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Grace Ellen Barkey ( Surabaya, 1958) is a choreographer, dancer and actress who is part of Needcompany (Brussels). Theater maker / visual artist Jan Lauwers is her life partner, actress Romy Louise Lauwers and curator and writer Victor Lauwers are her children.

Training
Grace Ellen Barkey studied dance expression and modern dance at the Theaterschool in Amsterdam. After her education she worked as an actress and dancer.

Collaboration with Jan Lauwers and Needcompany
She choreographed several productions before she founded in 1986 the Brussels based performing arts collective Needcompany together with theater maker / visual artist Jan Lauwers. She became the collective's permanent choreographer. She not only created the choreography for various Needcompany productions but also performed in a number of them, and in other productions.

Own artistic work
Since 1992 she also creates her own productions, which are situated at the interface between theater, dance, performance and visual arts. With these productions she has steadily and successfully built an international career. The productions of Grace Ellen Barkey are often surreal and permeated with absurd humor, because they deal with the great failure, the tragedy of a clown, or the helpless barbarity of sexuality. Music often occupies a central dramaturgical position, e.g. music by John Cage for One (1992), Sonic Youth for Chunking (2005), Thomas Adès for The Porcelain Project (2007), The Residents for MUSH-ROOM (2013) and Gustav Mahler for FOREVER (2016). She says about her work: "For me, it's primarily about images. I start from the material and the stage setting. Music is important, but my texts are not very narrative. They have more the abstraction of poetry." There is seldom a linear development in the productions of Grace Ellen Barkey. According to the Belgian critic Ive Stevenheydens "she creates rather performance-oriented dance performances in which personal memories, daily events and extraordinary experiences are merged into a dream world." Grace Ellen Barkey adds: "I try to create a new world in which I am very motivated by personal fantasies, the absurd and the grotesque. My performances want to move away from reality. The content is found between the lines, context arises from associations. There is therefore a logic in my performances, though it is rather poetic in nature."

Her first own productions
Her first pieces, One (1992), Don Quijote (1993) and Tres (1995) were co-produced by Theater am Turm (Frankfurt). One dealt in large part with Flaubert's travels to the Orient to escape his melancholy or to forget his love for Louise Colet. The production had an associative structure, and consisted of a combination of text fragments from Flaubert and Ivan Goncharov, songs, choreographies and small sketches. According to the Belgian publicist Pieter T'Jonck "Barkey evoked a mood rather than offering a penetrating analysis of the melancholy". Don Quijote was inspired by the novel El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes and Le Mythe de Sisyphe by Albert Camus. Barkey dressed the story up with songs and dances, but what stuck in the memory were mainly the few extremely moving images of the helpless main actor Mil Seghers. Tres was inspired by the writings of Jean Genet.The production consisted orginally of spoken texts and characters from Genet, but a conflict with the copyright association that represents Genet's publisher Gallimard made the use of these texts impossible at the last moment.This forced Grace Ellen Barkey to find last minute other texts, and to re-edit the production. According to Pieter T'Jonck this probably had a negative impact on the cohesion of Tres; the production suffered from vague sketchiness. Shortly afterwards Stories (Histoires/Verhalen) (1996) followed. Like in the previous three productions, texts from world literature, this time from the novel Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy, form the basic pattern of Stories. Grace Ellen Barkey associates on the text material through improvisation with a group of actors / dancers. Other texts, but also the music and the decor form a closely knit theatrical fabric, that is difficult to interpret unequivocally.

Away from literary texts as basic material
Also her following production RoodRedRouge (1998) was inspired by literary texts, this time texts by Jeroen Brouwers and Paul Auster. But with this production Grace Ellen Barkey's work starts to take a different direction. RoodRedRouge (1998) does no longer refer to an author or work, but is derived more from her youth and stories her father told her. The production follows two different tracks: on one hand her personal experiences and memories from her country of birth, Indonesia, and on the other hand a lonely man without memories. With the productions RoodRedRouge (1998) and Few Things (2000), the work of Grace Ellen Barkey became increasingly international. Few Things received much acclaim, not only in Belgium but also internationally. In between Rood Red Rouge (1998) and Few Things (2000) she also worked on De wonderbaarlijke mandarijn (1999), but with that production she clashed again with the copyright legislation. It was based on the one act pantomime ballet with the same name that was composed by Béla Bartók. After a try-out in New York Bartók's heir demanded a high penalty payment for every new performance of the production. Barkey adjusted the performance drastically, but found the result artistically unsatisfactory. Few Things (2000) is a reworked version of De wonderbaarlijke mandarijn (1999); instead of using Bartók's composition the music in the production varies from György Ligeti, Sonic Youth, Karlheinz Stockhausen to Tricky. The Belgian dance critic and dramatic advisor Jeroen Peeters wrote about the production: "The cross-linking of looking, greed and power forms a red thread in 'Few things', a lot of mime and movement material is conceived from there. Where words fall short, Barkey puts in a lot of dance to give the drama some tension, say to keep the desire alive." According to Pieter T'Jonck the result is lively theater that does not betray Bartók's theme of death and desire.

