Trouble

Live art is by nature a territory where dance flirts with the visual arts. The artists mentioned here, Steven Cohen and Janez Jansa/Maska, work on those fringes. Their work was presented at the festival Trouble which, each year in the Halles of Schaerbeek in Brussels, shakes the establishment and allows interaction with artists from the visual arts, like Myriam Laplante. Here are our troubles with the works we saw.

Cohen Cohen Cohen – Trouble trouble trouble

The strongest asset of a festival is also it’s flaw: too much! “What? You missed another performance!?” A flaw that echoes the massive offering (cultural or other) in our peaceful western societies. But the merit of a festival, notwithstanding the proper use of the festival in question, is that one can also stop the internal clock and let oneself be submerged in the mental fluctuation it causes. Remain hypnotised. Follow the artist with the long eyelashes – Steven Cohen – into his dressing room, take off his make-up to discover what he looks like without it and accompany him home, to South Africa. Perched high on his stilts (30 cm high heels) he walks slowly and stumbles often, just like the civilization he seems to target ...