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SEPTEMBER 9, 2015 \ nEwSwEEkly - € 0,75 \ rEad morE at www.flandErstoday.Eu currEnt affairs \ P2
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An arduous journey
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wim vandekeybus releases long-awaited feature film galloping mind Bjorn gabriels More articles by Bjorn \ flanderstoday.eu
After 10 years and three continents, choreographer, photographer and filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus’ feature film Galloping Mind is finally running free. It’s a debut, of sorts. And a love letter to family life, of sorts.
A
s a young lad with no specific training, Wim Vandekeybus successfully auditioned for Jan Fabre’s The Power of Theatrical Madness in the mid-1980s. Only a year later, Vandekeybus founded his own dance company, Ultima Vez. His first production, What the Body Does Not Remember, immediately made waves internationally and paved the way for an ambulant career, with its roots on show in his studio in the Brussels district of Molenbeek. In the almost 30 years since founding Ultima Vez (there’s a celebration next year), video and film have been an inte-
gral part of Vandekeybus’ constant search to shape and reshape the language of dance. The 50-minute film Blush (2005), based on the eponymous performance, was heralded as an inventive dance film, and for his 2011 production Monkey Sandwich, Vandekeybus created a feature-length narrative film (selected for the Venice film festival) to go with the live single-actor performance. He has also made stand-alone short films not directly related to his dance productions. And now there is Galloping Mind, his long-awaited feature film, which is released in cinemas this week. To say that it has been a rocky road from idea to finish would be a gross understatement. A full decade ago, Vandekeybus pitched the film as a story about a father who loses sight of his child, born to his mistress. But he gets back in touch with the boy through an accident.
This simple description wasn’t the only idea zinging around in the choreographer’s head. But even after a decade of production woes, travels and a continuous creative output in different artistic disciplines, the core of the story is still there. Though it has germinated, so to speak. Galloping Mind is the story of twins – a boy, Panscó, and a girl, Rása – who are separated at birth. They don’t know of each other’s existence and grow up under entirely different circumstances, both fatherless, or so they believe. In a dramatic event that includes their parents, the twins cross paths again, never, they say, to be separated. “The toughest love stories are the most interesting ones, and without unexpected events, fate becomes really boring,” says Vandekeybus. In Galloping Mind, some of those unexpected turns of events involve horses. “My father was a veterinarian and continued on page 5