Ever since ancient Greece, the female voice has often been presented as anything from superfluous to irritating.  That is what Anne Carson wrote in her essay "The Gender of Sound" (1992). In it, she exposes how patriarchal culture has sought to silence women by ideologically associating the female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death. 
When creating his new performance VOICE NOISE, Jan Martens took inspiration from Carson's work. A number of innovative, unknown and/or forgotten female voices from the past hundred years of music history will here be given a stage. In doing so, he brings Martens' efforts to shape an alternative canon to the next level.

In his recent productions - any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones and FUTUR PROCHE - Jan Martens, who previously has worked with large groups, returns to a production for a small ensemble of six dancers. They confront recordings in which the human voice can be heard humming, soothing, screeching, whispering and singing. Gradually, they discover their own voice. 

• Jan Martens (born in 1984 in Belgium) studied at the Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg and graduated from the Dance programme at the Artesis Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp in 2006. He has since 2010 been creating his own choreographic work, which has been performed for national and international audiences with increasing regularity over the years. His obsession with numbers, geometry and patterns meets the unique physical languages of his performers, leading to a rediscovered interest in dance itself, in detail and subtlety, in redefining grace and in elegance.