Lost&Found

A performance about vulnerability and indifference

Lost&Found

A performance about vulnerability and indifference in a big city.”

Following the successful collaboration on ‘Boxing Pushkin’ for the 2007 Pushkin Festival, Andrea Boll and orkest de ereprijs are combining forces once again. LOST&FOUND is a choreographic work by Andrea Boll with 6 dancers and a full orchestra of fourteen musicians, conducted by Wim Boerman.

For this production, choreographer Andrea Boll drew inspiration from the novel Age of Iron (1990) by J.M. Coetzee, Die Dinosaurier und das Gesetz from Gedankenfuge by F. Dürrenmatt, The terror of St. Trininan’s (1948), cartoons by Ronald Searle, and the photos Insomnia and Dead Troops by Jeff Wall.

A very normal woman… There is nothing remarkable about her. One day, she finds a homeless man on her doorstep. He is lying there in a cardboard box, wrapped up in plastic. His upper body rolled up; his legs stretched out like a marionette and his mouth open. A washed-up bit of driftwood.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asks. ‘You can’t stay here. You have to go’. The man doesn’t move and stays lying in his shelter. His eyes wander over her woolen stockings and her blue jacket, and upwards. Shy under his gaze, she tugs her skirt straight.’

In LOST&FOUND, this encounter is acted out over and over again, in different variations: absurd, senseless, violent, tender and humane, but also morally uninhibited and with no shame whatsoever. The audience is thus confronted with continually new twists, different perspectives and changing sympathies. Is the woman charitable or cold and distant? Is the homeless man a profiteer or a victim?
The music by orkest de ereprijs links up with this basic principle. Set musical themes are performed in ever-shifting variations.

Script, choreography
and direction:
  Andrea Boll
Composer:  Hanna Kulenty
Conductor:  Wim Boerman
Set design: Roos van Geffen
Light design:  André Pronk
Costumes: Françoise Magrangeas
Dramaturgy: Frank Kaufmann
Performed by:
Andrea Beugger
Jaakko Toivonen
Peter Kadar
Audrey Borthayre
Manon Avermaete
Oscar Kelsang Padrosa Alzamora


Orkest de Ereprijs

Orkest de Ereprijs is the leading orchestra for new music in the east of the Netherlands. The orchestra initiates new projects, at both local and international levels. Orkest de ereprijs is a professional orchestra that is dedicated to being an instrument for contemporary composers. This makes it an ideal partner for collaborations with other disciplines in the performing arts, which has resulted in some multi-faceted productions.

In the past 27 years, orkest de ereprijs has done pioneering work by presenting new music in various places. Like contemporary art, new music cannot be defined in terms of one particular style. The hallmark of new music is mainly its mentality; its curiosity and courage to experiment.

The orchestra has 14 musicians and an unusual combination of instruments; mainly wind instruments, supplemented by piano, rhythm and bass guitar, and percussion. The artistic director and conductor is Wim Boerman.

  • Year: 2007

In Lost & Found, choreographer Andrea Boll (former member of Hans Hof Ensemble, now founder of bollwerk) regularly invites orchestra ereprijs – conductor Wim Boerman to act with six “vagrant” – dancers. Sometimes he catches a madman freaking out, sometimes he picks up some plastic bags. The six live among the garbage bags and try to maintain some of their former decorum against the odds. Yet they fall deeper and deeper, become more and more neurotic and psychotic and lose their grip on reality. A recurring symbol is a bright red door behind which a citizen waves of a vagrant with a sandwich. He is no longer satisfied with that. The fourteen musicians underline the beautiful theme with capricious compositions: the border between crazy and normal is diffuse; one hitch and you’re on the other side of the door…. 

Source: Volkskrant 10 November 2008