We count all the time: when we go to the shop, when we read the clock, when we dance, when we hold our breath to get rid of a hiccup. But also when we decide on the amount of asylum seekers we can take in or when we calculate the scope of a war or a natural disaster.

Imaginary numbers deals with the violence inherently present in counting: in calculating, encompassing, containing, excluding, making binary of a complex and multiple existence to make it fit into a stable worldview. We want to lift the stability of that counting from its hinges, both by disrupting the subject that counts, by offering the counting object a rebuttal, but also by derailing the numbers. For how tangible is that counting? How real are the numbers we count with? In quantum physics, mathematicians were found to need imaginary numbers to make the most fundamental calculations make sense. Our performance explores the imaginary numbers that interject our attempts to calculate our lives, desires and futures.

Imaginary numbers is a hybrid performance on the boundaries between dance, theatre and clowning that explores the critical potential of a contemporary clowning practice. This performance is a continued and intensified collaboration of theatre maker and performer Geert Belpaeme with dancer and choreographer Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez, who met during the creation of Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood.

Imaginary numbers will premiere in September 2025.

In Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood three figures perform the intrinsic frenzy of being human. To do so, they revert to an old, almost extinct, tradition: clowning. Using the clown’s nonsensical language and wobbly body, with gleeful recklessness and frivolous pretence, they make their way through human history and beyond.

Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood is a hybrid performance that moves in between clowning, dance and theatre, a performance in which human bodies step out of their banks to play non-human relationships as well. Everything with the clown’s wink.

concept & direction: Geert Belpaeme / performance & creation: Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez, Geert Belpaeme and Stanley Ollivier / battery: Wim Segers or Arno Grootaers / co-direction: Bosse Provoost / dramaturgical advice: Mats Van Herreweghe / lighting design: Geert Vanoorlé / costume design & scenography: Carly Rae Heathcote / productional support: Famke Dhondt

production: l’hommmm / coproduction: C-TAKT, STUK en VIERNULVIER / spreiding: Vincent Company / in collaboration with CC Blankenberge, CC Strombeek, Cultuurhuis de Warande, De Grote Post, Dommelhof, Kaaitheater, Nona en Miramiro / with the support of the Flemish government and Culture Ghent

Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood went into premiere on the 14th of January 2023 in NONA (Mechelen), and was afterwards performed in CC Strombeek (Grimbergen), Monty (Antwerp), De Grote Post (Ostend), De Nieuwe Vorst (Tilburg), C-Mine (Genk), Theater op de Markt (Neerpelt), STUK (Leuven) and Campo (Gent).