“Frictions. That place where two so called opposites come together and create tension. It is a zero point. A void. Moving in this in-between-space and being moved by it, is my dance.”
“the act of speaking and storytelling has gradually made place for the silent language of the body. In my participatory art practice, the vulnerability and imperfection of the body has been a source of inspiration. Inspired by Japanese Butoh, I now develop work in which I explore my own physical presence and vulnerability in a performative space.”
Rebecca Lenaerts is a Belgian artist, working and living in Brussels. She first obtained a master degree in theatre science at the university of Ghent and the Freie Universität Berlin on the topic of ‘the political in postmodern theatre’. Since her graduation in 2006 at the Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) in Brussels, she has been attracted by the crossover between theatre and other artistic disciplines. Hybridity, transdisciplinary practices and collaborations with artists with other artistic and cultural backgrounds then herself are a constant in her artistic journey. Her work consists mainly of audio stories, storytelling projects, interventions, installations, performances and the intersection between those genres, often outside the confines of the performing arts.
In 2019 she received a development grant from Flanders State of the Art in which she researched 'the vulnerability of the performer' through the practice of Japanese Butoh Dance. Still a bird (2021) is her first solo performance in which she allows herself to be a dancer and explores her own Butoh Dance. Lenaerts has been training with several Butoh masters in Europe, USA and Japan. Since 2021 she initiates a weekly Butoh Lab (currently @TictacArtCentre).
Lenaerts has been initiated as firewoman in the tradition of the Lakota natives. As Warrior-of-the-Heart, she regularly facilitates sweat lodge ceremonies. The crossover between performance art and ceremony takes more and more ground in her artistic projects (cf. Birds, a ceremony, 2022).
“The focus in my most recent work is the (lost) connection between the body and nature, the place of the human in a larger unity, and the power of vulnerability and stillness.”
Parallel to her artistic trajectory, Lenaerts developed a participatory art practice. Since 2008 she is connected to MUS-E Belgium, platform for inter-creation, and developed many artistic projects in various contexts and with different organisations and groups of people: Platform-K, Child Cancer Fund, ONBETAALBAAR VZW, Victoria Deluxe, KunstZ, Atelier Quartier/Seppe Baeyens, …. to name just a few. She currently initiates artistic interventions in a Brussels elderly home with the oldest generation and their caretakers (cf. Nikutai, the poetic body).
—— Brussels, 2024 ———