Ballrooms

Ballrooms is Andrew Graham's new project at laGeste in autumn 2023. It uses the framework of a ball to kill a few birds with one stone. It focuses on the development of new partner dances and reimagines ballroom dancing with its classic gender patterns. And it uses the achievements of ballroom culture from New York in the 1970s: the safe haven for a marginalised community perfecting its own codes and dance styles to great virtuosity.

At the same time, Ballrooms expresses the ambition, through performance, to create a meeting place in the city for people whose paths would not immediately cross without Ballrooms: dancers with disabilities, the queer community, refugees, members of the laGeste choir (from last summer's particularly successful Mein Gent) and participants in laGeste's inclusive workshops.

By taking the framework of the ball as a formal starting point, Graham creates space to maintain a certain fluidity in the division of roles between performer and spectator, between professional and amateur, between rehearsal, improvisation and demonstration. The sharp distinction between these roles in a classical theatre setting gives way to a non-hierarchical space that invites participation without in turn becoming coercive. The large laGeste Studio at Bijlokekaai is the perfect place for this.

The scenography is in the hands of Vera Martynov, Russian theatre maker in exile in Marseille. Musically, various collaborations will be entered: with a number of DJs, but also with the laGeste choir that breaks into each performance with surprising harmonies. Both audience and performers can update their looks using costumes and props from the stock of les ballets C de la B (Gardenia, etc.).

The performance consists of several well-defined parts: live music, catwalk, singing together, guided and framed dance improvisation, demonstration of the newly developed partner dances. During preparation and rehearsals, Andrew Graham is assisted by varying artists: the aforementioned Vera Martynov, British crip dancer Dan Daw and Belgian formation Gilles Polet and Arno Ferrera (of the acclaimed circus duo Cuir) and Tijen Lawton.

Direction, however, is tightly in the hands of Andrew Graham, a central figure in laGeste's work as a choreographer. His company l'Autre Maison, based in Marseille, inspired laGeste to set up an inclusive operation in Ghent. After weekly workshops since April 2021, the time has come to include that necessary preparatory work in the heart of the operation: the creation of new productions.
Ballrooms is a first step to that end.