Prone is a performance piece for three dancers, to be performed in a space the audience shares with the performers; the spectators take turns lying prone on the floor among the dancers, while the rest remain seated, thus rendering the division of space of performance relative and creating the double immediate experience of performance. 

The voyeuristic or external vision of the seated spectator implies not only spatial but also ideological separation of the viewer and the viewed. The dancer's experience, at the same time, is a vision akin to the view of a landscape, with the environment physically displaced. 

Lying prone on the floor, on the other hand, the spectator comes to understand the privilege of his position, but also a certain mercy and affection, so that ideological and rhetorical indications pale and fall by the wayside. His bodily position within what is usually taken to be performance space makes him, if only temporarily, the object of another spectator's vision. The production highlights the fact that the viewers are the axis of any device, that some notice what others miss. Moreover, when the spectator is lying prone in performance space, he comes close to the performer's physiological processes. As the performers touch, jump over, or crawl across the bodies of the audience, the spectator has the impression that he can exchange a lot with them, that he can even gain access into their thoughts.

Prone is one of Jasperse's works exploring the basic mechanisms of experience. How to create a structure that implies the experience of the audience as an integral phenomenon of exchange, within the loose confines of dance performance art? He is interested in the nature of perception, meaning construction, the role of the artist in search of peace and quiet in the consensually irritating and semantically binding socio-cultural micro-space. The key component of Jasperse's work is the dialogue of individuals who create concepts without compulsion.

Prone invites the audience to examine their experience of the dance, as well as of their own changed perception outside the theatre. The choreography focuses on meticulous movements, often repeated, which requires dancers who are exceptionally skilled both in dancing and in handling the audience, and who are equally at ease working with material and with each other. Jasperse believes that the same line of enquiry can lead towards an understanding of both aesthetic and political world that we inhabit. This production offers different human parameters, it includes moments that are hilarious, as well as those of frivolous eroticism.

John Jasperse, dancer and performance artist, began his career in Lisa Kraus and Dancers (1985-1987). From 1988 to 1989 he worked in Belgium with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's troupe Rosas, taking part in the production Ottone, Ottone. From 1987  to 1993 he worked with Jennifer Monson in her productions and on improvised projects. Under his artistic lead, John Jasperse Company steadily becomes more and more visible on the international dance scene. Of their ten productions thus far, the following have been best received: Eyes Half Closed (1991), Excessories (1995), Waving to you from here (1997), Giant Empty (2001), just two dancers (2003). His choreographies include See Through Knot for the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation; The Rest for the Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv, and à double face for the Lyon Opéra Ballet.