Category: Benelux

Contemporary Dance Highlights in Brussels, Amsterdam, the Hague, Luxembourg, Antwerp…

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Mediterranea Benelux

Marco da Silva Ferreira – F*cking Future

  • September 18th – 20th, 2025 Biennale Danse Lyon, Lyon
  • October 10th – 11th, 2025 PACT Zollverein, Essen
  • November 14th – 16th, 2025 Festival de Otoño, Madrid
  • November 20th – 21st, 2025 TANDEM, Douai
  • November 25th – 26th, 2025 La Condition Publique, Roubaix
  • November 29th, 2025 Espace des Arts, Chalon-sur-Saône
  • December 4th – 6th, 2025 TMP, Porto
  • December 12th – 13th, 2025 Charleroi Danse, Charleroi
  • February 20th – 22nd, 2025 CCB, Lisbon

70 minutes

Rigor and Freedom

© José Caldeira

F*cking Future searches the friction between militancy and militarization, exploring and challenging the systems that shape bodies and behaviors. On a quadrifrontal stage, drawing from those very same systems, a collective marches between rigidity and dilution, discipline and desire, invoking new forms of union and insurgency.

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Categories
France Benelux

Jan Martens – THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER 2.0

  • September 17th – 19th, 2025 Biennale Danse Lyon, Lyon
  • September 24th – 25th, 2025 Theater Rotterdam, Rotterdam
  • October 12th, 2025 Festival Aperto, Reggio Emilia
  • October 23rd – 24th, 2025 SPAF, Seoul
  • November 7th – 9th, 2025 National Theater NPAC-NTCH, Taipei
  • November 20th – 21st, 2025 La Comédie, Valence
  • November 26th – 27th, 2025 La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand, Clermont-Ferrand
  • December 2nd, 2025 Les Salins, Martigues
  • December 12th – 13th, 2025 TANDEM, Douai
  • January 13th, 2026 Schouwburg Concertzaal, Tilburg
  • January 20th, 2026 Parkstad Limburg Theaters, Heerlen
  • January 21st, 2026 Theater de Veste, Delft
  • January 31st, 2026 Grand Theatre, Groningen
  • February 3rd – 4th, 2026 VIERNULVIER, Ghent
  • February 11th – 12th, 2026 KLAP, Marseille
  • April 2nd – 3rd, 2026 ITA, Amsterdam
  • April 21st, 2026 centre culturel, Hasselt
  • April 22nd, 2026 centre culturel, Sint-Niklaas
  • April 24th – 25th, 2026 De Singel, Antwerp
  • May 5th – 7th, 2026 STUK, Leuven

Duration: unknown

The Dog Days Are Back

© Alwin Poiana

Thanks to its radical choreographic form, THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER revealed the audience’s perception of dancers, choreographers, spectators and the cultural policy at the time. Ten years on, these questions are still very much relevant due to current political and social trends: 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? 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.

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Benelux

Radouan Mriziga – Magec / the Desert

  • August 21st – 23rd, 2025 Tanz Im August, Berlin
  • October 3rd – 5th, 2025 Dream City Festival, Tunis
  • October 9th – 10th, 2025 Culturescapes, Basel
  • October 15th – 18th, 2025 Festival d’Automne, Paris
  • October 28th – 29th, 2025 Théâtre de Vidy, Lausanne
  • October 31st, 2025  Kurtheater, Baden
  • February 6th – 7th, 2026 De Singel, Antwerp

70 minutes

A Polyphony of Perspectives

© Louka Van Roy

Magec / the Desert is the second part of a new trilogy by Radouan Mriziga, inspired by mythological stories from the Amazigh culture, and in particular those who have a close relationship with the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, in terms of spirituality, art, philosophy, craft, and science.

