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Kunstenfestivaldesarts Diary 2010Dateline: 9th May, 20107th May 2010 For the next three weeks, performing arts venues across Brussels will be abuzz with activity as actors, directors, dancers, choreographers, artists, writers and filmmakers from nineteen different countries will be congregating for the most diverse and eclectic event on the Belgian performing arts calendar. From 7th until 29th May 2010 we will be spoilt with a choice of 33 projects (21 of them co-produced by KDFA itself) showing in 22 venues and site-specific locations around the city. This evening, the annual KFDA kicks off by welcoming back some old festival friends and some newcomers. The internationally-acclaimed, UK-based performance group Forced Entertainment will première a brand new show, The Thrill of it All, in the Kaaitheater. At the same time the Koninklijke Vlaams Schouwburg's main house (KVS-Bol) will be presenting Jorge León's film Vous Etes Servis, the first part of a trilogy of events with performances, talks and installations investigating contemporary domestic servitude. In the studio space (KVS-Box), a 'drama essay' about where fiction and reality meet in a war-torn city will be opening, directed by Tomi Janezic from Belgrade. Meanwhile, at the Francophone Théâtre National, Flemish actress Carly Wijs is making her directorial debut at the festival with an adaptation of the banned Albanian novel A Moonlit Night by Ismail Kadare. At the converted distillery Wiels, a retrospective of fifty years of video performance entitled Do/Redo/Undo opens this evening and will be showing for the rest of the month. At 11pm, Dutch director Lotte van de Berg will be mobilising people in one of the two site-specific events she will be staging for KFDA 2010. Tomorrow night, an artist known as the Human Brush will be painting with his own body. It's a microcosm of the 21st century world; and that's just the hors d'oeuvre. Brussels is home to many communities and the festival was initially conceived as an opportunity for dialogue between the Flemish and French-speaking Walloons who co-exist in the city. Over the last fifteen years it has grown and extended its boundaries to create a global community of like-minded people, arts professionals and audiences, concerned about the critical issues that beset our planet and the potential for new artistic languages that sponsor alternative and imaginative ways of thinking about our present impasse. While there is no formal choice of annual theme, patterns emerge naturally as the work of artists across the globe reflect on our contemporary dilemmas. This year the city itself seems to be centre stage. Belgian dirctor Inne Goris' Muur presents a performance installation on the waste land beyond the impressive colonial warehouse Tour & Taxis. The Italian collective ZimmerFrei has made an urban video portrait of the Lakensestraat in central Brussels, where halal take-aways, Chinese restaurants and street walkers rub shoulders with art galleries and genteel renovations. Belgian video director Sarah Vanagt has taken the 'micro-histories' of her neighbours on the Boulevard d'Ypes as her subject. And the Austrian site-specific company Theater im Bahnhof will be staging Death of a Cardholder beside a cash dispenser in City 2 shopping centre. Surtitres accompany every show in Dutch and/or French; there are shows in English (Forced Entertainment, Lone Twin Theatre, Theater im Bahnhof, for example) and many dance and performance events that require no particular language skills. There is, in fact, something for everyone (even a piece in Farsi). There are performances on the streets, in a bus, in a shopping centre, many of Brussels' purpose-build theatres as well as post-industrial buildings transformed for cultural projects. The kunstenfestival fulfils an essential function at the heart of Europe in fostering debate in artistic circles. By bringing together performing arts professionals from such a variety of cultures and backgrounds, from within the EU and beyond its frontiers, it facilitates artistic dialogue and opens the boundaries we create, wittingly or unwittingly, from a deeply-rooted need for security. This year's festival highlights those walls, personal, cultural and geographical, our fragile comfort zones, our ambivalent social attitudes towards the new, the other, the foreign, who we include and who we exclude. Moreover, as part of a circuit of festivals, KFDA offers the opportunity for extended touring and exposure to new audiences and further intercultural dialogues. Young professionals are well-served by NXTSTP, a funding initiative which aims to profile the work of performing artists on the brink of a breakthrough. Rodrigo Garcia's Versus and C'Est Comme Ça et Me Faites Pas Chier are shows to watch out for. A Madrid-based Argentinian, Garcia has something of an enfant terrible status across Europe, justly deserved too. His work is often a smorgasbord of tantalisingly provocative images and ranting characters. Yet another reputed enfant terrible, the multi-talented Christoph Schlingensief from Berlin, wants to restore opera's social functions and is building an opera house in Burkino Faso where 20 African dancers and musicians created a version of Luigi Nono's Intolleranze 1960, an opera about intolerance and racism reflecting a socially-engaged vision of art. Via Intolleranza will provoke controversy in its African context. Likewise, South African dancer Boyzie Cekwana will be investigating ways in which racial identities are imposed on the body. And, Lia Rodrigues' latest choreography (Porcoroca) emerged from the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. She will also give two workshops: Dancing in the Favelas: Art and Social Integration and Dancing and Living Together. Vera Mantero's latest dance piece, We are Going to Miss Everything We Don't Need, deals with our destructive and compulsive habits of consumption and the Ioannis Mandafounis/Fabrice Mazliah team that wowed audiences last year with their powerful brand of contact improvisation are back with a choreography presenting the body as a tabula rasa without memory, purpose or function. Amir Reza Hoohestani (Tehran), Toshiki Okada (Japan), Kornel Mundruczo (Budapest) and Enrique Diaz (Rio de Janeiro) bring views on their own societies to Brussels, while Claude Schmitz directs his latest text (Mary Mother of Frankenstein) and Daniel Veronese presents a startling new perspective on the timeless classic, Ibsen's A Doll's House. There's something for everyone, including the children (see the kamishibai). The centre of the this year's festival will be KVS, where food and drink is dispensed to avid festival-goers and the latest updates can be found. The full programme can be found on www.kfda.be and reviews will be appearing daily. If you are in Brussels, come along, enjoy, be engaged and, at times, enthralled. If you are in England, get on Eurostar NOW! Brussels is at the heart of Europe and it's all happening here. Jackie Fletcher
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