Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Jan Martens
<THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER 2.0> is a reinterpretation of the previous work, restaged with a new generation of dancers. The work calls fundamental questions to the stage, such as when a work becomes a canon, how dance heritage should be passed on, what role recreating an existing piece can play to bring sustainability to the performing arts, and how original creators and performers can share their experiences and values with the next generation. The performance encourages the audience to go beyond the passive act of watching and deeply reflect on these issues. Jan Martens emphasizes that the experiences and perspectives of the artistic team who premiered the work in 2014 should be actively reflected in this new work, and that their contributions should be recognized. This goes beyond a simple re-staging—it becomes an exploration of how dance heritage is passed on. Elements such as the premiere performance's duration, repetitive structure, and jumps were reexamined and adjusted with the new cast, while the knowledge and experience accumulated by the original cast served as valuable assets for the new generation. <THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER 2.0> expands the meaning of sustainability and co-creation within a performance, establishing itself as an important milestone among works focused on exhaustion and repetition.
SynopsisOne of Jan Martens' representative work, <THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER>, defines dancers as 'pure performers striving for perfection', examining the essence of the performer through intensely demanding choreography. In the work, dancers are defined as pure artists pursuing perfection. Subjected to a complex, mathematical, repetitive and exhausting choreography executed in forced uniformity, the eight dancers ultimately slip up. And then the masks of the “performers” fall, revealing the bare faces of “human” beings. When it premiered in 2014, <THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER>, with its radical form, physical intensity, and collective execution, provided an opportunity to re-examine perspectives on dancers, choreographers, audiences, and even cultural policy at the time. Ten years later, these questions are still relevant within contemporary social and political contexts.
Born in Belgium in 1984, Jan Martens studied at Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg, Netherlands, and graduated from the dance department of Artesis Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp in 2006. Since 2010 he has been making his own choreographic work which, over the years, has been performed with increasing regularity before a national and international audience. Jan Martens holds the belief that each body tells a story in its own unique way. Rather than creating a new movement language of his own, he reconstructs existing idioms in various contexts to draw out new meanings. Through this, he tries to reconfigure the relation between audience and artist on stage. His notable works include <I CAN RIDE A HORSE WHILST JUGGLING SO MARRY ME (2010)>, portraying young women in the age of social media; two duet pieces, <A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION (2011)> and <SWEAT BABY SWEAT (2011)>; <BIS (2012)>, created with performers with non-typical bodies; <LA BÊTE (2013)>; and <VICTOR (2013)>. In 2014, he made a major impact with the group performance <THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER>, which revealed the identity of dancers and the limits of the human body. He has continued to produce experimental works with artistic excellence including <ODE TO THE ATTEMPT (2014)>, <THE COMMON PEOPLE (2016)>, and <RULE OF THREE (2017)>. In recognition of his artistic achievement, Jan Martens was awarded the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Prize in 2013 and the Charlotte Köhler Prize in 2015. He collaborates with prestigious companies and institutions including Ballet de Lorraine, Opera National de Lyon, Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), and Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance(Carte Blanche ). He also actively mentors young artists. Since 2022, he has been working as co-artistic director of the Belgian contemporary dance company GRIP, while also serving as an associate artist at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
This content is coming soon.