Jan Martens

ON GOING

For The Image Generator, Jan Martens reworks a performance he developed in 2012 for Rudi Meulemans and Vincent Dunoyer/ De Parade’s project Purgatorio. Whereas ON GOING was then developed to the size of BOZAR’s large Horta hall, he now moves the choreography to a much smaller space that is part of the church of the former Dominican convent where Kunsthal Extra City is currently housed. The approach remains the same: ON GOING is a prolonged danced walk, back and forth, transforming from human to architecture and back again.

Jan Martens (° 1984, Belgium) studied at the Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg and graduated in 2006 from the dance department of the Artesis Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. Since 2010 he has been making his own choreographic work which, over the years, has been performed with increasing regularity before a national and international audience.

Since 2022 Martens combines his role as co-artistic director with GRIP with that of associate choreographer with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. In FUTUR PROCHE (2022), together with fifteen dancers from OBV, two children, and harpsichordist Goska Isphording, he built a performance about the imminent future. After two previous successful productions, Martens again finds inspiration in a surprising, contemporary repertoire for the centuries-old harpsichord. The performance had its world premiere on July 19, 2022 at the Cour d’honneur of the prestigious Festival d’Avignon.

Martens was awarded the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds prize for North Brabant (2014) and the prestigious Charlotte Köhler Prize (2015) for his work. He is associated artist at DE SINGEL Antwerp, La Comédie scène nationale de Clermont-Ferrand, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Maison de la danse Lyon and Lyon Dance Biennale.

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