description
With their passion for unidentified performance objects and their personal research on Real Time Composition and, the paths of Tompkins and Wade were bound to cross one day. It happened in 2012 at the Festival Densités in Fresnes-en-Woëvre (F). They spent the 24-hours-chrono preceding the performance brainstorming, storytelling, tuning and enumerating the potential dances, musics, states, and of course shopping for costumes. From this disparate and spontaneous harvest, STARDUST was born.
After the astonishing, hilarious and joyous performance the next day, they heartily agree to pursue the adventure. The next occasion was the closing performance of Compil d’Avril 2013 - Charleroi Danse Festival in Brussels. Again, their aspirations and desires were more than fulfilled and the audience thrilled. From the opening as nymphs, skipping and tumbling naked through the forest of iron trees, to the final audience sing along of Whitney’s I Have Nothing, they pried open the doors of perception, or a least produced a hell of a good time!
Mastering the crafts of non-linear storytelling and the fabrication of complex images, plus the skills of shift, counterpoint and catharsis, they cajole, punish, seduce and enlighten the audience with a constant flux of song and dance and stand up comedy. They click on stage! Tompkins, the tall one, is fall guy to Wade, the small one, and his fairy tale flights of fantasy. Their improvised universe mixes kitsch, camp and queer imagery with dead serious comedy and tragi-comic entertainment. Maybe that’s their secret, they thoroughly enjoy themselves and have FUN sharing it!
After the astonishing, hilarious and joyous performance the next day, they heartily agree to pursue the adventure. The next occasion was the closing performance of Compil d’Avril 2013 - Charleroi Danse Festival in Brussels. Again, their aspirations and desires were more than fulfilled and the audience thrilled. From the opening as nymphs, skipping and tumbling naked through the forest of iron trees, to the final audience sing along of Whitney’s I Have Nothing, they pried open the doors of perception, or a least produced a hell of a good time!
Mastering the crafts of non-linear storytelling and the fabrication of complex images, plus the skills of shift, counterpoint and catharsis, they cajole, punish, seduce and enlighten the audience with a constant flux of song and dance and stand up comedy. They click on stage! Tompkins, the tall one, is fall guy to Wade, the small one, and his fairy tale flights of fantasy. Their improvised universe mixes kitsch, camp and queer imagery with dead serious comedy and tragi-comic entertainment. Maybe that’s their secret, they thoroughly enjoy themselves and have FUN sharing it!
quote
STARDUST, the improvised duo with Mark Tompkins and Jeremy Wade explodes in every direction - voice, dance, theatre - and impulses a hilarious and infectious auto-derision. In this “unidentified performance object”, parody becomes a pretext to transcend extreme technical skill. Impregnated by multiple sparks of lucidity about the absurdity of the human condition, the result is a transgender show of great dexterity, in which the distancing and humor allow all excess.
– Cathy Heyden, Mouvement, 07.11.12