I/II/III/IIII [2007]

I/II/III/IIII is a new theatrical installation by the performance artist Kris Verdonck. Four ‘identical’ female dancers hang like marionettes in a huge ‘machine’. Together with them performance artist Kris Verdonck generated a passage of choreography: a solo, a duet, a trio and a pas de quatre. They sought the greatest possible freedom from the machine, but sooner or later it sent them in the direction it decided upon. The images evoked by I/II/III/IIII are confusing, many-layered and ambiguous: they remind us of the white birds in Swan Lake and also of animal carcases being dragged along, hovering angels, falling human bodies and everything in between.