Frans Poelstra remembers: ‘You tried again to find out who you really are — on stage, I mean. A dancer? You know better. You’ve always been an actor, someone who spent a lifetime pretending to be a dancer. And yes, they all believed it. Europe, the US, Brazil, Japan — the festivals, the applause, the bow at the end. They all saw a dancer. But you knew it was always a role, a fiction you slipped into so well that even you sometimes forgot you were acting.’

A friend once told Frans Poelstra, ‘At one moment, I saw six dancers – and one human being who was dancing.’ He meant it as praise, of course, but the dancer/performer took it as failure, as a sign that he wasn’t convincing enough. And then the curtain fell – not on stage, but in life. Something in him broke open. Poelstra couldn’t stop talking, explaining, repeating the same story to anyone who happened to be there. Until his friends finally said, ‘Frans, please, shut up! Put it on stage.’ He resisted at first. But now, there he is, Frans Poelstra, of all people, the man who swore never to turn pain into performance, that gifted, witty storyteller, that role model for generations. Now, at 71 years of age, he is still standing in front of an audience. THIS MOMENT WITH YOU is his take on what is left – not the dancer, not the actor, but a man trying to be both, without pretending anymore. Maybe that’s what dancing really is: this moment with you.

As a child, Frans Poelstra spent more time staring into Amsterdam’s canals than sitting in classrooms. He never graduated, but he also never gave up on his dreams. Finally, he decided in favour of the theatre – the only place where you can live your dreams professionally. As a performer, Poelstra wants to dance through all kinds of virtual realities of thoughts and associations. In the past, he regularly worked with artists such as Mark Tompkins, Vera Mantero and Robert Steijn/united sorry. He has lived in Vienna since 2004 and worked with local artists such as Oleg Soulimenko, Christine Gaigg, Andrea Maurer, Michikazu Matsune and Anna Maria Nowak. He is also part of the inclusive school art project Mellow Yellow. For THIS MOMENT WITH YOU, Frans Poelstra is happy to continue his collaboration with Robert Steijn.