In his work, Mriziga continues his practice of collective creation, where rhythm, text, movement, and sound become interwoven through the contributions of his collaborators. The choreography unfolds as a polyphony of perspectives, where individual experiences intersect to form a shared, multifaceted vision. Like the layered textures of the desert, the performance resists singularity, instead offering a complexity that is at once intellectual and deeply sensory.

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Categories
Benelux

TAO Dance Theater – 16 & 17

  • July 25th – 26th, 2025 Biennale Danza, Venice
  • August 9th, 2025 ImPulsTanz, Vienna
  • October 12th – 13th, 2025 Dialog Festival, Wrocław
  • October 16th – 17th, 2025 SPAF, Seoul
  • March 4th, 2026 Amare, The Hague
  • March 7th, 2026  International Theater Amsterdam, Amsterdam
  • March 10th, 2026 schrit_tmacher Festival, Heerlen
  • March 14th, 2026 Stadsschouwburg Utrecht, Utrecht
  • March 17th, 2026 SPOT Groningen, Groningen

70 minutes

The Latest Chapters of Numerical Series

© Fan Xi

This double bill from the TAO Dance Theater’s Numerical Series begins with a celebration of the dragon, a bringer of good look in China. Inspired by the Chinese dragon dance Loong, sixteen black-clad dancers from Beijing swirl through colourful light in the first piece, 16. And the seventeen bodies in 17, wearing black and white, activate their voices along with their movements, thereby turning themselves into a “mobile sound system”. With his minimalist yet virtuoso dance style, choreographer Tao Ye has found a path between tradition and futurism that brings the body and the mind into harmony.

TAO Dance Theatre’s choreographic Series of Numbers began in 2008 and has been invited onto the most important stages of the world, from the Lincoln Center Art Festival of New York to Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, as well as the Sydney Opera House and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Its minimalist aesthetic further codified Tao Ye and Duan Ni’s method, achieving an exasperated repetition that seeks truth in the body.

COMPANY WEBSITE
Categories
Benelux France

Alexander Vantournhout – FRAMES

  • June 25th – 28th, 2025 VIERNULVIER, Ghent
  • July 31st – August 5th, 2025 Theater Aan Zee, Ostend
  • August 19th – 21st, 2025 Noorderzon, Groningen
  • October 3rd – 5th, 2025 Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Schaerbeek
  • October 21st – 22nd, 2025 Circa Auch, Auch
  • April 8th – 12th, 2026 CENTQUATRE, Paris
  • April 18th – 19th, 2026 CC Maasmechelen, Maasmechelen
  • April 25th – 26th, 2026 Leietheater, Deinze
  • May 9th – 10th, 2026 CC Ter Dilft, Bornem
  • May 21st, 2026 ‘t Vondel, Halle
  • June 19th – 20th, 2026 De Spil, Roeselare
  • June 26th – 27th, 2026 Le Carreau, Forbach

Duration: unknown

Between Frame and Art

© Bart Grietens

How defining is a frame for a painting? What if you remove the frame? Or vice versa: what if you remove the artwork and just look at the frame? Frames explores this relationship between frame and art, placing Not Standing’s physical movement art in outdoor visual frames. 

Alexander Vantournhout and his three co-performers focus once again on movement art in its purest form. Meticulously, the four performers build ever-changing body sculptures in the viewing frames.  Bodies intertwine, hang from and climb on the frames, walk upside down, and defy both gravity and your imagination. Each movement is a continuous search for balance, focusing on cooperation and body control. 

The observer can view all this from all sides: from the front, side, and even from below. Perspectives tilt and physical logic seems to disappear. Frames invites you on a trail along choreographic installations that challenge and blend art and viewing perspectives into physical poetry in the public space.

