Pace University Welcomes Ultima Vez, Performing WHAT THE BODY DOES NOT REMEMBER, 3/22-23

Pace Presents announces the arrival of the Ultima Vez, a Belgium-based dance company currently embarking on a US Tour to the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts for a two-evening engagement, tonight, March 22 & Saturday March 23 at 7:30pm. The company will perform What the Body Does Not Remember which Artistic Director Wim Vandekeybus debuted with Ultima Vez in 1987, stunning the dance world at the time winning a Bessie for this "brutal confrontation of dance and music." In 2013, 25 years later and with a new cast, the show once again is on a world tour.

Vandekeybus describes What the Body Does Not Remember as "The intensity of moments when you don't have a choice, when other things decide for you, like falling in love or the second before the accident is about to happen; suddenly they appear, with no introduction, important for me because of their extremeness rather than for the significance to be given to them. The decision to use this as a basic material for a theatrical composition is at least a paradoxical challenge, considering a theatrical event as repeatable and controllable. Perhaps when all is said and done, the body doesn't remember either and everything is a subtle illusion of lack which helps to define or exhaust the game."

What the Body Does Not Remember balances on the razor edge of attraction and repulsion. Sometimes this results in confrontation between two dancers, then between two groups, between dancers and music, and between dancers and a compelling set of lines. But throughout there is an explosion of aggression, fear and danger.

Ultima Vez was founded in 1986 as the company and organization of choreographer, director and filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus. Since its foundation, Ultima Vez has intensively developed its work as an international contemporary dance company with a strong base in Brussels and Flanders.

Wim Vandekeybus is director, choreographer, actor and photographer. After having worked for two years with Jan Fabre, he created his own working structure Ultima Vez in 1986. His first performance What the Body Does Not Remember (1987) was soon being presented on international stages. In 1988, Wim Vandekeybus received the Bessie Award in New York for this production, which was credited "a brutal confrontation of dance and music".

Vandekeybus then created Les porteuses de mauvaises nouvelles (1989), The Weight of a Hand (1990) and Immer das Selbe gelogen (1991). Her Body Doesn't Fit her Soul followed in 1993. For this production Wim Vandekeybus collaborated with non-seeing dancers for the first time.

From this moment onwards film became a constant value in Vandekeybus' work. A film and short stories by Paul Bowles and Milorad Pavic, constituted the theme for Mountains Made of Barking (1994). Wim Vandekeybus later created, among others, Bereft of a Blissful Union (1996), 7 for a Secret never to be told (1997), In Spite of Wishing and Wanting (1999) and "Inasmuch as Life is borrowed..." (2000)

For Scratching the Inner Fields (2001) Vandekeybus collaborated with the Flemish author Peter Verhelst, a collaboration that was continued for Blush (2002) and Sonic Boom (2003).