photo: Isabelle van Putten
Why we decided to get a dog
love songs for friendship and survival (2027)
Why we decided to get a dog is a vocal performance for two voices, two guitars and one genie (aerial work platforms). It is a collection of serenades to chosen family: serenades to the friends with whom you want to raise a dog, for whom you would bear a child, with whom you dó want to celebrate Christmas or marry platonically.
Chosen family is a term from the queer community. It describes a loving relationship between people without a blood tie or romantic motive. The term is a survival strategy: many people from the LGBTQIA+ community are excluded from their own families or are not fully accepted. Friends and fellow sufferers take over the tasks that one expects from a family but does not receive. These chosen siblings replace the blood family. What is the counterpart to the heteronormative expectation of a traditional family life? Where does a queer family begin and where does it become homonormative?
'Queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it), but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.
bell hooks
sibling links non-normative forms of love and togetherness to the normative serenade. As singers and composers, they explore what the musical frequency of a serenade does and how it changes relationships in space. A serenade is usually a solo dedicated to one person, who preferably receives it in the same space. It is an ode, but also a hostage situation: a power relationship in time and melody. In its voice and music research, sibling focuses on the transmitting principle of the serenade, but also on the receiving principle of the person for whom the song is performed. What happens when you sing to each other at the same time? Can a serenade also be a duet or a polyphonic piece? What does a queer serenade sound like?
The serenade and the duality between singer and recipient are often visually translated into differences in height. Think of the lover singing to his beloved beneath the balcony, or the pop star picking someone out of the audience to perform his love ballad, or standing on a chair to receive your birthday song. In Why we decided to get a dog, the image consists of two chosen siblings and two genies. The genies bring a mechanical possibility to the balcony, to elevation and proportion. Scenographically, they co-create the love dance and redefine the proportions: elevating another, being lifted up, buzzing yourself up or bringing yourself down.
A new duet by studio sibling, coming out in Spring 2027
Concept, composition & performance Timo Tembuyser & Hélène Vrijdag (studio sibling) Artistic team TBC
Production studio sibling Coproduction Theater Rotterdam & DeSingel Antwerp & Club Gewalt & Performancecollectief URLAND With the support of De Coproducers