Quando l’uomo principale é una donna

In Quando l’uomo principale é una donna (When a Leading Man Turns Out to be a Woman), Belgian stage artist Jan Fabre creates a performance homage to the artist Yves Klein. Klein stunned the art world when he used naked female bodies as paint brushes. Jan Fabre takes that idea to the limit and explores gender, sexuality and being with a naked character who transforms from man to woman, human to animal. The nudity and sensuality are right upfront and the changeling character, at one point, is on a stage drenched in olive oil. Yes, olive oil. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times, reviewing the piece as part of the famous Danse Biennale in Lyons, France said, “it was a relief to see a nude woman soaked in olive oil thrash through a brilliantly impudent solo.”

Jan Fabre is a visual artist, sculptor, designer, writer/director and choregrapher who creates powerful, sinewy works that fill stages in ways previously unseen. He calls the intrepid performers of his company Troubelyn “warriors of beauty” and he and his warriors take no prisoners with our preconceptions and our senses.