Directed by Wim Vandekeybus
Music by David Eugene Edwards
Text by Peter Verhelst & Ultima Vez
Produced by Ultima Vez and KVS/de bottelarij, Brussels
Directed by Wim Vandekeybus, Blush mixes confrontational, intensely physical dance, theatre, film, text and music in an explosion of visual imagery and sound. Love in all its states – lust, temptation, exhilaration, and shame - is the subject of Blush as the performers transform into wild animals, lost Eurydices and raging furies. It is Wim’s fourteenth production for Ultima Vez, featuring an international cast of 10 performers, including Vandekeybus himself.
A rock soundtrack, composed by American singer & songwriter
David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower and Woven
Hand, forms the background to an avalanche of images.
In London, Truro and Glasgow Edward’s Denver based
4-piece band performs live with Ultima Vez.
“It is the pillar of ‘Blush’ with
its percussive hammering, cutting and ethereal guitars,
heavy, nervous, dreamy ambience. Sometimes Latin, sometimes
Voodoo, it doesn’t lose any of its rock essence or
its personality.”
- Le Soir
Film sequences featuring the cast, directed by Vandekeybus, are projected in large scale, and introduce one of the most inventive and breathtaking moments of interaction between film and live performance. Diving from the stage into the screen, dancers seamlessly reappear on film, transformed into water nymphs in an underwater netherworld.
Vandekeybus’ work seems to push dancers and technology beyond their limits in a powerful osmosis of live action, film and music. Blush seethes with energy, danger, emotion and sensuality.
“A cross between Trisha Brown and John Woo.
Lively and strong, sensual and explosive, wild and elegant.”
- Le Soir
“The performers go to extremes of emotion and
physical strength, giving the show a powerful and disturbing
energy.”
- Wall Street Journal Europe
“One knows straightaway that one is in a ‘Vandekeybus’,
with the violence and the poetry, the drive and the tenderness,
delivered in a visual and bodily shock.”
– La Libre Belgique