Background
Pieter T'Jonck works as an architect, but he is also active as a dance and theatre critic for various media since 1983: Veto (1983-85), De Standaard (1985-2000), De Tijd (2001-06), De Morgen (since 2006) and Klara (since 2006). Furthermore, he regularly published about performing arts, architecture, and urbanism in magazines and journals such as Etcetera, DWB, Ballettanz, and A+, and contributed to books. After 25 years of continuous activity as a newspaper critic, T'Jonck has become an indispensable witness of the performing arts in Flanders and elsewhere.
Several thematic strands meet in T'Jonck's oeuvre. Dance and theatre concern representation, they allow us to gain insight in the world and ourselves. During the 18th century, theatre (both as a space and as a concept) was a social laboratory in which new models of living together were being explored. Although this notion of theatre is no longer valid today, T'Jonck has a particular interest in the transformation of these concepts and practices in today's performing arts. Fuelled by a historical awareness, newspaper reviewing is T'Jonck's medium to probe the manifold ways in which dance and theatre create a portrait of the contemporary world. Criticism as a testimony that links fascination for what is still all too close with the need to take distance and develop a language that facilitates analysis.
The continuity of T'Jonck's critical activity for newspapers is the starting point of Sarma's anthology. The anthology includes all T’Jonck reviews and interviews for De Tijd (May 2001-February 2006), De Morgen (February 2006-today) and De Standaard (1985-2001), essays for journals such as Etcetera and Ballettanz, book contributions...
In dialogue with Sarma's editorial team, T'Jonck will create a reading trajectory of about fifty texts from his oeuvre that appear to be central to him as an author. These stepping stones include a discussion of artists he has been following closely (Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, amongst others), reviews tracing historical moments (e.g., Forced Entertainment's first passage in Belgium), or texts which played a role in the development of his thinking about performing arts.