STILL STANDING YOU

In Still Standing You, the young dancers Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido hurt each other so much, and so convincingly, that they must surely be friends.

- DE STANDAARD (22/04/2010)

The first choreographic encounter between Belgian Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido, from Portugal, took place in Still Difficult Duet (2007). In Still Standing You, the same pair unleash a lockerful of new dance moves and in their own mischievous way give us a glimpse of their kaleidoscopic view of friendship. With a dance idiom entirely their own, both actors shamelessly seek out onstage what they mean to each other. What is their relationship? Are they friends, partners, lovers, rivals or maybe even enemies?

In Still Standing You, Ampe and Garrido have decided not to worry about what the current dance scene dictates and instead go for the radical choice of one light position and no set. The only instruments they can use are their own bodies, the ironic display of their muscles, the intensity of their boyish friendship, the capacity to turn one's own limitations into virtuosity and the ability to combine all this into a dynamic performance in which ruggedness, anger and love are entwined in one great physical and all-encompassing embrace. According to the newspaper, De Morgen, the actors "fight with their bodies, starting off as two bad boys, then go into dangerous physical behavior, really hurting each other, finally finishing up in beautiful body sculptures." At the end of the work, the only thing they know for sure, is that they are "partners in crime", the cowboy and the indian riding their horses through the bumpy hills into the sunset.

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