Is there a way out of here? is available in English, Dutch and French. You can order it here.
Alexander Vantournhout and Bauke Lievens met for the first time four years ago – he a mover and circo-/choreographer, she a dramaturg and researcher. An inspiring and sometimes stormy artistic dialogue was born, which in 2016 was expanded to a menage-à-trois with the arrival of circus artist Raphaël Billet. As a creative duo, Alexander and Bauke account for ANECKXANDER (2015) and Raphaël (2017), two performances that test the boundaries of circus as an artistic language, genre and tradition. Together they form a diptych, united by their continuing research into the physical relationship of the artist to an object and to the gaze of the other.
The booklet Is there a way out of here?, which was originally published in November 2017, tries to trace the path of that research in retrospect. Three different voices enter into dialogue with the UK journalist and writer John Ellingsworth. They look back on a shared quest, touching on lonely work in Norwegian bathrooms, the reality of fiction, and how, in circus creation, you endlessly hit your head against a self-built wall.