Press

The coffee drinkers are elegant and mundane, but also cold, cloned like two reflections from the other side of a mirror. They continue to drink their coffee (visibly an aphrodisiac) sitting at a table before moving on to other chilly pleasures. The more they play at seduction the more their bodies’ muscular force increases. The more they are themselves the less human they seem.

This is a powerful work full of irony that lies at the intersection between being and appearing to be, between fire and ice. Savoury and exultant, like a strong dose of freshly brewed coffee!

Thomas Hahn, Danser Mag / April 2011

 

Opnening to the seemingly innocent scene of two bleach blonde 'Stepford wives-esque' women sitting by their dining tables, the audience is led through the meticulously arranged process of drinking coffee that these characters have composed. However dry and unwaveringly stern expressions suggest that there is something more to this than a simple afternoon drink (...).

Peppered with simple humour, excellently executed, and combining gesture and movement unconventionally, The coffee drinkers is a unique and utterly refreshing performance piece. A notable inclusion in the Melbourne Festival line-up, this Belgian duo is one to watch.

Nithya Iyer, Melbourne.Arts.Fashion / October 2014

 

Two women in matching platinum-blond wigs and bright pink jackets, looking like escapees from a Vanessa Beecroft photoshoot take their coffee in identical scroll-leg coffee tables. The ritual is very elaborate, passionate, and symmetrical - each to each. It's mesmerizing, the two women, weird sisters, with their mirrored expressions of sensual delight (...).

It's a terrible cliché to describe something as David Lynch-like, and it's usually an injustice. But The Coffee Drinkers, choreographed by company founders Nicole Mossoux and Patrick Bonté, really does have an eerie resemblance to Twin Peaks (...). The humour and the symbols are similar, but The Coffee Drinkers goes further in digging out the absurdity (...). From the coffee lounge, the scene shifts to a sort of backroom, where a third dancer appears, a tyro coffee drinker - an initiate. Dance gives way completely to theater, with a spoof horror twist; the ritual of coffee drinking rises to a full-blown brown mass - or black mass, au lait.

Andrew Fuhrmann, Daily Review / October 2014