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Categories
Benelux

Pichet Klunchun – Cyber Subin

June 11th – 13rd, 2025 Holland Festival, Amsterdam
June 15th – 17th, 2025 Holland Festival, Video on Demand
December 13th, 2025 Concertgebouw Brugge, Bruges
70 minutes

Traditional Thai Dance
with Technology

© Lee Chia Yeh & Pichet Klunchun Dance Company

The opening performance of the Holland Festival 2025 is Cyber Subin, which will also mark its European premiere. In Cyber Subin, choreographer Pichet Klunchun (Thailand, 1971) combines traditional Thai dance with technology. Together with MIT researcher Pat Pataranutaporn, he has created an AI that deconstructs traditional movements and generates new poses, resulting in a fascinating interaction between human and machine. 

The movements of both the people and avatars in Cyber Subin are based on “Mae Bot Yai” (59 poses from a traditional Thai masked dance, Khon) but will be reinterpreted through digital processes. The dancers are invited to react, resist or dance together with the avatars.

For more than two decades, Klunchun has studied the movements of Kohn dance, looking for ways to reinterpret these. He developed Cyber Subin in four phases: capturing the movements, codifying them according to six principles, developing an interface for interaction with avatars, and experimenting with dancers and AI.

Khon has been performed since the 14th century and was added to the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2018. As such, the piece is not just about the interaction between human and machine, but also offers a new approach to cultural preservation.  Cyber (derived from cybernetics) Subin (‘dream’ in Thai) shows how tradition need not be static, but rather lives and evolves.

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Categories
France Mediterranea Benelux DACH region

Peeping Tom – Chroniques

  • June 4th – 6th, 2025 Théâtre National de Nice, Nice
  • June 18th – 20th, 2025 Festival de Marseille, Marseille
  • September 27th – 28th, 2025 I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia
  • October 2nd – 4th, 2025 Torinodanza, Turin
  • October 8th – 9th, 2025 Triennale Milano, Milan
  • October 13th – 14th, 2025 Dialog Festival, Wrocław
  • November 14th – 16th, 2025 Anthéa, Antibes
  • November 20th – 21st, 2025 Les Salins, Martigues
  • November 27th – 29th, 2025 Châteauvallon Liberté, Toulon
  • December 5th – 6th, 2025 Le Carré Leon Gaumont, Sainte-Maxime
  • December 9th – 18th, 2025 KVS, Brussels
  • January 23rd – 24th, 2026 Tanz Köln, Cologne
  • March 4th – 6th, 2026 Le Vilar, Louvain-la-Neuve
  • March 20th – 21st, 2026 Teatro Central, Seville
  • March 28th – 29th, 2026 Emilia Romagna Teatro, Caserna
  • April 2nd – 8th, 2026 La Villette, Paris
  • April 14th – 15th, 2026 CSS Udine, Udine
  • April 28th – 30th, 2026 Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  • June 4th – 14th, 2026 TNC, Barcelona

90 minutes

Peeping Tom’s
Next Chapter

© Sanne De Block

Among the immortal, each act (and each thought) is an echo of those who anticipated it in the past or the faithful omen of those who, in the future, will repeat it to the point of vertigo. – Jorge Luis Borges

Five figures are trapped in a temporal maze, mutating and colliding in an attempt to defy immortality. Their existence takes place in a vast sulfuric landscape, unfolding in a series of chronicles. Is this landscape the ground for new creations, or made out of remnants of what once existed?

Confronted with different laws and physical phenomena, their bodies reveal other behaviors and possibilities of being, without knowing if they are at the twilight or dawn of their existence. We are witnessing a bodily metamorphosis in an abyssal and poetic dimension.

Chroniques unveils the next chapter in Peeping Tom’s universe.

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Categories
Benelux

Ali Chahrour – When I Saw the Sea

June 2nd – 3rd, 2025 HAU, Berlin
June 11th, 2025 Les Rencontres à l’Échelle, Marseille
June 24th – 25th, 2025 Festival Theaterformen, Hannover
July 5th – 8th, 2025 Festival d’Avignon, Avignon
December 9th – 11th, 2025 Les Tanneurs, Brussels
70 minutes

A Celebration of Life

© Lea Skayem

The internationally acclaimed dancer and choreographer Ali Chahrour has created a language inspired by Arab myths and by the political, social, and religious context of his country. Through it, he explores the deep relationships between the body and movement, between tradition and modernity.

