VERA TUSSING & ESSE VANDERBRUGGEN: BOTH, TWO

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In Both, Two Tussing & Vanderbruggen examine the duet, the smallest unit of togetherness. The dance duet is a genre with a history. In their most familiar forms, duets reflect the range of possibilities for relating, which resonate within a certain cultural imaginary. In particular, they reveal common-sense attitudes towards who gets to move, how, and under what conditions.

When two people dance together, a whole constellation of invitations, permissions and prohibitions is put on display. Both, Two invites the spectator to jump into this complex more-than-human ecology with her whole body: the work asks us not just to see but to sense. Can we hear a duet? What does it feel like? Costumes with palpable textures, swirling currents of air and sound, and a tactile program note complement the movements of tangibly enfleshed bodies; a journey for the proximal senses that intersects with the visual and the aural in unusual ways. In a duet which both references and exceeds the tropes of the genre, Both, Two asks what it could mean, today, to be two together.