Man Strikes Back

Man Strikes Back is a musical juggling performance. The masters of ceremony? Five wooden triangles, a juggler and a drummer. Stijn Grupping juggles by bouncing rubber balls from one object to another while musician Frederik Meulyzer picks up the rhythm with his drums. Together they compose musical harmonies and an intriguing web of lines created by the bouncing balls in motion. Everything depends on both the precision and strength of the juggler and the speed of reaction of the drummer.
Until the wooden triangles begin to mix and take up new positions. The concert develops into a fascinating choreography involving objects, juggler and musician. But who is directing whom? And who needs whom? Or is this an equally matched dance? Each triangle comes to life, revealing its own personality. But the livelier the triangles become, the more challenging it is for the juggler to keep the balls up in the air.

Post uit Hessdalen is a company that makes unique music theatre. The film-maker and circus artist Stijn Grupping and theatre-maker Ine Van Baelen are its core artistic members, but they also involve other performing artists in each new creation.

In this changing collective setting the company creates hybrid stage creations that combine several artistic disciplines in an innovative stage idiom: theatre, video, visual art, circus etc. In each creation it enters into confrontation with live music and/or soundscapes and aims to visualise connections between our senses, our powers of comprehension and our actions.

“Each performance is a two-way conversation, with the senses on alert and great curiosity on both sides, but also the questions are tricky, the answers complicated and the outcome changeable. Even if we have not truly found each other, be aware that we have listened attentively and will try again tomorrow. And again.”