A body that remembers, resists and reorganises itself becomes the starting point for 42, a choreographic work by Anne Juren that approaches relation as a shifting, unstable condition. Taking its title from the number often framed as an answer to fundamental questions, the piece unfolds instead as something that refuses resolution. Voice, movement and perception form a fluid constellation that continuously rearranges itself. The work follows 41, premiered in Vienna in December 2018, where Juren examines the relationship between the body and its representation, and extends an ongoing inquiry also present in her series Private Anatomy Lessons. Here, attention turns more fully towards relation itself, towards what connects and separates at once.

An open and self organising structure shapes the work as it unfolds through fragmentation, interruption and reconfiguration. Blackouts punctuate the space, bodies appear in parts, movements drift apart and gather again without settling into a stable whole. A song composed and performed by Juren moves through the piece like a thread that never fully closes, surfacing in fragments, dispersing, returning. What might be perceived as a composition remains suspended, held together by a desire for coherence that is never fulfilled. Within this shifting field, the body follows its own logic, at times diverging from intention, at times producing unexpected alignments, as if thought were distributed across movement, voice and space.

Relation emerges as something that cannot be fixed or fully known. Proximity and distance, coherence and dispersion coexist without resolving into unity. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s notion of a poetics of relation, Juren sustains opacity rather than dissolving it. Theatre becomes a space where not everything needs to be clarified, where experience can remain partial, layered and open. Within this shared yet unstable terrain, a sense of being together takes shape, not through sameness, but through the ongoing negotiation of difference.