http://www.vti.be/en/http/%252Fwww.unionsuspecte.be

Union Suspecte is a young, rebellious, challenging theatre and dance company. It is known for its radical, straight to the point performances like Onze Lieve Vrouw van Vlaanderen, Singhet ende Weset Vro and We People.

Union Suspecte represents the sort of theatre that simultaneously hurts and heals, that delivers theatrical hammer-blows to its audience in order to rub their noses in their fragile social status. Onze Lieve Vrouw van Vlaanderen, for example, is a performance that flips between Culture with a capital C and populist ‘emotional stuff’. The company flirts with breakdance, Vivaldi and African beats. Music and dance are used to enhance the text. Onze Lieve Vrouw van Vlaanderen chronicles a family’s history interwoven with autobiography and fantasy, the Far West and Islam, everyday situations and epic tales. A fresh performance full of playful, absurd and politically-coloured images, with the Virgin Mary as its common thread.

Union Suspecte believes wholeheartedly in the emancipatory role that culture can play in society. As such, it aims to show the complexity of our rapidly-changing intercultural society, but without approaching it from any particular point of view, and without offering easy solutions. Union Suspecte doesn’t believe in a dominant perspective, but aims to rewrite existing – often Flemish and city-based – stories from a new and challenging point of view. This search for a ‘new’ voice doesn’t stop with the interweaving of different types of content, but continues in the crossover of genres and disciplines. Union Suspecte does not use interculturalism, urban values and identity merely as its subject matter; it actually embodies them.

Union Suspecte offers highly visual theatre that for years has been enthusiastically ensuring the company a unique position in the Flemish cultural field. The piece Singhet ende weset vro continues this tradition. Singhet ende weset vro is inspired by a songbook of the same name from a distant Flemish past. In the past, the book played a crucial role in group singing in schools and youth groups and within the family circle. But why do people find it so important to sing together? And what role does music play in the creation of a feeling of togetherness? Singhet ende weset vro offers musical theatre in an authentic Christmas decor, but still leaves the audience with an uncomfortable feeling about the Flemish-nationalistic connotations of some of the lyrics. In this performance, Union Suspecte has tried to remove the negative connotations with which the modern world has invested these symbols, so that anyone who feels like it can use them again without feeling guilt.

Union Suspecte is an open, bilingual collective with a core of four theatre-makers: Haider Al Timimi, Zouzou Ben Chikha, Ruud Gielens and Mourade Zeguendi, who wander their strong-willed artistic path together. Union Suspecte occupies a unique position on the Flemish stage due to its artistic multilingualism. The company brings people from different cultural and religious backgrounds together and is especially focussed on working with young people. This has already led to surprising new input on several occasions.

Union Suspecte creates a theatrical rainbow of dance, pictorial and/or text-based performances. This might be the colourful mixture of clichés in Onze Lieve Vrouw van Vlaanderen and Singhet ende Weset Vro, the search for harmony in Utopeace and Broeders van Liefde, or the confrontational frictions of We People and BVBA Borderline. The Suspecte Festival is the place where this artistic multilingualism is at its most apparent. It is a chance for interventions and work-in-progress to be presented in a humorous mosaic of highly-individual voices and radical ideas.