with the support of the Flemish Government
Jan Martens / Frascati Producties
2011A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION forms the first part of a diptych about love. Jan Martens takes a close look at the relationship between two people with a couple’s dance in the most literal sense of the term: without leaving each other’s side, a couple shows five key moments in a love affair.
A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION is a wordless moving picture with at its centre a couple in a small, indeterminate space: a lift or a kitchen, a basement or a caravan. In that small space, and across different chapters, a relation is stripped of its codes and turned into an object of study: relational gestures take on a surprising overtone in the grey area between tenderness and violence, longing and indifference. A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION is a tender and intimate work about the love that both wounds and heals.
A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION was selected for Aerowaves 2012 and acts as the first part of the diptych TO LOVE DUETS. The diptych was later completed with SWEAT BABY SWEAT (2011), after which the two shows were performed several times together as a double bill. In 2018 A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION was reprised with two new dancers: Thomas Régnier and Pauline Prato. This reprise was a collaboration with CDC Le Gymnase in Roubaix.
“The young bridal couple in A SMALL GUIDE ON HOW TO TREAT YOUR LIFETIME COMPANION demonstrates on a few square metres the intractable flux of being together. Set to the compelling strains of The White Stripes, hushed caresses blend with raw, sexual energy to form a clenched pas de deux.”
- Charlotte De Somviele, De Morgen, 05 December 2012***½
“Martens’ choreography is everything you can wish for from a young maker: vigorous and yet vulnerable, recognizable and yet personal.”
- Sarah Vankersschaever, De Standaard, 29 November 2012****
“Martens himself and Steefka Zijlstra rarely stray more than a few inches apart and frenzy turns to reflection and back with well-thought out simple movements that create genuine tension and intimacy between them.”
- Gerard Davis, Dance Review, 20 November 2012
PREMIERE: 17 March 2011, Frascati Amsterdam (NL)
BY: Jan Martens
WITH: Jan Martens and Steefka Zijlstra
COSTUME: Olivier Waelkens
ADVICE: Peter Seynaeve
DURATION: 30 minutes
PRODUCTION: Frascati Productions
INTERNATIONAL DIFFUSION: A Propic / Line Rousseau and Marion Gauvent
WITH THE SUPPORT OF: STUK, kc NONA, Productiehuis Brabant and United-C
THANKS TO: Michel Spang
