Battre le Fer/Battre le Noir, Jens van Daele

In collaboration with Jens van Daele, I was asked to create visuals for the backdrop of his theater dance performance ‘Battre le Fer / Battre le Noir,’ an energetic, theatrical dance concert with live music.

“A powerful, unpolished duet.” (Theaterkrant)

“Battre is about the eternal battle. Blindly executing the motto ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. This creation is a dance duel at the cutting edge. The two dancers don’t let go of each other for an inch. It’s the clash of iron against iron. Two equal forces that bite into each other. A performance that ends in a draw, as it were. In the end, there are only losers to behold.” – Jens van Daele

I decided to work with shadows that would move impressively, bold and slow, over the backdrop. These shadows of the two dancers, in relation to each other, act as ghosts of themselves, either opposing or confirming what is happening on stage.