Alexander Vantournhout / Not Standing - Through the Grapevine

Performers Alexander Vantournhout and Axel Guérin show their bodies, stripped of all frills. They are trained, but not perfect, and they don't try to convince you with virtuoso movements. Bit by bit, their athletic bodies meet physical boundaries, and throughout the movements they discover their own bodies' strenghts and weaknesses. The choreography plays with their difference in proportion and physical power. With tons of effort and concentration, the performers investigate balance, equilibrium and harmony withouth shunning humour. They challenge and help each other, taking turns in leading the dance. Through an uninterrutped mutual contact, the performance's basic thread of connection between touching and being touched is being spun.

The seventh piece by Alexander Vantournhout, after La Rose en Céramique (2018) and Raphaël (2017), is his first real duet. Through the Grapevine thematically builds on ANECKXANDER (2015). The body is again represented in its purest form and the performance also focuses on the kinetic potential of physical limitations, a theme that runs through Alexander's entire oeuvre. After the location performacen SCREWS (2019) Alexander returns to the theatre space, together with partner in crime Axel Guérin, one of the performers in Red Haired Men (2018).

Alexander Vantournhout (Brussels-based, 1989) studied contemporary dance at P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts and Research Training Studios), the school founded by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and single wheel, juggling and dance acrobatics at ESAC (Ecole Supérieure des Arts du Cirque).

Alexander's movement language is influenced by different pedagogical processes and by working across several fields within the arts. Two constants within his artist pursuits are a search for creative and kinetic potential in physicality and an investigation into many aspects of the relationship between performer and object.

2014 marks the premiere of his first piece, CAPRICES, a choreographic solo to the music of Sciarrino. ANECKXANDER (2015), a second solo, co-created with Bauke Lievens, won Circus Next award in 2014, the Public and Young Theatre Prize at Theater Aan Zee (Ostend, 2015), was selected for the Aerowaves Network, and was selected for Het Theaterfestival 2016, the prize for the most remarkable Belgian performances.

His first duet RAPHAËL (2017) was co-created with Bauke Lievens in the framework of the research project Between being and imagining: towards a methodology for artistic research in contemporary circus, supported by the research fund of HoGent/KASK School of Arts, Ghent (BE).

In 2018 Alexanders premieres with LA ROSE EN CÉRAMIQUE, a movement solo accompanying the theatrical solo of Scali Delpeyrat at Festival d’Avignon. Soon after follows his first ensemble piece for 4 men, RED HAIRED MEN, which has been touring around Europe for more than 2 years now.

In SCREWS, created in 2019, Vantournhout guides the audience, together with 5 dancer-acrobats, along a route of reverberating micro performances, from short solos and duets to pointed group choreographies. With THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE (2020), Alexander now returns to the format of a duet. It’s his first true duet and builds upon the concept of ANECKXANDER (2015) to a certain extent. The body is reintroduced in a highly pure form and the performance delves into the creative, kinetic potential of physical limitations, a theme that is reflected throughout Vantournhout’s complete oeuvre.

Alexander is artist in residence at Kunstencentrum Vooruit (BE), artiste associé at CENTQUATRE-PARIS (FR) and artiste accompagné at Cirque-Théâtre Elbeuf (FR) .