Is there a way out of here?

Alexander Vantournhout and Bauke Lievens met for the first time in 2013 – he a mover and circo-/choreographer, she a dramaturg and researcher. An inspiring and sometimes stormy artistic dialogue was born, which in 2016 was expanded to a menage-à-trois with the arrival of circus artist Raphaël Billet. As a creative duo, Alexander and Bauke account for ANECKXANDER (2015) and Raphaël (2017), two performances that test the boundaries of circus as an artistic language, genre and tradition. Together they form a diptych, united by their continuing research into the physical relationship of the artist to an object and to the gaze of the other. ‘Is there a way out of here?’ tries to trace the path of that research in retrospect. Three different voices enter into dialogue with the UK journalist and writer John Ellingsworth. They look back on a shared quest, touching on lonely work in Norwegian bathrooms, the reality of fiction, and how, in circus creation, you endlessly hit your head against a self-built wall.

Bauke Lievens is affiliated as an artistic researcher to KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts. Her research project Between being and imagining: towards a methodology for artistic research in contemporary circus (2013-17) is financed by the HOGENT Arts Research Fund.

The publication is available in Dutch, French and English.