In THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER, the dancer is defined as a pure performer, striving after perfection. Subjected to a complex, mathematical, vigorous and exhausting choreography executed in forced uniformity, the eight dancers ultimately slip up. And then their masks fall.
The American photographer Philippe Halsman once said: “When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.” Jan Martens takes this stand as a starting point for THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER and exposes through the jump the person behind the dancer. Thanks to its radical choreographic form, THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER reveals the audience’s perception of dancers, choreographers, spectators and the current cultural policy. Where does the thin line between art and entertainment lie? Who are we as an audience when we contemplate the suffering of dancers from the theatre like a bullfight in an arena? What do we want to get as audience? Do we want to experience an intensity that we do not feel in our everyday life? Do we want to experience beauty that is perhaps not visible in our everyday life? Is contemporary dance striptease for the elite? THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER makes the viewer shift in his position: from being merely subjected to the experience to actively reflecting on it.
Check out the show page to learn more – and see a portrait gallery of the dancers, before and after performing.
Office Hours: Coming Soon
Get Into It
Get Thee to the LIbrary
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Kathleen Coessens, editor, Experimental Encounters in Music and Beyond (2017).
Mark Evans, Konstantinos Thomaidis, and Libby Worth, Time and Performer Training (2019).
André Lepecki, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement (2006).
Laurence Louppe and Sally Gardner, Poetics of Contemporary Dance (2010).
Sébastien Tutenges, Intoxication: An Ethnography of Effervescent Revelry (2022).
Notes from the Dancers
Ilse Ghekiere | June 2025
reflections on THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER
“Ten years later, I still carry these memories in my body. So strong, so deep.”
e-tcetera | Feb 25, 2025
Six short stories on being a performer and what we (don’t) own
“When I tell people that I performed in The Dog Days Are Over, a piece by the Belgian choreographer Jan Martens that toured around the world, I’m often met with disappointment: ‘Oh, but you weren’t part of the original cast.’”
Read All About It
Ottawa Citizen | Oct 23, 2015
Dance review: Jan Martens takes them to the limit and beyond
Belgian choreographer Jan Martens explores the uneasy relationship between the creator’s will, the performer’s execution and the spectator’s gaze.
The Georgia Straight | Oct 21, 2015
Jan Martens's The Dog Days Are Over sees dancers leap to their limit
“In Paris we had a woman screaming in the middle of the show, ‘This is torture!’”
Daily Hive | Dec 19, 2017
Dance Review: Jan Martens makes us jump for joy
There was joy and excitement being radiated from the stage while the audience could do nothing but feel exhilaration and support for such exquisite performers.
Walker | Mar 11, 2018
The Meritocracy of Jumping: Penelope Freeh on The Dog Days Are Over
This layering is magnificent, borrowing a page from Cunningham and Cage.
Extra Credit
The dog days of summer mark the hottest days of the year in the northern hemisphere, from July to August. The “dog” in question is Sirius, the Dog Star – the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major. Sirius rises with the sun during the dog days, making it the morning star for these hot weeks. The dog days’ association with sweaty, exhausting heat is apt for the content of this particular work.
NEON, PERSPEX, TRANSLUCENT FILM, ALUMINUM
770 CM × 330 CM × 10 CM
“The Dog Days are Over” shares its title with two earlier notable works. New Yorkers may recognize the work of Ugo Rondinone from his 2001 “Hell, Yes!” installation on the New Museum facade (reprised in 2007-2010). His “Dog Days Are Over” was installed in London, where Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine, regularly passed it on her commute over the Waterloo Bridge. The title became the inspiration and chorus for one of her most notable, anthemic songs – which she recently performed onstage at NYU Skirball as part of the Ally Coalition’s annual concert and fundraiser – and a version of the work appears in the music video.