Double Bill: My Body is a Work in Progress & Comme un Symbole

This Body is a Work in Progress
In this physical performance, Jiaxin Chen explores what her body is telling her when she really listens. What does it say about how she should be and how she wants to be? To what extent does she determine how people see her? Is it possible to keep adapting to the people around you? And how do you do that, when different cultures have different expectations of you? Lin An Phoa guides Jiaxin's quest with spoken word.

About Jiaxin Chen
Jiaxin Chen is a dancer/maker, dramatist and historian. Her work is personal and vulnerable, but always has a strong social foundation. She graduated from the Dancer | Creative Contemporary program and focused on floorwork and movement theater. Jiaxin made her debut as a maker at the Café Theater Festival 2022 and last year was Maker in Huis at Productiehuis Nowhere and resident at Het Huis Utrecht. She will again be a maker at the Café Theater Festival 2023 with the performance YOU ARE YOUR BODY.

About Lin An Phoa
Lin An Phoa is a spoken word artist, writer, linguist and teacher of Dutch for people of all home languages. In her lyrics, she questions her own position as a woman of East Asian background and critically examines themes of femininity, social engineering and how we deal with the expectations and systems we are part of. Lin An is involved in spoken word platform Poetry Circle and is in the development process of Winter Garden.

In March 2022, This Body is a Work in Progress (premiered) at the Cafe Theater Festival in Utrecht and Arnhem. A performance about the struggle of having a colored body that identifies as a woman.

Photographers: Jan Turkenburg, Maurice Gemmeke
Text & performance: Lin An Phoa
Choreography & performance: Jiaxin Chen
Concept: Jiaxin Chen
Dramaturgy: Emma Berentsen and Merel Heering
With thanks to: Municipality of Utrecht, Janivo Foundation, Café Theater Festival

Comme un symbole - Alexandre Fandard / Cie Al-Fa

Every now and then you come across those all-rounders who blow your mind. Have we got one for you now...The French Alexandre Fandard is active as a visual artist, choreographer and has a self-taught background in dance with roots in hip-hop and krump. At the crossroads of all this, he has been making his own performances for a few years now with which he is beginning to attract international attention.

With the unsettling Comme un symbole, Fandard denounces the one-sided image that exists about young people from the Parisian banlieu, or any major suburb in Europe, if you will. In an intense solo with great attention to detail, framing and light, the dancer/choreographer portrays the cliché images that exist about mostly young men living in the so-called frayed edges of the city: barbarians, scum, potential terrorist or eternal stranger. Hated, loved, sacrificed or rotated. All archetypes pass by in a fluid motion. Comme un symbole is an intense, political solo that asks you to look at the other side of these clichéd images. So go see it.

Production/Support
Le Centquatre-Paris | L'Étoile du nord, scene conventionnée | L'Espace 1789, scene conventionnée | CDCN Les Hivernales | Théâtre de Vanves - scene conventionnée | La Briqueterie - CDCN | Le 783 / Cie 29x27 | Festival Hip Opsession - Pick Up production | Festival 30/30 | Festival Fabbrica Europa | Karukera Ballet | La Commanderie-SQY | Collectif 12