Since Rebecca Lenaerts (1980, Belgium) studied theatre at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) in Brussels and the UDK Berlin, hybridity and transdisciplinary practices have been a constant in her artistic journey. Her work consists of interventions, installations, performances and the intersection between those genres, often outside the confines of the performing arts circuit. Strongly inspired by the movement practice and philosophy of Japanese Butoh Dance, she develops work in which she explores presence and vulnerability in a performative context. This shift took place thanks to a development grant from Kunstendecreet Flanders and laid the foundation for new work.
Still a bird (2020-2021) has been her first solo performance, in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Tijen Lawton, in which Lenaerts allows herself to dance. The performance is in constant transformation and shifted recently from the black box towards a long-durational intervention in public space. She also created the video work BIRTH (2022), which has been selected for the Cinéfestival of Eco-performance in Sao Paulo.
In 2022, Rebecca was initiated as a fire woman in the tradition of the Lakota natives and regularly facilitates sweat lodge ceremonies. The influence of ceremony has since strongly influenced her artistic practice, with a focus on the (lost) connection between the body and nature, the place of man in a larger unity, and the power of vulnerability and stillness.
Together with Tijen Lawton and in collaboration with 10 performers she directed the dance piece BIRDS, a ceremony (2022), (kunstZ, City of Antwerp). Based on the sufi text 'Conference of the Birds' from Attar, she explored the cross-over between performance art and ceremonies. Together with Jan Wouters she organises the yearly memorial for the street deaths (Herdenkingsceremonie voor de Straatdode); a performance/ceremony in public space to honour the anonymous dead of homeless people in Antwerp.
Since 2008 Lenaerts has also been developing a participative art practice, mostly in close collaboration with MUS-E Belgium, platform for inter creation. Nikutai, the poetic body is the title of a series of artistic interventions in elderly homes with the oldest generation and their care takers and with movement and dance as medium. Inspired by these encounters she created the performance Folds&Wrinkles (2023) specifically for the oldest generation and the context of elderly homes. With this performance Lenaerts continues to put the body, with its limitations, fragility and potential in the forefront of her work.
