This year, as usual, Flemish theatremakers, choreographers, composers and writers will be on display in abundance. With the exception of the French themselves, no other European territory is as well represented.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, whose work has been performed in the city’s atmospheric cloisters since 1983, is renowned there. Her new choreography is based on 14th-century polyphonal compositions from Avignon’s Papal court. Introduced in the festival brochure as a “dancer of inexhaustible ardour,” her personal appearance this year constitutes an “event” in its own right.
Alain Platel’s Les Ballets C de la B has been a regular in Avignon since the much-acclaimed Bach in 1996. This year, his Out of Context: For Pina accompanies a new collaboration with Flemish writer/director Frank van Laecke (dubbed by the local press as “the magician”). Gardenia, an exploration of the accumulated hopes, memories and shattered illusions incumbent on growing old will be performed by “mature” dancers. (The piece will premiere in Belgium in September.)
Guy Cassiers of Antwerp’s Toneelhuis, meanwhile, is well-respected in Avignon for his visual originality in staging major literary works (Proust, Tolstoy, Duras) and his creative scrutiny of Europe’s past and present. Avignon audiences and critics enthused warmly about his exploration of war in Bezonken Rood, Mefisto Forever and Wolfskers. This year, The Man Without Qualities opens Germany’s Theater der Welt festival before travelling to Avignon and beyond.
Most Belgians are actually unaware that the Flemish performing arts scene is so celebrated across the globe and that the work is facilitated by co-productions with major European venues and festivals.
Avignon audiences will also be able to see Belgian Dominique Roodthooft’s highly provocative Smatch [1], a multilingual, multimedia performance co-produced by Belgium’s French-speaking subsidising bodies together with the KVS and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts.
The visionary Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula, whose magnificent More, More, More…Future and The Dialogue Series iii: Dinozord were on show recently at KVS as part of the Congo Festival, has been commissioned by Avignon to do an adaptation of Racine’s Berenice, which will be available for Belgian spectators in March of next year.
Flanders Today is a 
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