Blush - Ultima Vez/Wim Vandekeybus

“Blush is about boys and girls, loving, streetfighting, falling out… raw sex, gritty humour and magical imagery.”
- Financial Times

Directed by Wim Vandekeybus
Music by David Eugene Edwards
Text by Peter Verhelst & Ultima Vez
Produced by Ultima Vez and KVS/de bottelarij, Brussels

Directed by Wim Vandekeybus, Blush mixes confrontational, intensely physical dance, theatre, film, text and music in an explosion of visual imagery and sound. Love in all its states – lust, temptation, exhilaration, and shame - is the subject of Blush as the performers transform into wild animals, lost Eurydices and raging furies. It is Wim’s fourteenth production for Ultima Vez, featuring an international cast of 10 performers, including Vandekeybus himself.

A rock soundtrack, composed by American singer & songwriter David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower and Woven Hand, forms the background to an avalanche of images. In London, Truro and Glasgow Edward’s Denver based 4-piece band performs live with Ultima Vez.

“It is the pillar of ‘Blush’ with its percussive hammering, cutting and ethereal guitars, heavy, nervous, dreamy ambience. Sometimes Latin, sometimes Voodoo, it doesn’t lose any of its rock essence or its personality.”
- Le Soir

Film sequences featuring the cast, directed by Vandekeybus, are projected in large scale, and introduce one of the most inventive and breathtaking moments of interaction between film and live performance. Diving from the stage into the screen, dancers seamlessly reappear on film, transformed into water nymphs in an underwater netherworld.

Vandekeybus’ work seems to push dancers and technology beyond their limits in a powerful osmosis of live action, film and music. Blush seethes with energy, danger, emotion and sensuality.

“A cross between Trisha Brown and John Woo. Lively and strong, sensual and explosive, wild and elegant.”
- Le Soir

“The performers go to extremes of emotion and physical strength, giving the show a powerful and disturbing energy.”
- Wall Street Journal Europe

“One knows straightaway that one is in a ‘Vandekeybus’, with the violence and the poetry, the drive and the tenderness, delivered in a visual and bodily shock.”
– La Libre Belgique

This production contains nudity, scenes which some may find offensive and is not suitable for children.

A production of Ultima Vez & KVS/de bottelarij in co-production with Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Le-Maillon (Strasbourg), Teatro Comunale di Ferrara and PACT Zollverein/Choreographisches Zentrum NRW (Essen). Ultima Vez is supported by the Flemish Community and the Flemish Community Commission of the Brussels Capital region. Blush received the support of the Flemish Minister for the Capital City.

A Sadlers Wells and Dance Touring Partnership initiative.
UK Tour funded by Arts Council England.

http://www.dancetouringpartnership.co.uk/blushtour//info.htm