Writing about dance can be intimidating. But everybody knows how to write a letter. You usually start with the word Dear. Then you share your thoughts and perhaps update your recipient about how you're doing. There may be some questions for the reader. You finish with a kind word and a signature.
Initiated by Claire Lefèvre, Letters for later is a writing project which allows audience members to write open letters about the performances programmed at brut. Addressed to the artists, to the piece, or to the world, these letters offer a gentle and personal alternative to review-writing, inviting spectators to share their impressions from a place of care and curiosity, while also acknowledging their subjectivity.
This project aims to offer a plurality of perspectives upon the performances. It welcomes questions without demanding answers. It embraces intimate thoughts and experiences as a valid form of feedback and proposes its own time-frame: the letters will be available on brut's webpage all season, to be read on their own or as a collection, right after the shows or months later. Leaving behind a written trace of each performance and the imprint it had on one audience member.
The Letters for later will be written by members of brut’s new audience club BEATE. Meeting regularly during the whole season, BEATE accompanies rehearsals, projects and creative processes, creates dialogues with artists and takes part in brut's program decisions.
Claire Lefèvre is a French choreographer and performer working in Vienna (AT). A self-titled language nerd, Claire also teaches writing workshops, and is a contributing writer for Springback Magazine.
