Robert Steijn's Solo: 'I am a reborn smoker' November 3, 2011

Nov 3, 8pm

THEOFFCENTER, Zero Performance and Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos are proud to present internationally acclaimed dance and performance artist Robert Steijn.

Robert will perform his solo piece "I am reborn a smoker / Allowing myself to get high in the clouds of imagination" on Thursday, Nov 3rd at the Joe Goode Performance Annex. A performance in the form of a lecture/demonstration, Steijn mixes story telling, dancing, stand up comedy and serious investigation to get obsessed with invisible energies and presences.

In this intimate solo about trying to connect with the invisible, Robert Steijn asks: How do you dance with people who died? With totem animals? With spirit energies? When does imagination become reality?

Working between Amsterdam and Vienna, Robert Steijn's multiple careers in and around contemporary dance include several years as a critic, curator, dramaturg, performer, and teacher. Now he tries to bring the magic back into life and into the theatre. Steijn believes that everyone can become a homemade contemporary shaman, if they put themselves on the path of poetry. His helper is a deer, who appears in many of his texts and dances.

Steijn has collaborated with Frans Poelstra/united sorry, Latifa Labiissi, Anne Teresa de Keersemaeker, Maria Hassabi, Cilia Erens and Georg Blaschke, Theater der Jungen Welt (Leipzig) and Theater im Bahnhof (Graz). He teaches at School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam and p.a.r.t.s. in Brussels. Steijn is strongly influenced by the performance artist Jack Smith, the poets Walt Whitman and Alan Ginsberg, the conceptual artists Dan Graham and Matt Mullican, the Korean shaman/performer Hi-Ah Park, Ayahuasca rituals, long walks and very significant dreams and visions about how to go on in his life.

Robert Steijn (aka DJ Sorry) often works in tandem with Frans Poelstra (aka Mr. United) forming the group United Sorry. Read their manifesto and check out the website: http://www.unitedsorry.com/manifesto

Official Website: http://theoffcenter.org/2011/10/12/robert-steijns-solo-i-am-a-reborn-smoker/