Finding her won voice
With (AND) (2002) Grace Ellen Barkey found her own voice and transcended all boundaries of theater, dance and music. Like Few Things (2000) (AND) is again an adaption of an opera piece, this time of Puccinis Turandot. In order to avoid copyright problems, Grace Ellen Barkey kept this time far from the original work. From Puccinis Turandot there only remain a few sound patches and the story grid. In Few Things (2000) (AND) Grace Ellen Barkey departed from works by Bartok and Puccini to arrive, according to Pieter T'Jonck at "chaotic, almost grotty-like dance spectacles with a large dose of punk energy. Barkey shrugged the raw emotion hidden behind the polished surface of these familiar stories. With often staggering direct images as a result." Dutch Critic Elke Van Campenhout described (AND) as "a sparkling rock fairy tale, an inventive dance performance, a chunk of pure concert theater." Based on the performance that followed, Chunking (2005), Grace Ellen Barkey was nominated for the Flanders Culture Prizes of the Flemish Community. Like her previous production, Chunking also excels in unsettling images. But unlike Few Things and (AND) Chunking is not inspired by opera, but by Quatuor à cordes # 3 by Giacinto Scelsi and Kill your idols by Sonic Youth. For The Porcelain Project (2007) she created, together with visual artist and costume designer Lot Lemm, an installation that consists of hundreds of porcelain objects and integrated it in her choreography. The Dutch critic Sander Hiskemuller described the production as a work "that balances on the edge of visual art, performance and dance". In 2010, This is a little too small (for a bear) followed. One of the red threads in that surrealistic and absurd production, in which the puppets from Chungking return, is Frank Zappa's motto "To me, absurdity is the only reality".

and in 2013, both MUSH-ROOM, for which the American iconic avant-garde art collective The Residents wrote the music, and ''Raar? Maar Waar! (Weird? But Where!''), a dance performance for children. A few years later she made the dance performance FOREVER (2016), based on an interpretation of Gustav Mahler's Der Abschied (from Das Lied von der Erde).

Acclaim
The Belgian publicist Pieter T'Jonck wrote about Grace Ellen Barkey: "What distinguishes her from other theater makers, also from [Jan] Lauwers (despite many stylistic similarities and the same cast of actors) is a special tone. Without falling into irony or cheap ridiculation, Barkey always shows a refreshing lack of respect, a peculiar mixture of seriousness and frivolity, also and especially when she talks about the most melancholic topics." The performances of Grace Ellen Barkey toured in Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland.

Grace Ellen Barkeys was nominated for the Flemish Culture Award for Performing Arts 2005.

Lemm&Barkey
In 2004, Grace Ellen Barkey and visual artist and costume designer Lot Lemm started on the basis of their close artistic collaboration Lemm&Barkey: they design costumes (e.g., for De kamer van Isabella (Jan Lauwers/Needcompany, 2004), conceive the concept, image and decor for Barkey's performances and create museum installations.

Productions
Own werk:
 * One (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 1992)
 * Don Quijote (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 1993)
 * Tres (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 1995)
 * Stories (Histoires/ Verhalen) (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 1997)
 * RoodRedRouge (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 1998)
 * De wonderbaarlijke Mandarijn (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 1999)
 * Few Things (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2000)
 * AND (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2002)
 * Chunking (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2005)
 * The Porcelain Project (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2007)
 * This door is too small (for a bear) (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2010)
 * Raar? Maar Waar! (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2013)
 * MUSH-ROOM (Grace Ellen Barkey / Needcompany, 2013)

Co-creations:
 * The Porcelain Project Installation (Lemm&Barkey / Needcompany, 2006)
 * The Porcelain Object (Lemm&Barkey / Needcompany, 2008)
 * 18 videos (Lemm&Barkey / Needcompany, 2012)
 * FOREVER (Lemm&Barkey / Needcompany, 2016)
 * The Time Between Two Mistakes (Jan Lauwers, Grace Ellen Barkey en Maarten Seghers / Needcompany, 2017)

Other work:
 * Need to Know (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1987): performer
 * ça va (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1989): performer
 * Julius Caesar (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1990): choreografie, performer
 * Invictos (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1991): performer
 * Antonius und Kleopatra (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1992): choreographer, performer
 * Orfeo (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1993): choreographer
 * The Snakesong Trilogy - Snakesong / Le Voyeur (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1994): performer
 * Caligula (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 1997): performer
 * Needcompany's King Lear (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2000): performer
 * Images of Affection (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2002): performer
 * Goldfish Game (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2002): performer
 * No Comment (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2003): performer
 * The Lobster Shop (Jan Lauwers/Needcompany, 2006): performer
 * The House of Our Fathers (München) (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2007): performer
 * Het Hertenhuis (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2008): performer
 * Sad Face | Happy Face, Een Trilogie (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2008): performer
 * The House of Our Fathers (Mannheim) (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2011): performer
 * The House of Our Fathers (Leuven) (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2011): performer
 * De kunst der vermakelijkheid - internationale versie (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2011): performer
 * De kunst der vermakelijkheid - German version (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2011): performer
 * Marktplaats 76 (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2012): performer
 * 25 Moves (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2012): performer
 * The House of Our Fathers (Herrenhausen) (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2013): performer
 * All Tomorrow's Parties (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2014): performer
 * De blinde dichter (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2015): performer
 * The House of Our Fathers (Shanghai) (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2016): performer
 * Oorlog en terpentijn (Jan Lauwers / Needcompany, 2017): performer