lehmer’s dance – a performance installation september 2022

roos van berkel

8 September 2022 - 18 September 2022

Roos van Berkel ‘Lehmer’s dance – a performance installation’ with Ayrton Fraenk, Karlijn Roest, Evgenia Rubanova, Denise Verschut and Jurriaan de Vos. Saturday 11 September four performances: 12.00h, 13.00h, 14.30h, 15.30h at Bradwolff Projects.

‘Lehmer’s Dance’ is a 20-minute live performance by choreographer Roos van Berkel at Bradwolff Projects. She merges dance and mathematics, together with the five performers, in an exact choreography that invites recognition through proximity. The choreography is based on the work by mathematician Tom Verhoeff. Verhoeff works on proving a mathematical conjecture by Derrick Henry Lehmer. The conjecture revolves around sequences and minimal change: how can you show all possible combinations with the least amount of change? While the rules of the conjecture are very specific, it does not specify what needs to change. Van Berkel uses Lehmer’s rules as a basis for various compositional scores. The performance installation at Bradwolff Projects is the second part of a series.

After a time in which physical distance became necessity, we welcome you in an installation that invites proximity. We invite you to enter the light space of Bradwolff Projects and take place opposite the performers. As they change position according to specific rules, a seemingly indecipherable movement pattern emerges. An intimate, colorful performance that contains subtle rhythms and unpredictable visual changes. While you seek a pattern behind these changes, the anticipated roles of spectator and performer begin to shift. The installation is a reciprocal, meditative experience that penetrates through outer characteristics and into human contact. ‘Lehmer’s Dance – the performance installation’ uses minimal changes in sequences and movement to reinforce the presence of performer and spectator.

Roos van Berkel [Voorburg, 1981] is a choreographer and performer who works on the intersection of art and science. She completed her education in London and New York and is based in Amsterdam since 2008. She collaborates with other artists, designer and scientists, also within the collective ‘NOW live performance and living ecologies’. Roos has performed her work at different digital art and art&technology festivals in The Netherlands such as E-Pulse, STRP and Discovery festival as well as Museumnacht Amsterdam, the Gent Light Festival (BE) and Come Together #4. The duet ‘Your body – My Landscape’ – in collaboration with Hungarian choreographer Gyula Berger – was performed in NL, DE, HU and RO. Besides her artistic practice, Roos teaches at the Academy for Theatre and Dance (ATD), the faculty of Industrial Design (TU/e) and has taught internationally in Belgium, Germany, Finland, Austria and Hungary. ‘Lehmer’s Dance’ is a series of different performances. The first part was shown in scientific contexts: the National Mathematics Days, the Dutch Mathematical Conference and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The performances respect the Covid-19-regulations.