14/11/2025
The Sleep of Reason
Núria Guiu, Claudia Solano Watson & de 2nd-year students of the Bachelor Dance, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp
Durational performance
14/11, 6-8PM, DE SINGEL, Kunstenplein - FREE ENTRY
15/11, 3-5PM, Bozar, in the exhibition Luz y sombra. Goya and Spanish Realism - FREE ENTRY WITH EXHIBITION TICKET
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Emerging from a week-long creation workshop, The Sleep of Reason draws inspiration from the unsettling and satirical universe found in Goya’s work – particularly the engravings Los Caprichos and Los Disparates, created during the later years of his life, when the artist had become deaf. The dancers bring this imagery to life by inhabiting a “goyesque” body, merging Goya’s world with traces of their own affective, personal, and social conflicts.
The title, borrowed from the engraving El sueño de la razón produce monstruos [The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters], suggests a state where imagination – and its monsters – awakens as reason drifts. Goya worked in a society marked by censorship and rigid hierarchies. Bound to royal patronage, he turned to irony and the grotesque to veil his critique, using absurdity and fantasy to expose human folly and the corruption of power.
Throughout the performance, the bodies morph and transform - between human and non-human, creature and monster – at once transcendental and dramatic, yet casual and quotidian. Over the course of one hour, a loop of shifting postures and images unfolds across different rooms. The performance runs continuously and repeats, for a total duration of two hours.
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A performance by the 2nd-year students of the Bachelor Dance, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp
Commissioned by EUROPALIA
Co-produced by Bachelor Dance – Royal Conservatoire Antwerp
Choreography: Núria Guiu in collaboration with Claudia Solwat and the dancers
