In October 2020, The Animals premiered, a performance that takes you to the zoo, a place where people watch animals. After the premiere, the performance went into forced hibernation. But a performance is a living organism that continues to grow, even when it is not played or seen. Be a Bear is the fever dream of a performance in hibernation.

Be a Bear is a Podcast by Geert Belpaeme and Esther Venrooy.

The Animals is a playful requiem for a dying ecosystem and a failing image of humanity. The performance takes you to the zoo, a performative space where animals are forced to perform their otherness so that humankind can confirm itself – by watching. Zoos engage visitors in an historic ritual of a Western ordering of the world, teaching them to “gaze” at creatures made to be exotic through our imagining wild and faraway places. But in this zoo the boundaries are blurred between who is human and who is animal. In this zoo it is unclear who should perform (for) whom.

“Animals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance.” (John Berger, Why look at Animals?)

director: Geert Belpaeme / dramaturge: Bauke Lievens / performers: Greet Jacobs & Sophia Bauer / lighting design & scenography: Geert Vanoorlé / sound design: Esther Venrooy / masks: Viktor Leestmans / costume: Valerie Le Roy / technical support: Geeraard Respeel / artistic advice: Mats Van Herreweghe

production: l’hommmm / coproduction: Vooruit / Supported by the Flemish Government, Culture Ghent, Buda, De Grote Post & KAAP

Previously performed at Vooruit (Gent), De Grote Post (Oostende), Buda (Kortrijk), Malpertuis (Tielt), Nona (Mechelen), Tweetakt Festival (Utrecht)

First is a collaboration of Geert Belpaeme with pianist/composer Heleen Van Haegenborgh. They were inspired by Tik Tak (an iconic Belgian tv program for todlers), Barnett Newman and String theory to reflect on the linearity of our consciousness.

First starts off from the idea that we, human beings, are ourselves the creators of the reality we live in. First is a pamphlet: an ode to beginning; a prelude danced by the first man, for the last man.

First was rewarded with the Price Roel Verniers in 2016 and played at het TheaterFestival 2018 in Antwerp.

Geert Belpaeme (text, creation & performance) / Heleen Van Haegenborgh (music & performance) / Mats Van Herreweghe (dramaturgy) / Ezra Veldhuis & Bosse Provoost (scenography) / Geert Vanoorlé (light design)

a production by l’hommmm, with the support of KASK School of Arts Ghent, Vooruit, Pact Zollverein, wpZimmer, KAAP and the price Roel Verniers 2016 (TheaterFestival, t-heater & Circuit X)

First was performed at KC Nona (Mechelen), Het TheaterFestival (Antwerpen), Vooruit (Gent), Festival Dansand (Oostende)

In The Act of Dying three performers try to die as cheerful non-human figures. They are looking for the ultimate freedom of the animation figure: to rise up again after a downright violent death. The performance is a reflection on the role of violence and death in our society. By approaching death from the light and playfull perspective of the animation figure, de polen try to reach a veritable tragic. The performers are assisted by a square and by the Third Symphony by Henryk Górecki.

‘They don’t know death, they don’t know sexuality, they don’t know suffering, you cut them into pieces, they’re reconstituted. There is no finitude, no mortality here. There is evil, but a kind of naieve, good evil. You’re just egotistic, you want to eat, you want to hit the other, but there is no guilt proper.’ (uit A Pervert’s Guide to Cinema van Slavoj Žižek)

created and performed by: Bosse Provoost, Kobe Chielens, Lieselotte De Keyzer & Geert Belpaeme / scenography: Sibran Sampers & Ezra Veldhuis / dramaturgic advice: Mats Van Herreweghe / technical: Britt De Jonghe

productie: de polen 

co-productie: wpZimmer, Buda, Vooruit & Toneelhuis 

met de steun van: de Vlaamse Overheid, TAZ, LOD & KAAP

The Act of Dying was performed at Vooruit (Ghent), KAAP (Brugge), TAZ (Oostende), Festival Boulevard (‘s Hertogenbosch), Love at First Sight festival (Antwerpen), Jonge Harten Festival (Groningen)

Fünf leichte tanzspiele tells the story of language. Not the language that we speak but a primordial language, a game, an imagination that preceeds understanding. Fünf leichte tanzspiele reveals how quickly language erupts, how easily we understand what we cannot apprehend.

Language, maths, science are not attempts to apprehend reality, they are a game in which people try to order experience through self-invented rules. There is no logic, there is no truth, there are only plays and players, rules and the application of rules.

Fünf leichte tanzspiele takes you back to the serieusness of being a child, where every form has to be discovered, where content is still abstract and abstraction is very normal.

Created & performed by: Geert Belpaeme, Mats Van Herreweghe, Loes Carrette, Benjamin Cools & Seppe Decubber

Light design: Timme Afschrift

Hoe houdt een mens zich staande in een architectuur – een desolate vlakte onder een brug – die zich onverschillig opstelt tot de mens die zich erin begeeft en hem door haar afmetingen fijn drukt? Het sterkste teken dat een mens er kan geven is er zijn of er niet zijn. 1 en 0 zijn instrumenten om iets uit te drukken. Er zijn. Er niet zijn. En vervolgens leest de architectuur als een partituur van ongewone ontmoetingen.

