the context within which they were born in, grew up in, dream and do in. Are you a Palestinian dancer/performer, living in Belgium/Europe with an interest in movement and/or contemporary dance and a curiosity to engage in a project that searches for connection? Please read the info below: P r a c t i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n When: Wednesday August 31 from 2 pm till 4.30 pm or from 6 pm till 8.30 pm Where: Atelier laGeste, Nieuwevaart 118, 9000 Gent More info & subscribing: Registration for this workshop is free and can be done by mail to marieke@lageste.be . After your registration you will receive a message from us with the exact time at which you are expected. You can register until August 22th. After this short audition workshop, some performers will directly be selected for a 2-days intensive workshop in October. After that workshop a selection of dancers will be invited to continue in a small project with children and in a second phase the final performance will be elaborated during 2022 – 2023, with a premiere in Belgium in August 2023 and subsequently a tour throughout Europe and the Middle-East in the months after.
newsitem added on 06.07.'22
Lisaboa Houbrechts #creation2023
24.06.'22
les ballets C de la B/La Geste is putting it's back into a new creation by Lisaboa Houbrechts. Expected in season 2022-2023: Grandpa Puss; or how God disappeared . Lisaboa Houbrechts writes and stages a family epic that spans three generations. She looks back at the times of her grandparents, her parents and her own generation. She goes in search of how the small is interwoven with the large, the intimate with the political, and the past with the present. The main character is a twelve-year-old girl who stands at the end of a long history and dives into the hidden traumas of the past. Lisaboa Houbrechts elaborates the fictional story in images, text, dance and music. Grandpa Puss; or how God disappeared will premiere in early 2023. Lisaboa Houbrechts: “It is a dark tale. It opens wounds and sewers. It is about how children are trapped in a chain of violence. The urge to break that chain can release a tremendous life force and imagination, but it can also implode into a cycle of destruction. The space between theatre and opera is the perfect form to bring this most intimate to a radical expression." More info: https://www.lesballetscdela.be/en/projects/productions/grandpa-puss-or-how-god-disappeared/info/
newsitem added on 24.06.'22
20.05.'22
16.05.2022 – Open letter from Alain Platel following the murder of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. While the whole of Western Europe is justifiably nervous about the war in Ukraine and everything is being done to offer support to the stricken people there in all kinds of ways, the murders continue in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Common practice. It is annoying that the final of the Eurovision Song Contest coincided with the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh in Jerusalem. Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian journalist who reported for more than 25 years on the daily violence in the Occupied Territories for Al Jazeera. She had become the voice of every Palestinian. The cold-blooded murder of Shireen on 11 May by Israeli snipers was apparently not enough in itself. The Israeli security forces also had no problem whatsoever in breaking up the funeral procession of relatives and friends who wanted to accompany Shireen's coffin on foot from the mortuary to the church in Jerusalem. The live footage was shocking:https://www.youtube.com/WHqytR_y0I8 https://twitter.com/Rushdibbc/status/1525114366403743744?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1525114366403743744|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/13/slain-al-jazeera-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh-laid-to-rest Jean Philip De Tender - some broadly smiling director of the extremely apolitical Eurovision Song Contest - was asked in De Zevende Dag (current affairs programme) of 15 May why Russia could be thrown out of the festival and Israel not. He laconically replied that the festival could hardly concern itself with incidents in each of the Member States… Notwithstanding Israel is described bythe Human Rights Watch Organisation in a substantiated dossier of more than 200 pages full of evidence as a blatant apartheid regime. The incidents in Israel and the Occupied Territories are a decades-long series of violent actions and counter-reactions resulting from the military occupation of the Palestinian territories and the aggressive repression of the Palestinian inhabitants. Shireen represents the countless victims that have fallen in Israel and the Occupied Territories in recent years as a result of the ruthless and violent Israeli apartheid regime, without much publicity in the Western media. What's more: in many Western countries, under pressure from Israel, a lot of work is being done to make an organisation such as BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), an international and non-violent movement of mainly academics and committed citizens, which pleads for the boycott of the Israeli apartheid regime, illegal and punishable. I wonder how someone who has seen and heard the images and testimonies of Shireen's murder and the breaking up of the funeral procession can still look at himself in the mirror and claim, without blushing or flinching, that Israel has an absolute monopoly on defending itself ... When will the international community react with action in stead of just the easy indignation? Action to hold Israel responsible and accountable for the journalist's death, action to stop Israel from dictating who can and cannot enter the West Bank, action to stop the occupation and oppression. Alain Platel >> Info about the Belgian Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel:www.bacbi.be www.vrede.be >> More information about the point of view of les ballets about the cultural boycott, can be read via this link .
