Experimental Theater

Two dancers play out scenes of male friendship, machismo, and the naked male body in this mischievous dance, a kaleidoscopic view of friendship—rife with tensions and aggressions, clumsy desires of harmony and virtue, whispered tunes of togetherness and solitude. Still Standing You is a daring, hilarious dance work that travels from the aggressive to the intimate, and the forms two bodies create.
With a dance idiom entirely their own Pieter and Gui shamelessly, and mischievously, seek out what they mean to each other. Are they friends, partners, lovers, rivals or even enemies? The only instruments they can use are their own bodies: displays of muscle, the intensity of their boyish friendship, the capacity to turn one’s limitations into virtuosity and the ability to combine all this into a dynamic performance in which ruggedness, anger, and love are entwined in one great physical and all-encompassing embrace.
Knowing that relationships are both indistinguishable mixtures of recognizable shapes and patterns and random feelings, these two boyish men—that can as well be friends, partners, lovers, contestants or even possible enemies—put their body at work to discover the different layers of physical complicity.

Please note: This performance contains nudity.

About Pieter Ampe
Pieter Ampe grew up in Ghent, Belgium, and studied at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, the Arnhem Dance Academy, and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. Together with Guilherme Garrido, he has created and performed Still Difficult Duet (2007) and Still Standing You (2010). In 2006, Ampe took part in danceWEB, a scholarship program at Vienna’s ImpulsTanz-festival, and since 2009, he has been an artist-in-residence at CAMPO. Ampe has worked with stage director Jan Decorte, performance duo United Sorry, artist Roland Seidel, noise-rock quartet The Germans, and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, among others. Guilherme Garrido is a Portugese-born artist, dancer, and musician. Between 2007 to 2009, he was the curator of Show Rooms within the frame of the annual Festival da Fábrica in Porto. He has performed as a dancer with Maria Clara Villa-Lobos, Ibrahim Quraishi, and Tommy Noonan/PVC company. In 2011, he premiered his first solo work, GO JOHN, at Fresh Festival in Croatia, and in 2012 he presented BEST BEAST, his first group piece as choreographer in HAU, Berlin. He has performed Still Standing You with Ampe at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Festival Transamerique in Montreal, and PuSH Festival in Vancouver, BC.