Jan Martens

Inspired by three patterns conducive to the shortened format, Rule of Three unearths its own very particular path. Somewhere between concert-performance, short story collection and Facebook wall/YouTube channel, it navigates between contemporary dramas and everyday occurrence.
With the atmosphere of a hardcore nightclub recreated live by NAH, replete with metal, avant-jazz, noise, punk and minimalist electro-industrial beats, the succession of danced tableaux has a surprise lurking at every corner. Short scenes are interspersed with iconic treats of a more languid and accentuated nature. The intricately writing of these scattered yet linked scenes gives us the sensation of being lost in the pages of a book. The layering of rhythm/light/music creates a variety of landscapes that might just as easily exude the sweet whiff of nonchalance as set bodies alight. Rebellious, fiery, and direct but always rigorous, mathematically so, Jan Martens teams up with the untamed, raw drums of NAH in this crystallization of a deliciously bewildering symbiosis. Dance and music interlock with each other in an organic way. Served up by two long-term collaborators of his, Steven Michel and Julien Josse, together with a new recruit, Courtney Robertson, this piece unleashes an untamed meditation on the contrasts of our era: numbness and explosion, the decided upon and the intuitive, heart and mind.