Elie Tass

Monkey Mind and Alain Platel

Dance as a universal language  

Elie Tass will replace Lisi Estaras
In this workshop, Elie Tass starts from his parcours working with Alain Platel and lets that experience nurture propositions coming from more personal curiosity and fascinations. By calling on inner desires and associations, both conscious and not-so-much, to take shape through the body we encourage manifesting our imagination, instant and over time. How can we explore, understand and then flirt with our creative space of movement, channel and multiply our intentions, and build with those in a shared landscape?

Professionals and dance enthusiasts – with or without a disability – venture into this weaving of individual and collective endeavour. The invitation is to be available to and insist on our very own senses and dance, while choosing the opportunity to be influenced by those who surround us, allowing for either what may seem incoherent or that which brings clarity.

Teacher

Coming from a background rooted in many sports, studying Physical Education at Ghent University, and later dance at HID in Lier (currently the Conservatory in Antwerp), Elie Tass, ° 1981, Ghent (BE), started working with Alain Platel (les ballets C de la B, now laGeste) in 2006. Starting with vsprs, this encounter continued for about a decade and a half, mainly in the creations, pitie!, Out of context – for Pina, tauberbach and nicht schlafen. Throughout the years he embarked on creative processes of his own, both in Belgium and abroad.

In 2019, he made entrata di emergenza with final-year students at the Paolo Grassi school in Milan, which was invited to the Festival Morsi and later also to Fondazione Prada in Milan, this time reworked for the much larger Deposito space.

In 2022 he worked with Lisi Estaras at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in and for A bigger Thing, and later (and currently) in What We Can Do Together, a performance originating from a collaboration between Monkeymind (Lisi Estaras) and Unmute (an inclusive company based in Cape Town, South-Africa).

In his work, Elie mainly starts from the idea of a fiercely inquisitive body … dancing but also walking, sitting, breathing, manipulating, sweating and observing. And from desire.

Accessibility

• The workshop can be physically demanding, but can be adapted to suit your own abilities
• The workshop is accessible to wheelchair users
• The ability to memorise long phrases or structures is not a requirement