Liza Baliasnaja – TRIEB

May 4 & 5

Arts Printing House, 17:00

Duration: 45 min.

Combining movement, animation, and poetry, TRIEB explores the qualities of human mind through the metaphor of the knife.  

Since the dawn of modernity, the notions of distinction and sharpness have been central to western ideal of the human mind. Inspired by the figurative use of sharpness with respect to thinking, Liza re-imagines the relation between body and mind as the one between body and knife. By means of poetry, animation, and movement TRIEB fantasizes about the limits of conceiving / sensing / imagining the world through the edge of a knife. The performance offers a journey of cutting through language, body, fabric, paper that discovers and bursts open the potential for an unusual order of things, for incision and insertion of new meaning. TRIEB, which is German for drive / desire / instinct, becomes the force behind the knife-mind that wants to test cut all that appears on its way including one’s own sense of the self. 

Liza Baliasnaja’s (she / her, 1994) work is shaped by interest in theoretical research and an expanded approach to choreographing. Seamlessly combining movement, language and philosophy, her works investigate shapes and patterns of thinking and reading the world. She is interested in questioning the historical, political and social fabrics that tailor our sense of the self. 

After completing her studies in dance at P.A.R.T.S, Liza obtained a BA in philosophy from the university of KU Leuven. Although her main focus is performance making, she enjoys navigating between performing, teaching, organizing and accompanying the processes of others. Most of her works have been conceived either in collaboration or in an ongoing dialogue with other artists. Her latest work, The Third Room, was made in collaboration with Christine De Smedt and Theo Livesey. 

As a performer, Liza collaborated with Ula Sickle, Eglė Budvytytė, Eszter Salamon, DD Dorvillier, Mårten Spångberg and Lenio Kaklea. She worked as an artistic assistant with Christine De Smedt, Myriam Van Imschoot and Eszter Salamon. She is active as a pedagogue and mentor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater, P.A.R.T.S and ISAC.