Alguma Coisa Crua

In search of a contemporary spectacle

This year’s theme is ‘the search for contemporary spectacle’. Today more than ever before, dance and performance artists are not only creating a stir with strong concepts, but also going in search of surprising – and often very physical – ways of communicating with audiences. This work demonstrates even greater openness towards the audience, while at the same time raising questions about ossified conventions, traditions and beliefs. Every performance selected for the festival relates to the theme of the ‘spectacular’ in its own, unique way. Most of the productions are Dutch premieres, and a number of performances have even been produced specially for the festival.

On the last afternoon of the Something Raw festival, the possibility and impossibility of ‘the spectacular’ will be examined. Lectures, discussions, and artistic interventions will provide an all-round view of a topic that, in the decades following Guy Debord’s La Société du Spectacle, gave rise to a certain amount of mistrust among (theatre) artists. What can the term spectacle still mean, as an artistic and critical starting point now, while we find ourselves in a full-blown ‘spectacle society’? Do we dare to use the spectacular, of which the powers dominate our (cultural) economy, as a means to achieve subtle yet direct communication between performer and audience? Can first-line forms of communication harbour any critical potential whatsoever, or are they doomed to remain on the surface and not penetrate any deeper? And how has the ‘spectacular’ been defined in past centuries?

This afternoon a spectacular set of practitioners, scholars and critics will set off – together with a curious audience – in search of different ways to grasp a contemporary understanding of spectacle while exploring connections between scholarship and theatre practice, emotion and thought, history and present.