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‘Sweat Baby Sweat’ by Jan Martens in the United States
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The choreography by Jan Martens will be in New York and Cincinnati between January 27th & February 3rd
On January 27 & 28, the Jan Martens production ‘Sweat Babby Sweat’ will be at the Abrons Arts Centre, and on February 3 & 4 at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati. Sweat Baby Sweat is about all-consuming love, and shows two people who can’t – or won’t – let one another go. You can get your tickets HERE for New York, and HERE for Cincinnati!
About Sweat Baby Sweat
A searing, minimal production in which images, text, movement and music complement one another perfectly. Sweat Baby Sweat is a new step into the investigation on the symbiosis of storytelling and abstraction, which started in Jan’s former production a small guide on how to treat your lifetime companion. Working together with a video designer and a composer, Sweat Baby Sweat becomes a work in which composed music and projected text take an important role next to the moving composition. Departure point in Sweat Baby Sweat is the most cliché theme ever: a relationship between man and a woman. By adding love song lyrics and at times even mellow music one would expect a very theatrical approach, but the contrary is true. The result is a one hour performance in which a lifetime is passing. A modern mating ritual: naïve, sensual, tender but painful, at the same time comforting and confronting. it is performed by Kimmy Ligtvoet en Steven Michel
About Jan Martens
Jan Martens (b. Belgium, 1984) studied at the Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg and is a dance graduate of the Artesis Royal Conservatory in Antwerp. He has performed with Mor Shani, Tuur Marinus, Ann Van den Broek and more. In 2009, he began his own choreographic work. He has been hosted in this capacity by Frascati, ICKamsterdam, CAMPO and DansBrabant. In 2014, together with business leader Klaartje Oerlemans, he founded GRIP in Antwerp/Rotterdam, from where they organize and distribute his work. From September 2014 through June 2016, Martens was artist in residence at the Tanzhaus NRW in Düsseldorf. From 2016 till 2018 he’s artist in residence at CDC Le Gymnase and till 2021 he’s Associated Artist at deSingel. Jan Martens’ works are fresh, as well as hard-core, but most importantly communicate directly. He does not attempt to create his own language of movement, but forms and reuses existing idioms, placing them in different contexts so that new ideas arise. The human being is central to his work.