Scio me nihil scire (I know that I know nothing)
Socrates

The Dutch writer Nescio [J.H.F. Grunloh] kept a journal in his later years in which he described in unadorned prose his daily outings in the countryside around Amsterdam. As a youth he belonged to a pastoral Dutch commune named Walden - after the book by American Henry Thoreau, himself a lifelong journal writer. Both writings  feature a remarkable emphasis on detail, on the qualities of modest things, and on perception of nature itself as a liberating and redeeming force.

It is this same natural world which is seriously threatened today by neglect of the vital symbiotic relationship shared with the planet. Nature’s fragility becomes more evident with each day. This movement work illustrates the fundamental fragility of natural existence in three elegiac solos, going out and coming back.

This two-part performance proceeds like an outing described in a nature journal – movements and gestures as simple events, weather or landscape, danced with a dispassionate,  but expressive consciousness which nevertheless awakens the viewers senses and emotions. Silent movement as close-reading: observant, expectant, as open-ended as the nature around.

Ne Scio - No I know

Concept, choreography & mime: Rob List

dance: Constance Neuenschwander
mime: Tjebbe Roelofs
sound: Jaap Lindijer
premiere December 2005 [Nescio part 1] and November 2007 [Nescio Series]

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