Lisa Vereertbrugghen - DISQUIET

In the frame of the Creative Crossroad activity, Lisa Vereertbrugghen was selected by STUK to receive a 2 years structural support by the LLB network to work on her latest production "Disquiet":

As in her previous works Softcore, a hardcore encounter and Camouflaging Kelly, Lisa Vereertbrugghen once again explores the possibilities of hardcore dance styles. In DISQUIET her focus is on disruption and dystopia as inherent elements of hardcore subgenres. All these genres are marked by an intensified bass and drum, a minimum speed of 160 BPM and a tendency for disruption of the flow. Focussing on these sonic ruptures, pauses and bursts, DISQUIET explores how they can inform and stimulate the body. Dancing hardcore is presented as a break from structure, looking for a disquieted elsewhere.

Credits

Concept/Choreography/Performance
Lisa Vereertbrugghen
Sound
Michael Langeder
Lights
Vera Martins
Artistic Advice
Madison Bycroft
Construction of Scenography
Ian Gyselinck and Simon van Parys
Photo
Maud Samaha

"DISQUIET is a continuation of my research on hardcoretechno bodypolitics. By looking closely at and experiencing hardcore techno dances, I investigate what it means to be hardcore and what its political potential is. Politics refers to bodypolitics: how an embodied experience is marked by power relations. After gabber in the pieces Softcore and Camouflaging Kelly, my vocabulary is extended with jungle, drum-'n'-bass and other techno variants that call themselves hardcore. One of the elements shared by all these subgenres (apart from their speed) is the rupture of flow, the disturbance of regularity with breakbeats, pauses and complex rhythms. I see it as an opportunity to embrace my own incoherence. With the months of isolation in my body, I want to focus more on the interaction between all those actors: sound, my body, bodies of fellow players (aka the audience) and the space in between."

Lisa Vereertbrugghen is a choreographer, performer, teacher, dramaturg and researcher based in Brussels (BE). Since 2014 she has been researching hardcore techno dance styles trough various formats: performances, lecture-performances, performance-installations and publications. As a teacher she works with amateurs and professionals on empowerment, physical awareness, sonic release techniques.

“ I look at sound as an abstract material that can activate human bodies and remind people they actually have a body and that they share a space together.
Since 2014 I have been researching hardcore techno trough music theory, choreography and
theorists like Jack Halberstam, Fred Moten, Kodwo Eshun and Donna Haraway, but also through the tracks themselves and my love for them.”

Following the pieces ‘Camouflaging Kelly (2014)’ and ‘SOFTCORE - a hardcore encounter’ (2018), Lisa Vereertbrugghen will continue her physical and theoretical research on hardcore techno dances. While her first pieces zoomed in on the Dutch subgenre of gabber, she now includes other hardcore dance styles - such as UK jungle, drum-‘n-bass and other contemporary hardcore varieties - in an attempt to find and activate their common ground.
One element that connects these underground substyles is the disruption of the flow with pauses, breakbeats and complex intermittent rhythms. In her upcoming creation ‘DISQUIET - sensational aesthetics of a technokin’ (première December 2020), dancing hardcore is considered a continuous breaking down of rules and regularity. Hardcore is approached as a kind of physical anarchy that wildly embraces noise and irregularity.