CUTLASS SPRING
In 2005, Canadian Dana Michel completed her dance studies in her late twenties. A surprising career change, because before that she combined a marketing job with competition sports (running and football). Equally special is the place that she occupies as a choreographer and performer. 'Michel is inimitable and unique. Rather than say she dances, we can say that she dares. She dares to break through conventions and to question our conceptual frameworks. And she does that from a position she is well aware of: ‘she is an artist, she is a woman and she is black’, wrote the Belgische Campo.
Wed 10 July 19:00
Thu 11 July 20.30
Theater Bellevue
Dutch premiere
Co-production
60 minutes
No intermission
€20
Julidans Young €12.50
Inimitable Canadian talent recovers her lost sexuality.
Michel quickly created a craze. First in her home base in Montreal, after that Europe fell for her. In 2014 she received the ImPulsTanz Award for 'extraordinary artistic achievements' from the prestigious Viennese festival of the same name. The New York Times called her one of the most extraordinary female artists of the year. Her work can be seen at the leading European and American festivals. In 2017 she received the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for her innovative approach. Julidans has been following this Canadian talent for a while now and is co-producing her new solo performance CUTLASS SPRING.
CUTLASS SPRING begins when Michel noticed that the curiosity she had for sex as a child and a teenager had slowly faded in her adult life. When and how that happened, she doesn't know either. That was the starting point of her new dance solo, where she wants to give herself sex education again.
In earlier works, Michel analysed the suppression of cultural identity. Now she makes the connection between the experience of sexuality and all the ways in which it is suppressed from outside (and from within). She travels to places from her childhood and looks at places where sexuality thrives, such as at Jamaican dancehall parties or Berlin nightclubs. In CUTLASS SPRING Michel uses her usual courage and originality in search of her sexual self and how it affects her as a person, dancer, mother and lover.