Herberg werd in 2015 gemaakt voor een zeer specifieke ruimte onder een viaduct in Ledeberg (Gent) om tijdens zonsondergang gespeeld te worden.
Het uitgangspunt van de voorstelling is altijd geweest om naar de ruimte, meerbepaald een grote vlakte met pilaren en een ‘dak’, te luisteren en haar niet iets op te leggen, wat ons bracht tot het proberen hertalen van een architectuur tot partituur. Een ander belangrijk onderzoek in de voorstelling is het verkennen van de mogelijkheden van een speler/mens/lichaam om over grote afstanden of bij weinig licht iets te communiceren, en welke mogelijkheden de visuele barrière van een afstand of zonsondergang bieden voor wat je wil vertellen.

In 2016 werden we uitgenodigd door Toneelhuis om Herberg te hertalen naar een locatie in de omgeving van Antwerpen. Omdat de voorstelling zo locatiespecifiek is, heeft de uitdagende hertaling naar het viaduct van Merksem ons tot een andere voorstelling geleid met inhoudelijke en vormelijke accenten eigen aan de locatie.

created and performed by: Bosse Provoost, Kobe Chielens, Lieselotte De Keyzer, Britt Bakker, Midas De Saedeleir & Geert Belpaeme 

Sprachspiel is a performance on the line between art and philosophical experiment. In Sprachspiel Geert Belpaeme and Mats Van Herreweghe want to show how communication emerges out of playing, not out of understanding.

The performance was inspired by the idea of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that language does not need clear-cut concepts or unambiguous signification. It is not necessary for you and me to share predetermined concepts and rules to be able to communicate. Language is use: Meaning arises only when an action is performed. In Sprachspiel Mats Van Herreweghe and Geert Belpaeme examine how such a playful, active language could emerge.

Created & performed by Geert Belpaeme & Mats Van Herreweghe / coaching: Charlotte van den Eynde / light design: Timme Afschrift in collaboration with students KASKdrama

Sprachspiel was performed at CC Ghybe (Poperinge), KC Nona (Mechelen), Flare Festival (Manchester, UK), CC hasselt, De werf (Brugge), Love at First Sight (Antwerpen), MSK (Gent), Pact Zollverein (Essen, D), Chambre d’O (Oostende), wpZimmer (Antwerpen), Les Ballets C de la B (Gent), Rataplan (Antwerpen)

In It says nothing to me about my life l’hommmm explores how man and his body is socialised when growing up. How we stand, walk, laugh or cry is shown to us from when we are little children. Family and friends are a huge influence, but also the world outside and the abundance of images and information we get fired at us. The way in which we move in this world is not natural, it tells the story of every encounter in a human being’s life.

This performance is a search for sincerity in the multitude of information. How ever hard we try, we will never completely coincide with the images that we hold up to ourselves. And in that failing, a human being becomes his own, unique self.

Directors: Geert Belpaeme & Mats Van Herreweghe – Cast: Seppe Cosyns & Loes Carrette

With Freetimer l’hommmm is making a series of theatrical studies about our performance-prone society: “You will be yourself, you will distinguish yourself because of what you do and wear.” We paint a picture in three studies of how modern man has to fit himself into an identity in which success and self accomplishment are the basis (you get what you deserve), an identity that is so rigid and narrowly defined that it turns us into compulsive and indigent people.

Study #2 is a very minimalistic performance that, in its purity, tries to reach an essence. In this performance we focus on how our compulsive urge for self-realisation influences our relations. The performance confronts languages. While one of the performers tries to explain herself and fails in her attempts, another performer succeeds in really expressing himself with a purely physical language that is at first incomprehensible but throughout the performance manages to exceed understanding. When language fails and movement gets a clear direction, the possibility arises to really grow towards each other, not in signification but in physical recognition.

Director: Mats Van herreweghe – Cast: Geert Belpaeme & Yinka Kuitenbrouwer

With Freetimer l’hommmm is making a series of theatrical studies about our performance-prone society: “You will be yourself, you will distinguish yourself because of what you do and wear.” We paint a picture in three studies of how modern man has to fit himself into an identity in which success and self accomplishment are the basis (you get what you deserve), an identity that is so rigid and narrowly defined that it turns us into compulsive and indigent people.

In Study #1 (2011) a man goes on a job interview. He has brought a large stick.

By & with Mats Van Herreweghe & Geert Belpaeme

In Gat l’hommmm is looking for its own little revolution. To attain that, we have to go back to the beginning: the big bang that put the void out of balance. The result: bodies in an empty space, people who start to relate to each other, who discover and scan each other. The possibility of a world that arises and at the same time the expectation that everything can become something, that everyone has to be someone.

Director: Geert Belpaeme – Cast: Michaël Canto Minjauw, Seppe Cosyns, Lieselotte De Keyzer, Elien Hanselaer & Lize Pede – Dramaturg: Mats Van Herreweghe

In the garden of Eden

a cat jumped over the fence

and everything changed.

Three actors on a scène try to go back to the origin. They want to play. Without gravity, without embarrassment and without restraint they dance, move, play as little children. And, as when little chidren play, it does not matter that the game is shifting all the time.

They are liberated form everything that ties them in this world: society, language, themselves. Unconcernedly they search for their own paradise. But still that one question lingers:

Où est le chat?

Director: Geert Belpaeme – Cast: Michael Canto Minjauw, Sanne Haenen & Seppe Cosyns – Dramaturg: Mats Van Herreweghe – Designer: Sarah Geirnaert – Coaching: Elsie de Brauw, Sam Bogaerts & Alain Platel.