Love Doll playing with the big boys in a different kind of space

‘Between you and me: if emotional experiences are a human problem, I would love to keep that problem, actually.’ A dusty doll fumbles her way to words. Two boys’ voices break. Man molts into mermaid, human becomes machine. Welcome aboard the wobbly ark of desire. Destination: horizon. The captain calls for calm, then sheds her uniform. Amidst the tempest, the orchestra plays on – old sounds from a distant future. 

In Love Doll, director Lies Pauwels explores the utopia of connection in a splintered world. How paradoxical is the gulf between man and woman, human and animal, nature and technology, body and mind, individual and collective? Can we hope for balance in a sea of contradictions? Can we find each other in the search, in the beauty of the inadequate? 

Pauwels examines these and other questions in the company of dancer Nicolas Vladyslav, drag artist Sam De Mol alias Veronika Deneuve, two young singers, four musicians from B'ROCK Orchestra and saxophone player Bertel Schollaert. Together, the performers get lost in a visual wonderland designed by Johanna Trudzinski. Composer Frederik Neyrinck creates a hybrid score in which the historical and the contemporary coalesce.