Test pilots of stage art

Through performance art, physical theatre and interactive experiences, UDflugt invites audiences to come along on stimulating voyages in which everything comes alive in a dialogue with the audience.
Welcome to UDflugt’s unpredictable universe, filled with humour and surprise.

Vera Maeder, Mette Aakjær and Jacob Langaa-Sennek
UDflugt network is an association of artists established in 2000. Mette Aakjær (1973) is a self-taught dancer, performance artist and movement researcher. Jacob Langaa-Sennek (1968) is self-taught stage and light designer and composer. Vera Maeder (1972) is a performer, director and concept maker, educated at the School for New Dance Development Amsterdam and the Theatre Academy Berlin.

Artistic profile
UDflugt network is an ongoing excursion, a constant testing ground for the limits of assumed knowledge, involving the body, the mind and the heart.
 
UDflugt network’s excursions take the shape of interactive performances, site-specific work in the open or in public spaces, theatre projects, movement and dance projects, installations, social art projects, and projects on performativity in daily life.

Their work cheerfully tests what it means to be human and fearlessly challenges our habitual perception of ourselves and our surroundings. The audience becomes a co-creator of the performance, whether on the street or on the stage.

By constantly expanding the boundaries of theatricality, UDflugt network has made refreshing, new contributions to Danish performing arts with a wide variety of performances, including artists with different backgrounds .

UDflugt network’s company for children and young people, UDspring, offers performances and other activities for/with children and young adults.

Current Productions

Hairstyle and Butterfly Effects
(2007) By Mette Aakjær
A performance integrating dance, soundscapes, lyrics, visual art, sensuous experiences, and interaction. Audience members move freely through an apartment, where stories are whispered, hands meet behind long curtains, and landscapes of smell appear in each room. The performance attempts to mirror how we perceive ourselves, our life and our possibilities.

Walking Poem – A City Safari
(2007) By Vera Maeder and Jacob Langaa-Sennek
A poetic walking tour, inspired by a series of previous UDflugt network performances called Invisible Reality Show. The tour takes the audience through different parts of a city to explore and rediscover what is on the other side of town, of themselves, of ‘The Other’. The performance unites visual and audio elements with interactive principles and text to contextualize surroundings, people, and situations.

South South
(2007) By Vera Maeder and Jacob Langaa-Sennek
Three site-specific pieces inspired by the concept Invisible Reality Show. A journey of experience for each audience member that creates an awareness of patterns of perception and opens up the possibility for a different interaction with one’s everyday surroundings.

I Am Listening
(2004) By Vera Maeder
An event about the universal force of listening and the power of silence. The listeners wear a T-shirt that says “I am listening”. They stand, sit or lie for 12 minutes and listen… just listen. The listeners look like silent islands in the city landscape and shape their surroundings through their unconditional attention. The ultimate interpretation is left to the passer-by.

SoHo
(2003) By Vera Maeder
A solo work based on the experience of trying to answer paradoxical questions. Movement, text, sound, and visual elements are used to shape this process and communicate to an audience. The piece as such assumes very different forms and content: Funny, crazy, nothing, political, hilarious, historical, futuristic, relaxing, alarming, and more.

Review extracts

“UDflugt’s Invisible Reality Show is an unforgettable interactive journey for the senses! (…) You are sent alone out on a journey. A voice on an MP3 player and performers along the way stimulate your senses with small, funny, meaningful tasks to do. You actively participate – observe, become co-author, choose, experience, watch and listen to stories. A wonderful journey that is reawakened a few days later, when a postcard slips through your letter slot, written by another “UDflugt traveller”.”
Århus Stiftstidende (DK), The Invisible Reality Show #3

“It was very nice to hold a rabbit-girl’s hand and walk down Vesterbro Street and quite unusual (…) you don’t know Vesterbro until you have closed your eyes during this bizarre city walk, which gives you the chance to meet plush rabbits. Or see angels from the 13th floor, high above the city!”
Information (DK), The Invisible Reality Show #4

International tours

2008
Sep.: SE!NEXT, Tromsø/ Norway (Hairstyle and Butterfly Effects)

2007 
Sep./Nov.:  Forum Internacional de Danca,
                   Panorama Dance Festival, and 
                   Bienal Internacional de Danca, 
                   Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza/Brazil (South South)
May/June: Haya Cultural Center, Amman/Jordan (Walking Poem)

2005
May/June: OEROL, festival for site specific theater (Terschelling, NL) – The Invisible Reality Show#1
Aug.: SE!NEXT ( Tromsø/ NO)- The Invisible Reality Show#2