Deseo
In 2008 anoukvandijk dc's SHOT won the prize for best performance at the touring summer festival De Parade. In 2009 she had another hit with Deseo. Due to its succes Deseo will be shown again at the Parade in the summer of 2010, this time in all four cities.
Deseo is about being interested, searching, chasing, waiting, dreaming, and longing, endless longing. In over 30 short scenes the dancers rage past you in Deseo, energetically trying to achieve the things still missing from their lives. Like in real life, a lot of their pursuits remain hidden from view in Deseo, but at unexpected moments their secret desires will suddenly reveal themselves. Deseo combines some spectacularly skillful dancing with poignant and funny drama.
press
Anoukvandijk dc is developing into an amazing Parade showpiece
The choreographer […] has choreographed something small yet grand for the Parade festival. You are right on top of the excellent dancers and hear every groan, sigh or laugh. Deseo means ‘I wish’ in Spanish. This wish has something to do with liberation – which is exactly the feeling you have on leaving the tent.
Sander Hiskemuller Trouw 4 August 2009
A wonderfully detailed contrast
The scenes alternate at top speed. And because the dancers can walk around the wall and bike along it with their feet sticking over the top, now and then you get passers-by and flapping clothing in ‘your’ performance. There’s something slapstick about it, but mostly it is extremely human and sincere, and funny and moving.
Mirjam van der Linden, De Volkskrant, 4 August 2009
Van Dijk’s confused fantasies
Deseo (Spanish for ‘I wish’) is about secret desires and fantasies about what the three women and two men would really like to be or to do. It is a performance that races past the audience, conjuring up a torrent of associations. Anyone seeing the performance more than once will discover that there is more than one side to the dancers as well.
Francine van der Wiel, NRC Handelsblad, 5 August 2009
Yearning virtuosity
Deseo has many powerful moments. The duet by Philipp Fricke and Katja Shushakova is truly beautiful. Whereas at some points Shushakova stands out against the other female dancers as an inexperienced girl, in this scene she succeeds in grabbing all the attention. The opening scene, too, in which all the dancers throw themselves against the wall in an unremitting litany of human physical shapes, is overwhelming. The scenery is fantastic: a wall that divides the audience in two halves, so that the spectators are always dying to know what’s happening behind the wall. […] Deseo is a short, powerful performance and well worth going to see.
Annelies Omvlee, TheaterCentraal.nl, 5 August 2009
credits
Concept / choreography Anouk van Dijk
Created for and by Peter Cseri, Birgit Gunzl, Philipp Fricke, Nina Wollny and Yi-chun Liu