FRAGILE 2024:
A STRING SECTION

Recommended for all generations
Duration 45 min

• Place: Various public & outdoor places in Wuppertal
• • Tuesday, 24 September, 6 pm, in front of the Pina Bausch Centre
• • Wednesday, 25 September, 10 am, in front of Wuppertal Central Station
• • Wednesday, 25 September, 1 pm, Laurentiusplatz Wuppertal

Free admission

Reckless Sleepers have crafted a lavish, mesmerizing, and humorous ritual. This quirky, beautiful, and self-destructive choreography, rich with character and symbolism, adapts to its settings. Women in little black dresses sit on chairs, elegant as the string section of a symphony orchestra, but armed with saws instead of violins. Their mission is deceptively simple: to saw off the legs of their chairs without falling over. They contort their bodies into various positions—sitting, lying, stretched out, wrapped around the backrest, head down, legs split—seeking the optimal angle for their task. The chair legs resist, but the women, dedicated and battle-ready, persist. The rhythmic sound of saw blades cutting into wood foretells destruction. Sweat mingles with sawdust, muscles burn, and the women struggle to maintain their facade and balance as the chairs collapse. We shiver when a saw slips, and laugh when they lose their balance and crash to the ground. Mesmerized, we follow every movement, each cut, anticipating the inevitable self-destruction.

In 2010 Leen Dewilde began a series of destructive acts—smashing cups, breaking down walls, cutting up furniture, and sawing off chair legs. A STRING SECTION originated from this work, featuring a simple set of chairs, women, and saws. Here, the production of sawdust, the leftover legs, the half-broken chairs, and the residue of the action are as important as the act itself. The piece has been presented in various settings: indoors in galleries, theatres, a church, a warehouse, and outdoors by the sea, in an Italian courtyard, and under a bridge. A STRING SECTION will be part of the festival opening of FRAGILE, performed in front of the Pina Bausch Centre under construction. A Wuppertal version will be developed including dancers from Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, the independent scene, and Folkwang University of the Arts.

Reckless Sleepers was formed in 1988, named after a painting by Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The company emerged from a blend of ideas, concerns, mishaps, accidents, and opportunities.

“There was, I remember, an energy, a reaction to proper theatre in big places, too big for our small little words to get into,” so producer Mole Wetherell. “I was, I remember, getting angry at watching and listening to a style of presentation that attempted a realism in an unrealistic way, that tried to convince unconvincingly, that presented big names as a big attraction. It still seems the same, it still gives me a drive to try and attempt something else, something other than this bigness.”

The positives that emerged from this negativity soon outweighed the negatives. Without a clear plan or idea of what Reckless Sleepers was supposed to be, projects began to materialize. A small, unwritten set of breakable rules took shape. Ideas became central; projects were installed rather than presented. Mistakes were embraced, and ideas were pushed until they became uncomfortable to execute, listen to, and watch.

Reckless Sleepers' projects aren't written in the traditional sense. They are constructed from layers of cut-and-pasted fragments, worked out in front of a computer screen, in a black box, on a train journey home, or in the middle of the night. They contain a set of rules, a social order, a structure, and chaos in a very ordered way. After many experiments and numerous failures, a project begins to take shape and form an identity of its own.

• Credits:
• Created by Leen Dewilde for Reckless Sleepers
• Concept Leen Dewilde
• Producer Mole Wetherell
• Performers Leen Dewilde, Lisa Kendall, Annika Kompart

• Guestperformers Barbara Kaufmann, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, und Studierenden der Folkwang Universität der Künste

  Made with the support of INTEATRO Creative Residency Funded by British Council Australia, The Flemish Government & Arts Council England.

Homepage: reckless-sleepers.eu