Good Grief

Wim Kannekens & Joop van Brakel Dancer / choreographer Wim Kannekens and musician / performer Joop van Brakel met in the Shusaku & Dormu Dance Theatre in 1987. Soon afterward they left this company and went their own way.
Wim Kannekens, Feri de Geus and Adéla van der Weide created the Coup d'Amour Dance Company. Joop van Brakel initiated various music projects in the 'Tegentonen Festival' and elsewhere. They resumed collaboration within Coup d'amour, this time with Wim Kannekens and Joop van Brakel as choreographer, to work on the choreography Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song), which was launched in early 1990 and was chosen for the choreography contest in Bagnolet (Paris). In the same year Wim Kannekens and Adéla van der Weide won second prize in the international choreography contest in Groningen (NL) with their choreography De Bolderkar.

The choreographies of Wim Kannekens are marked by sober, brief, abrupt movements with a suppressed agressive undertone. His performances often have a literary sourve. Joop van Brakel's concerts often display a dramatic tension because of the seriousness of the humour. Performances in his own name or in that of the Random Ensemble often contain elements drawn from the visual arts, dance and poetry.
Typical of their collaboration is the almost literal coincidence of music and dance. They are creative in ther refusal to use taped music.

Good Grief was produced independently of Coup d'amour. It is the logical result of their fertile cooperation on the production Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song). Good Grief, half duet, halb duel, is a dynamic encounter in music and dance. It is a confrontation between two people who only have a limited grasp of one another's language and idiom.
On the one hand, they try to derive a feeling of power from their own specialities, while on the other hand they know that they are so emotionally dependent on one another that they are ony too ready to learn to speak one another's language. Sometimes Good Grief has the form of two parallel solo performances, while at other times both performers do their best to let the opponent shine.

A new choreography by Wim Kannekens, On the Pretext of Collecting Folksongs, will feature in the 1991/1992 season. It is a Coup d'amour production on which Kannekens and Van Brakel have closely collaborated again.


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