His new work When I Saw the Sea unfolds on a minimalist stage: the activists Rania, Zena and Tenei – the last two came to Lebanon as migrant workers – embark on a powerful journey of their previously unheard stories through dance, theatre and music. In doing so, they give a voice to countless other labourers from countries such as Cameroon, Sudan and Sierra Leone – people who have been deprived of their rights by the kafala system, which is similar to serfdom – and thus create a deep insight into the political and social reality of Lebanon. 

When I saw the Sea highlights the abuses of this repressive labour system while paying tribute to the courage and resistance of women fighting for justice and freedom. With a mixture of personal and collective testimonies, the work touches on themes such as love, motherhood, war, exile and home. With the music of Abed Kobeissy and the soulful voice of singer Lynn Adib, this is a determined celebration of life, rising above the pain of past struggles.

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Categories
Benelux

Lia Rodrigues – Borda

  • May 28th – 31st, 2025 Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels
  • June 3rd – 4th, 2025 PACT Zollverein, Essen
  • June 7th – 8th, 2025 One Dance Festival, Plovdiv
  • June 16th – 17th, 2025 MUFFATWERK, Munich
  • June 20th – 21st, 2025 WIENER FESTWOCHEN, Vienna
  • July 10th – 12th, 2025 Julidans, Amsterdam
  • August 27th – 28th, 2025 Tanz im August, Berlin
  • September 6th & 8th, 2025 Biennale Danse Lyon, Lyon
  • September 12th – 17th, 2025 Centquatre-Paris, Paris
  • September 19th – 21st, 2025 Théâtre Chaillot, Paris
  • September 24th, 2025 L’Azimut, Antony | Châtenay-Malabry
  • October 10th – 11th, 2025 Romaeuropa Festival, Rome
  • May 22nd – 23rd, 2026 DE SINGEL, Antwerp

60 minutes

Comfort and Hope

© Sammi Landweer

Borda in Portuguese refers to embroidery, decoration, but also to a border, the periphery, something that separates. Geographical and political borders create contradictions: hospitality and hostility, native and non-native. Who belongs and who is excluded, who has a right to exist? Metaphorically, the word ‘borda’ also means imagination, the ability to cross borders, to transcend.

With a new generation of dancers, choreographer Lia Rodrigues weaves a porous embroidery of liquid otherness, with edges that fray, float and dance. In her signature style, starting from the energy of the collective and using simple materials like textiles and plastic, she creates a unique ballet between bodies and matter whose recipe only Rodrigues seems to know. Bodies clump together into constellations, form masses and separate again. With great care, what was separated is brought back together. The result is a succession of powerful images and colourful tableaux. 

Rodrigues, after the savoured large-venue productions Fúria and Encantado, once again blankets us in comfort and hope.

company website
Categories
Benelux DACH region

Ayelen Parolin / Marco da Silva Ferreira – Malón / a Folia

May 21st, 2025 Concertgebouw, Bruges
March 21st, 2026 Festspielhaus St. Pölten, St. Pölten
Duration: unknown

A Joyful Tornado

© Laurent Philippe

Ballet de Lorraine glitter in a double bill, featuring work by two contemporary choreographers. In these works, Ayelen Parolin and Marco da Silva Ferreira both explore the joy of shared dance, as expressed at raves and in nightclubs. Parolin’s title Malón is a reference to a state of disorder, when energy and movement are amplified to the point of excess in a dance rave. Da Silva Ferreira’s title is a reference to the folia, a festive 16th-century Portuguese shepherds’ dance. Bringing out its ecstasy, joy and entrancing effect, he mirrors this folk dance to nightclub dancing.

Ayelen parolin
Marco da Silva Ferreira