Robert Steijn & Frans Poelstra
Lost in Space/The Feeling of being Home in an always-changing world

The feeling of home in an always-changing world How to create a sense of home in an environment where people from different backgrounds, cultures and countries come together to coexist creatively? This research-question in the field of contemporary dance becomes more and more urgent since nationalistic politicians dictated the historic roots of a nation as the dominant culture, to which everyone has to adapt. We need other strategies, the strategies of the heart, of the dream, of taking serious not to take your self always so serious. Contemporary dance becomes a wonderful field where we can test creative ways of coexisting together without getting stuck in power games. United sorry wants to create a Coaching Project in which we investigate the notion of home, with space for individual doubts and desires, for playfulness, and respect for differences. How to explore this feeling home in movement, songs, texts, installations, performances? Yes, we wonder, when do we feel home in our body, in our mind, in a space, which we have to share with more people, and when do we feel home with people we can’t immediately understand? This Coaching Project is a continuation of the research united sorry started this year to look for a new ecological awareness to confront ourselves with nationalistic propaganda. It is their attempt to translate the power of the sensual connection as provoked by Eros and silence as a force to change. Listening as a political act, poetry as a tool to change the mind. united sorry / Frans Poelstra & Robert Steijn United sorry is collaboration between Mister United (Frans Poelstra) and Deejay Sorry (Robert Steijn). In our publicity we present ourselves as a company who "brings semi-intellectual/semi-sentimental and rudimentary-conceptual events in the field of arts." Originally coming from dance, now we make work which mixes dance with theatre, music and visual arts in a way which makes people think: ”Do I dream, is this really possible or at least acceptable?” Our first public appearance as united sorry was in "I am in concert", a nostalgic disco-event, which we made especially for a jazz club in Oslo (Coda festival/ October 2003). For the theatre stage we introduced ourselves as theatre people with a long history in the performance "Frans Poelstra, his dramaturge and Bach" (Vienna, ImPulsTanz 2004). We still tour this performance (more then 50 performances up until now) to show the public where we come from. The first time we mixed dance, live-music and visual arts in a concert happened with the Viennese musician Martin Siewert. Together we made the six hours long performance "Hosting Matt Mullican", in the context of his exhibition Model Architecture in the Lentos-museum, Linz (Choreographical Platform Austria, February 2006). The second theatre performance of united sorry, "feminine delight" (co-produced by Steirischer Herbst and Tanzquartier Wien, premiered in October 2007) is also in collaboration with Martin Siewert. A pilot for this piece was the one-off performance "Dan, Martha, Trisha, Frans and Robert" in the context of Wieder und Wider (Tanzquartier Wien/Mumok November 2006). And we also performed together with Martin Siewert the six hours performance "Nous sommes très petits (face à la montagne)" in an installation of the visual artist Nadia Lauro, during ImPulsTanz 2008 (Kunsthalle Project Space). We created "How low can you go" for Tanzquartier’s (Precise) Woodstock of Thinking in September 2008, which was also presented at the Choreographical Platform Austria in Graz, in Frankfurt Mousonturm and in the Melkweg Amsterdam. Also for Tanzquartier Wien we made "Dancing the thin line" within the frame of Gravity – Skizzen zu Tanz und Gesellschaft. We performed a new version of "Dancing the thin line" in Graz at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, within the frame of the exhibition absolutely free. Our new theatre piece "Lost in space" will have its premiere in the end of April 2010 at Brut in Vienna. We started a collaboration with the visual artist Roland Seidel, which lead to the community art project for the public space: Maria Theresia entdeckt die zeitgenössiche Kunst (Brut, September 2008, in collaboration with the dancers/choreographers Anne Juren, Pieter Ampe and the theatre company Theater im Bahnhof). With Theater im Bahnhof we made a small project in an empty apartment in the village Oberzeiring in Styria, about how to heal neglected furniture (October 2008). We give workshops at among others School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, Centre National de Danse Contemporaine (CNDC) in Angers, Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, Co-operative Dance Education Centre - Pilot Project Tanzplan Berlin and Tanzquartier Wien. We also work in solo’s and collaborate with other artists under our own name but always with each other’s support. www.unitedsorry.com