My research is about Rope Design, the design of, but more importantly by the ropes. I have worked with ropes all my life in many different ways; sailing, circus, rigging, knots, etc. They are very important to me and the connection I feel with the ropes is deepened by the memories, fantasies and metaphors they carry with them. In my research I am looking at what they can do and who/what they can be. With, as well as without me, on stage, in my practice and in everyday life. I want to find an equal partnership with them where I acknowledge that we both have agency and where both of us constantly keep changing and learning from each other. I am looking into how they can change my movement and the way I look at the world. Through for example (movement) dialogues, writing and installations I discover more and more about our connection and what the space is where we overlap.

My way of working with circus is by looking at and playing with the relationship between body, object and space. I don’t want to master or control the objects I work with, but instead explore how those 3 elements; body, object and space affect and interact with each other. When I move, they answer… I react to that and discover the dialogue that we are forming together. The objects that I love to work with most are ropes. I create spaces with rope installations to explore and play in. On one hand for myself to practice and perform in, but also for an audience to interact with. This way they can experience circus in a different way, from a perspective that they usually don’t get to observe. I want to give the audience the possibility to develop their own connection to the ropes and I think that doesn’t work by just watching me perform. Through play they can be more open to relate to objects in a different way than they are used to. It doesn’t matter if you do circus or not, we can all use some more playfulness in our lives.

Her work is informed by New Materialism and Object Oriented Ontology and she employs philosophers like Graham Harman, Timothy Morton and Jane Bennet to dig deeper into her relationship with the ropes and how the ropes as objects have agency. Can this way of looking at the world change the way we look at circus and how we work with an apparatus?