Folly Series
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
In my work I want to create an elementary theater removed of all psychological elements, a performance space which evokes a more basic moment in human communication - one without text, characters, or socially coded gestures - and which affects the audience in an emotional way without their quite being able to identify what is going on. This work is grounded in an active stillness in which the viewer's perceptions are reactivated outside the context of daily life. My work strives not to be a representation of human experience but rather a source of it, more akin to listening to music or looking at painting, but without being merely a formal aesthetic experience. In my performances the human being is an anonymous everyman whose eyes and ears share the same sensations as those of the audience, in a communal and elemental experience.
The Folly Series is a set of movement pieces created by Rob List between 2000 and 2003. The first was a solo by List, and later expanded to include a duet by Constance Neuenschwander and Dominique Pollet, two young members of company OZU. The Folly Series are sober, minimal movement pieces with simple lighting, original soundtrack and DVD projections. Clear, powerful and yet unfathomable, they confront the audience with a quiet challenge to perception and allow for reflection on lifes transience.
Folly is an English word meaning "foolish action, undertaking or belief". It also refers to a form of landscape architecture - follies were structures made by 18th century English and French gentry to enliven and demarcate their gardens - towers, obelisks, grottos, rustic monuments or other buildings - reflecting not only the obsessions of their creators but also their fascination with nature as something picturesque, frightening, or sublime. These movement performances explore the double meaning of folly: an absurd and vain act as well as a structure erected in a world of "howling wilderness"
The Folly Series premiered in Amsterdam in 2003, and has toured in eastern and western Europe
Concept, choreography: Rob List
Performers: Rob List, Constance Neuenschwander, Dominique Pollet
Sound: Jaap Lindijer
Videoprojection: Boris Gerrets
