an image of a journey
a drawing that shows what it’s like to be leaving
a performance that’s like a graphic novel
without words
but with clear dialogues and clever thoughts
like a song
about leaving behind, saying goodbye, going, hoping,
about daring, dreaming, doubting,
travelling
Two men are on a journey. Although it is important, they don’t dare to tell why they have left. They are not entirely sure where they are heading. It is still a question whether they will even arrive there. Coincidence brought them together, causing a close friendship.
While travelling, people tend to collect pictures, keepsakes, pebbles or shells, as if they are trying to compensate for a journey’s fleetingness.
While travelling, people tend to rely on one another.
They also experience time in a different way: they have the opportunity to do nothing at all and to like it. To watch the starts and the mountains. To listen to the sounds of the sea. To sit and watch. Just like that.
Migration as its source of inspiration.
Being on the road, having left home, having not yet arrived as its focus.
A dance performance about friendship across many borders, for anyone aged six and over.
Joke Laureyns and Kwint Manshoven (kabinet k) asked Theater Stap’s Jason Van Laere to collaborate with them on a swallow song.
zwaluw zang trailer from Jan Bosteels on Vimeo.
timeline
zwaluwzang / a swallow song had its firstnight at the Krokusfestival 2013 in Hasselt (B).
credits
choreography: Joke Laureyns
dance: Kwint Manshoven and Jason Van Laere
scenography and technical support: Kris Van Oudenhove
dramaturgy: Gerhard Verfaillie
Theater Stap & Krokusfestival Hasselt
press
Wales Arts Review 2015
The relationship between the two dancers on stage was truthful, tender and dynamic. Woven into the journey narrative was an honest display of friendship. (…) Zwaluwzang / a swallow song is a skillful, tender and honest work. See it if you can. (Glenys Evans)
De Bond 2013
Elegant movements, upward, rolling on the floor, are dancing about friendship, attachment, about longing. Dancing about Fernweh, about being free as a bird, as a swallow. As always, choreographer Joke Laureyns and her dancers succeed in depicting big emotions using subtle dance language. A mixture of inner tragedy and joy of life, a mild kind of melancholy that touches you and makes you smile. The kind that takes you along. (Tuur Devens)