Is known that since six years the world is confronted with a drastic disappearance in the number of honeybee colonies. The cause or causes are not yet understood but "if the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live." (Albert Einstein)
I read the figure of the Queen in Gertjan’s performance as awakening call and figure of connection. The connection understood in both directions: each human being is called to become a Queen as the only manner in which change can be channelled. This realisation of the individual potential is towards arising of a common consciousness. The “stage” is a place where Gertjan deposits this fundamental research for connection. The stage is the experience of the opening and can be called also a spiritual experience, experience of integration.
In the tradition of Hermes Trismegistus is written, “ We must not be frightened of affirming that a man on earth is a mortal god and that a god in heaven is an immortal man”. The divine here is understood as the work of the Queen soul on earth united with the creative powers of its transformations that brings her to liberation.
Snejanka Mihaylova
Gertjan Van Gennip (1982 NL) Dutch artist and performer. Graduated at DasArts, Master of Theatre, Amsterdam. The author of numerous performances in which he gives life to “prophetic” figures, halfway between divine creatures and animals, which inhabit the space of revelation traced from visionary texts conceived by him. His creations The Honey Queen (2009) Above Below and the Place Between (2009), The Beginning (2010), Das Märchen (2011) have been performed in theatres and museum internationally, Rotterdamse Schouwburg (The Netherlands), Internazional Festival of Santarcangelo (Italy), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Les Urbaines (Lausanne, Switzerland), etc.