Dear Minister of Culture Sven Gatz,
My name is Elisa Lenzi. I’m an Italian woman 48 years old! I’ve one child, I work in a theme family park!
Around 25 years ago (after 4 years of training in dance at ballet Rambert school and London contemporary dance school in London) I attended an audition in Paris for Troubleyn company! I didn’t know much about the company. I was young and willing to make dance my professional life!
The company offered me the chance to continue the audition in Belgium during a longer workshop! For me started a new era of my life! Everything was beautiful organized and very professional! A good comfortable accommodation and a great staff gave us all the information!
Then the work started at Troubleyn space!
It was the most challenging intense and difficult time! We had days full of dance class and many request where made in acting and different technique of dance and performing skills! I still remember the emotion of those days and each day someone would leave thinking that the request were too hard! At the end of the two weeks Jan came to us and said: “Okay, this is the way I work, you decide if you stay or go!” The dream of my life became reality: I was in a dance company!
Now I could go on and on with memory but what I wish I could explain is, in that company and my personal experience with Jan Fabre has been in that direction of a freedom of choices to follow a strong and powerful artist that gave me the chance to express myself trough my body!
I was not particularly talented dancer or such a strong personality but Jan always gave me the right motivation and support! I always felt respect and all the company was structured in a way that we all had the best conditions to be able to concentrate in our artistic life! The best accommodation, all the transfers well organized, the best physiotherapist, the possibility to choose the best ballet shoes and last but not less we had very good regular contract!
I personally loved the art of the creative work where we had so much freedom of expression! Later on, during the time of my dance school that I directed for 20 years I always used the techniques which I experience with Jan also to create choreography with kids!
It’s very hard to express systematically and I apologize for my bad English writing, but I wish I could pass through how the kind of work which I lived in those years of my life has fulfilled my life!
I left the company as a personal choice when I felt the need to a deep change of my life! No pressure was ever made on me, a deep respect and comprehension even when I decided to leave!
Now I’m a mother with a ‘normal’ life but I still remember with intense gratitude the time and the sublime emotions that I have experienced in that magic place that was the stage that Jan was creating around us!
Elisa Lenzi