Vera Tussing & Quatuor MP4 - Tactile Quartet(s)

Vera Tussing and Quatuor MP4 pick up their work on Tactile Quartet(s). The performance in May 2020 was postponed due to COVID, and the new dates in January 2021 were cancelled as well. Since the company hasn't been able to work together since the first lockdown, we offer them a residency during the week their performance should have taken place.

In Tactile Quartet(s), Vera Tussing builds on her longstanding choreographic practice in exploring the sensory potentialities of the audience. In this piece, she has invited the string quartet Quatuor MP4 to join four dancers – Yoh Morishita, Zoltán Vakulya, Esse Vanderbruggen, Vera Tussing – on stage for a playful encounter between movement and sound.

What happens when we take the movements of a string quartet seriously as a choreography, and dance along? The four musicians play passages from canonical works by Franz Schubert and Florence Price, as well as contemporary works by Georg Friedrich Haas, Michael Picknett, and Caroline Shaw. As they play, the musicians engage in one-on-one tactile encounters with the audience, creating physical interaction. Everything arises from touch – a bow on a string, an arm on a shoulder, an acoustic sensation on your skin. The dancers mediate the encounter between musicality and tactility, their choreography oscillating between touch, sight, and hearing. At the point where the orbits of dance and music intersect, you are invited to enter the kaleidoscopic score. Lend a hand, or an arm!