The Sea Within

Lisbeth Gruwez, famous for her highly physical stagings, turns her attention towards the big picture with “The Sea Within”. In an artistic signature style characteristic of the Belgian choreographer, which is clear and intense at once, she develops a contemporary ritual here in which the “we” seems to embrace the “I”. Lisbeth Gruwez initially zooms in on each of the ten exceptional dancers as individual personalities, yet proceeds to dissolve them into an impressive pulsating landscape in the course of seventy intensive minutes. So, the performers conquer the room, the bodies become one undulant sculpture, and magical images of connection and cohesion emerge. In an interview titled “Reinventing the feminine” which Lisbeth Gruwez gave during “Tanz im August” (“Dance in August”), conducted by journalist Thomas Hahn, she talks about the challenge transforming somatic body techniques like T’ai Chi into an artistic language: “T’ai Chi is spiritual, it is simple and it brings you in tune with the environment and yourself: the sea within!“
Lisbeth Gruwez, formerly performing with Jan Fabre and others, founded her company Voetvolk, “rank and file” or “foot soldiers” in English, together with composer and musician Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, more than twelve years ago. Together with Elko Blijwert and Bjorn Eriksson, he is responsible for the electrifying sounds in “The Sea Within”, which premiered in May 2018 and has been touring extensively since.

Duration: 70 min.

What follows is a poetically masterful achievement both in dance and choreography, a work that formidably expresses individuality and collectiveness in all their contradictory senses so that one gets the sense, at the piece’s end, of having read a whole book about it. Helmut Ploebst, “Der Standard”, July 30, 2019