Dance ambassadors Celine & Jalda

"Very emotional and at the same time full of hope"

Interview with Guy & Wannes from De Dansers on the play “Shake Shake Shake”

On Sunday, 13.09 we, dance ambassadors Celine and Jalda, were in the play Shake Shake Shake by the Dutch group De Dansers at Theater Strahl. The special thing about the performance is that the artists can not only dance impressively, but are also musically versatile.

Throughout the performance, the music is played live, but this does not stop people on stage from running around or performing complicated dance steps. The piece begins above all as an energetic concert that wakes us up in the audience and fascinates us. Then it develops more and more into a dance piece and becomes calmer. I notice how different it feels to watch the more dance-heavy scenes. During these scenes, I think more about what the movements mean to me. It's about the feeling of never being enough, being alone and togetherness, but above all: to get rid of it. The people on stage no longer want to be stuck and shake everything away.

After the performance, we have the opportunity to conduct an interview with two of the performers. We sat down on stage with Wannes De Porre (dancer) and Guy Corneille, who is responsible for the concept together with Josephine van Rheenen. We conducted the interview in English and then translated it. We asked ourselves the following questions:

For me, it's the first time I've seen a performance where dance and music are so mixed. How would you define a dance concert?

Guy: For me, a dance concert is a performance in which music and dance are equally important and say something together. In a dance concert, people on stage are not musicians inside or dancers inside, but function together as a group. We develop our pieces on the basis of themes such as shaking, which are inspiring both physically and musically. Because you can make music that comes out of the body and you can dance out of your musical sense. That is the most important thing. So dancers automatically start to become musicians inside and differentheraum.

Wannes: Personally, I find the concept very great, as I have learned to express myself through dance in my training, but by referring to music I can deepen this. It enriches the dance to become more aware of rhythm and tonality. That's fun.

Which genre would you fit into? Which dance or music styles inspire you?

Wannes: I am trained as a modern dancer, but over time I got to know many different styles and learned new things through other dancers.

Guy: For us as a group, it makes little sense to classify ourselves in a genre. Each of us brings something of our own that we combine. But for a newer piece of ours, for example, we did some workshops with a flamenco choreographer to get new impetus. We are super interested in that. And that does not mean that we will take over all the elements of this workshop. But we met people who showed us their work and really inspired us. We got impressions of how to find new forms of expression with the body and through music, and got to know different ways of communication between music and dance or even between the dancers through their musicality.

Is there anyone who writes the lyrics in your pieces, or does it come from improvisations in the group?

Guy: We have no one to write texts for us outside the group, but create everything ourselves. For the texts we work rather little with improvisation and develop them individually: In this piece, for example, Wannes wrote the song ‘Lights Out’, Ruben wrote his own poem and I also sing my own lyrics. Sometimes we also take texts from each other and we help each other.

You performed this piece for the first time seven years ago and stopped playing it. Why did you decide to play this piece again?

Guy: For one thing, it turned out because we had no touring performance for adults this season. So we found this to be an opportunity to revisit something old. We had never done that before. We chose this piece because with the same cast we developed another piece called ‘Hush’ and found it exciting to revisit our first piece and bring in what we had learned from the second process together.

Did you change anything or did everything stay the same?

Guy: We changed a lot and then reversed everything. (laughs)

Wannes: We worked with someone from outside who worked on some scenes and eventually a pretty different piece was created. We took it all out again, but some of it remained, and that gave the old piece a new power and brought it back to life.

Guy: In addition, we were in our 20s when we did the piece. And now we're all in our 30s. We were a little nervous about how we would do that. It's also interesting to get older and then come back to a performance. You make a lot of pieces for younger people. Is there anything you would like to give us in particular?

Guy: Is there a message that you, as a young person, take away from what you have seen?

Dance Ambassador Jalda: Yes, I mainly take the part about letting go, because that's something I often have trouble with myself. I keep in mind things that are not important and that I actually want to get rid of. And I think that's something that a lot of young people have a problem with saying to themselves: "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter."

Guy: The piece is also a lot about the fact that sometimes you have to shake off the things you have internalized in order to find out whether they fit you or not. This is especially important for younger people.

Wannes: Sometimes I use this piece to do just that, to just shake everything off. I mean, we shouldn't (laughs). It's like a remedy for the difficult thing I have in my life.

Guy: Something else I like about the piece: It's not about everyone being able to sing and dance well. You can contribute even if you're not very good at it. You can do it anyway. I would also like to say that the thought that everything should immediately be super beautiful and perfect for me contradicts art.

A little later we both talk about the evening. We are inspired by the many original dance elements and especially by the duets that show how to be in a constant change in relationships with others, between wearing and being worn, giving away and recording. We agree that the piece is very emotional and at the same time full of hope and energy. It's a pity that it was performed for the last time, but we are looking forward to the next production of De Dansers!