Jan Fabre
It is said he never sleeps. A workaholic, Jan Fabre gets involved on all fronts. A visual artist, he is the author of a protean body of work composed of drawings, sculptures, photos and performances that have invested a host of venues, even the Louvres, which devoted a major exhibition to him in 2008, and the Venice Biennial, to which he is invited this summer. As for the stage, his shows, danced and acted with music and texts, have been one of the most radical sources of the renewal of contemporary theatre for the last 30 years. Jan Fabre works on the text, the body and its excesses, appearances and their disturbances, moods and their palpitations, proposing a plastic of saturation that shocks and fascinates. The Festival d'Avignon has welcomed the Flemish artist several times. In 1988, for Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas. In 2000, for My Movements Are Alone Like Street Dogs, then in 2001 with I Am Blood, a medieval fairy-tale premiered at the Cour d'honneur and The Angel of Death in 2004, danced and acted by his muse, Ivana Jozic. We remember, in 2005, the Festival for which he was the associate artist with, among others, History of Tears and his two monologues The King of Plagiarism and The Emperor of Perdition. After the much-noticed performance of the solo Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day, he returns with Orgy of Tolerance, which will be adapted for an outdoor performance in a new version for the festivals of Avignon and Dubrovnik.
ADB, April 2009