FRICTION a PLAYGROUND OF BIOGRAPHIES
Wandering through the realms of hyper-therapy, soap-illusions and psychological projections a group of people rediscovers the beauty of encounter. Going beyond the smooth situation of staying separated they enjoy the dynamic of giving and taking between opposite forces which want to meet. Sustaining conflicting energies instead of avoiding, they explore friction as a practice of transformation.

In a playground of biographies, a turmoil of thoughts, desires, fears, and compulsive actions appear, created by bodies, who are conditioned by narratives, we project on ourselves or on others. Do we really meet when we mirror ourselves in the other?

Sophia Rodriguez explores with her performers the act of friction as a strategy to get rid of psychological and cultural garbage that limits us to connect with each other. Friction becomes a deliberately chosen act of rubbing projections, beliefs and identities against each other as if they are pieces of dry dead wood. Sustaining this rubbing of unbridgeable differences creates an enormous heat in our minds and bodies, it will burn down our protection shields, for sure liquid will reappear in our way of thinking, a vitalising wetness of unknown visions and desires, a fluidity that destroys our comfort zone made by the narratives we told ourselves. Can we adapt to what is beneficial for that moment of connection, and not what is beneficial to who we think we must be.

In FRICTION we play with rubbing/flipping different atmospheres of connecting. Treasure diving in between the deep, the superficial, the artificial, the natural, the sentimental, the intellectual, the intimate, the opinionated. No quality can be excluded to glide along.

Sophia Rodriguez (° 1984, VE/BE) is an actress, dancer and choreographer. She studied circus, dance and theatre in Venezuela (Universidad Experimental de las Artes), in Cuba (Cuban National Circus School) and in Switzerland (Accademia Dimitri). Her artistic work was strongly influenced by her long-term trajectory of workshops and exchanges with David Zambrano. As a performer, Rodriguez received the ImpulsTanz DanceWeb scholarship in 2013 under the mentorship of Ivo Dimchev and performed with Ayelen Parolin, DE MAAN and Siamese Cie, among others. Together with Micha Goldberg, she performed The Primal Money Scream (2014, CAMPO) which was selected for Young Work at Theater Aan Zee and The Garden Laboratory (2015, CAMPO). Since 2020, she has been involved in Ne mosquito pas, a project by Simon Van Schuylenbergh that has since become a collective collaboration. In the same year, Sophia was also part of the successful contemporary opera performance A Revue (2020) by Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe (Toneelhuis). This collaboration with Meirhaeghe continued when Sophia took on the choreography for Madrigals (2022). Also, she was in charge of both coaching and performing A Bigger Thing (2022), created by Lisi Estaras for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. In her own work, Sophia uses physical performance, voice and improvisation as building blocks for energetic and feministic propositions. In 2019, she created Ostentation, a project about the meanings given by (female) bodies in our capitalistic society. This impressive solo was selected for Batârd Festival and the canceled editions of NEXT festival and ImpulsTanz in 2020. In November 2023, Sophia's latest creation FRICTION had its première at Toneelhuis in Antwerp (BE) and NEXT festival, and was received with great success.