Falk Richter & Anouk Van Dijk / Schaubühne Berlin
At the age of 15, giving up her dream of being an astronomer, Anouk van Dijk decided to become a dancer and entered the Dans Academie of Rotterdam. At the end of her studies, she worked with the Rotterdam Dance Group ballet and the Pretty Ugly Dance company. Very quickly, she created her first choreographies, but concurrently continued her career as an performer. It was not until 1998 that she decided to devote herself to her own shows and to teaching her own personal technique, the "counter-technique". Based on the dancer's freedom, his velocity, rapidity and virtuosity, she asks the performer to execute for each movement he makes on the stage, an opposite movement. A rule generating an "irregular", intriguing and generous choreography, which gives all its singularity to this international artist's work. In 2000, she co-signed with Falk Richter the staging of Nothing Hurts. She is coming to the Festival d'Avignon for the first time to present Trust, the second opus of her collaboration with Falk Richter, performed with dancers from her company, anoukvandijk dc, and actors from the Schaubühne of Berlin.
Author and director associated with the Schaubühne of Berlin, Falk Richter pursues an original approach on the European theatre landscape. Without neglecting the classic repertory, he favours contemporary authors who cast a scathing look at our society like Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp, Jon Fosse and Lars Nóren. A critical vein he also mines by himself, as Falk Richter is one of the rare German directors today to stage his own dramatic works. Plays in which he engages in an uncompromising analysis of the liberal system, carrying us into the deepest part of our contradictions, our desires and our fears. Presented at the 2008 Festival d'Avignon with The System directed by Stanislas Nordey, his political theatre very directly questions the spectator to speak to him about today's world with fearsome lucidity, efficiency and humour.
JFP, April 2010