STEVEN SUITE

This work is bringing together some artists that Jan Martens has known for a while now. He will collaborate with violinist Rakhi Singh (Manchester Collective), lighting designer Minna Tiikkainen (ROSAS, Mette Ingvartsen, Jefta Van Dinther, etc.) and long time collaborator Steven Michel as dancer/performer  (Jan Martens, Théo Mercier, Vania Vaneau, etc.).

The avant premiere will take place during Julidans in Amsterdam; the premiere is also scheduled for July 2027.

They will be working on the composition "Mystery Sonatas", written by composer David Lang in 2014. For Jan Martens, this is a logical step: he loves working in a direct relationship with music, but then radical, contemporary music. No Bach, Beethoven or Mozart, and no new version of ballet classics either, but rather compositions that dance audiences don't yet know.

By setting movement to it, he creates ways to give the audience access to this "new" music: dance as a guide for a first listening experience. At the same time, he questions the mechanisms and algorithms that keep putting a conservative, mainstream and often male canon in the spotlight. The goal? An alternative musical canon, and a greater love for it.

David Lang's "Mystery Sonatas" are based on the famous sonatas of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, but with a modern twist. No Jesus, but virtuosic pieces about Lang's own intimate, spiritual thoughts. The central parts — Joy, Sorrow and Glory — are not grand gestures, but quiet, inner, reflective states.

What appeals to Jan Martens, beyond the music itself, is how David Lang describes it: "Starting inward-looking, and a bit fragile, becoming much stronger and much more radiant." In this way, Lang describes how he wants the music to be performed. Mathematical and emotional, hand in hand, precisely how Jan Martens himself likes to choreograph.