Meet Roman Van Houtven
Club Toulouse
Smells Like Circus | March 2022
“it is of vital importance that we keep on creating queer- and gender-related work. Because they might offer a little bit of understanding and take away a bit of discomfort from people who are not acquainted with gender related subjects.”
What inspires you?
“A while ago I would have answered this question with the word ‘everything’. As long as there was a good story, idea, concept, I was willing to try anything. Mostly since I believed this would be the way to expand my skills and knowledge and get as much diverse input as I potentially could. This idea has changed over the last two years. Because a certain necessity and urgency have manifested themselves in what I do and what I want to do in the future. Noticing what happens in our society when it comes to LGBTQIA+ matters, fuels the conviction that certain things need to be addressed and talked about. Intolerance, discrimination, gay-bashing, ignorance. These are just a few of the tendencies we cannot help but notice. And they worry me. Sicken me. Leave me distraught. But then, like the dearly departed Princess Leia once said: take your broken heart, make it into art. So I would say: the urgency I feel inspires and drives me. “
Do you consider your art in relation to your identity or life? If so, how?
‘Both the creation of Club Toulouse and the projects I’m currently busy with for the next couple of years, are very queer- and gender-related. I think this has to do with two main reasons. On one side I always attempt to go to the core of who I am and the core of what drives me to create and realize certain things. And in that core, gender and queer related subjects drive and inspire me constantly -my personal gender identity and sexual orientation, and how I experience those. And I constantly wonder how I, with my personal experience and story, can contribute to us as a society in taking necessary steps forward when it comes to inclusion and tolerance. How we can have a dialogue. And how we can get certain messages across. Which is in direct connection to my second main motive which drives me. The constitution of our society when it comes to LGBTQIA+ related issues, problems, tendencies, etc. A society that, although it is framed by a solid legal base that is supposed to protect everyone and treat everyone equally, holds a common perception and tendencies which contradict that legal frame of equality. More specific in the heads and hearts of people. It worries me that online discriminatory trolling leads to verbal aggression on the street. That verbal aggression leads to physical bashing. You can fill on what the next step of that trajectory might be.’
‘In order to counter those tendencies, it is of vital importance that we keep on creating queer and gender-related work. Because they might offer a little bit of understanding and take away a bit of discomfort with people who are not acquainted with gender-related subjects.’
How did you get started out as an artist/ dancer?
“I started taking dance classes at the age of 8 because back then my mom couldn’t help but notice that I was dancing constantly. She basically forced me to take a tryout dance class in our local dance school, and I absolutely adored it. So I kept on dancing. And when I was 17, I realized that dance, movement and choreography were the things that made me most happy and were probably the only things I wanted to pursue in my higher education. So I auditioned. Coming from regular secondary school education, I took a leap in audition processes in multiple schools and eventually got accepted into PARTS, where I trained for 4 years. A process which was incredibly intense and broadened my horizon in every possible way. Not only physically, but also emotionally and intellectually. It forced me to take a very close look at myself, at who I am and what I do physically, but also how I position myself in the world.”
“After graduating from PARTS I participated in a couple of choreographies and dance projects and noticed I wanted to do ‘more’. I was eager to learn and experience how text and spoken word could potentially contribute to the physical language of the body. That’s when I got approached by Carly Wijs, a Dutch director, actress and writer who offered me a role in her piece “Us/Them”, which was created by BRONKS, theatre for young audiences in Brussels. And it turned out to be the best of both worlds, since it was very physical and movement-based but also used a lot of text, which altered each other. Playing “Us/Them” gave me the drive to pursue that combination in the future. The conviction to keep on investing and researching what that combination of physical and spoken language is. How these can alter each other and how one of the two or both of them can serve the message of the story you want to get across. Over the last couple of years, this has become the fundamental base of every project or practice I take on.”
Are you working on any future projects at the moment?
“I’m in the midst of setting out new projects. Researching, writing, discovering and then pitching it to potential partners. But what they all have in common is a queer related theme. They all tackle a queer angle and all, in their own way, attempt to touch upon different subjects that I think should be talked about. Like I mentioned earlier, I feel an urgency to get certain conversations going, and these outlined new projects are my personal response (or attempt) to them.”