newsitem added on 20.05.'22
C(H)OEURS 2022 and the reviews
25.04.'22
On March 13th the premiere of C(H)OEURS 2022 took place. We are happy to share some press quotes. The dance is so overwhelming that you even feel the choreography. Platel has made this his trademark for several decades. In this performance, too, he shows how rarely amazing he is at this. ... The result is a majestic performance against violence and suffering that literally makes the power of the masses resound. At times, the dancers and the audience are almost literally blown away by the power with which the 100-strong chorus performs nationalistic classics by Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. Choral passages from Wagner's Tannhäuser and Lohengrin or from Verdi's Aida and La Traviata - among others - can be heard. As soon as Lateef Williams storms onto the stage in his white, lacy jacket, your eyes fill up with tears of recognition, emotion, joy, and all of that at the same time. Wow. ... Threat is never far away. The concern for what is going on in the world shines through in every note and every movement. Every now and then, a tank seems to drive by. Or you hear a gunshot. The voices of Greta Thunberg and Desmond Tutu flare up from the music like flames of hope. Fear does not win. The beauty that is danced, sung and mightily played by the orchestra prevails.(Els Van Steenberghe, Focus Knack , 18.03.2022) C(H)OEURS 2022 is overwhelming because the choir is fully integrated in the theatrical aspect. Horrifying when the choir turns into an indignant and protesting crowd that tries to enter the auditorium. Hopeful when the members of the choir become individuals by stepping forward one by one to say their names.(Piet Van Kampen, RiRo Theatre Reviews , 16.03.2022) Platel turns his chorus, into which the dancers blend, into an army that makes a fist against war. Choeurs 2022 is a production with an exclamation mark that does not shy away from statements. Perhaps that is why, between all the deafening hymns, that last piece of Verdi is so intimidating. Chorus members and dancers, who have now completely merged as groups, sit down. The orchestra plays an aria from La Traviata, but there is no singing, at least not vocally. The players open and close their red-painted hands to the rhythm of the music. Like one big choral song, like one majestic ballet.(Ilse Dewever, Gazet Van Antwerpen , 16.03.2022) Orchestra, choir and dancers succeed in taking the audience on a noisy trip. It feels like you are part of the performance instead of watching it. ... You could call the choir the main character. It acts as an army of liberation fighting against war and dictatorship. But the masses also give the individual an identity. That does not always turn out positively. It is this thin line between good and evil that Platel is constantly exploring.(Koen Van Boxem, De Tijd , 15.03.2022) A performance that goes straight to your heart.(Bert Hartogs, Concertnews , 14.03.2022)
newsitem added on 25.04.'22
16.05.'22
Inclusive Workshop on Saturday Ghent dance companies les ballets C de la B and kabinet k are merging and continuing their work under the new name laGeste. Besides productions and residencies, laGeste is developing an inclusive practice on a permanent basis. From Saturday 30 April to 25 June, we will be holding open workshops for people with visible and invisible disabilities, people with and without (dance) experience, and people with lots of zest and body positivity. Age, body mass index, gender, religion, they are all allowed to play along, there must be diversity. The workshops are in the hands of several dancers and choreographers with an inclusive practice: Tijen Lawton, Lisi Estaras, Kwint Manshoven, Seppe Baeyens and Charlotte Goesaert. PRACTICALWhen :Every Saturday from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm, from 30 April to 25 June.Where : In the studio S18 at Nieuwevaart 118, 9000 Ghent (free of charge). You'd also like to subscribe? Please, send an e-mail to marieke@lesballetscdela.be and she will let you know when it is possible to join. Because of the size of the studio, the capacity is limited. The studio is accessible for wheelchairs.
newsitem added on 16.05.'22
30.05.'22
les ballets C de la B – the playlist
16.04.'21
The history of les ballets C de la B in music? That’s 19 hours of enjoyment. You can find it on Spotify: click this link to listen. Want more of our history? Soon to be discovered at our exhibition:WHO WANTS TO DANCE WITH ME les ballets C de la B & Pierre Muylle 1 – 29 May , Bijlokekaai 1 Ghent > more info, click here . > capacity is limited, we recommend to book your tickets in advance.
newsitem added on 16.04.'21
Want to be invited to our studio?
16.05.'22
We will gladly keep you in the loop about open rehearsals or presentations. Fill in your e-mail address here and you'll be added to the mailinglist which we only use to announce these open studio moments.
newsitem added on 16.05.'22
01.02.'22
Les ballets C de la B wants to invest in the next generation by taking in residents who will get the opportunity to be coached in their work by director Alain Platel and Hildegard Devuyst, Platel’s dramaturg for more than 20 years. The basic idea are one-month-residencies in one of the studios at les ballets. There are no prefixed artistic conditions, no exclusives when it comes to form or movement language. Young artists who think their work would benefit from a residency, can apply by mailing to Hildegard De Vuyst. hildegard@lesballetscdela.be Click here for an overview of the past residencies.
newsitem added on 01.02.'22
22.11.'19
les ballets C de la B supports HART BOVEN HARD Hart Boven Hard is a citizens’ initiative that unites individuals and organisations concerned about the planned policies of the Flemish and federal governments. Ranging from students and pensioners to social and cultural organisations, they all aim for a society that opts for ‘heart before hard’. The initiative was born in Flanders and is gradually expanding into French-speaking Belgium too. The francophone counterpart goes by the name of Tout Autre Chose. More info: www.hartbovenhard.be
newsitem added on 22.11.'19