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Tianzhuo Chen & Siko Setyanto – Moyang 先祖 & Seaman 漁師

May 10th – 14th, 2025 Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels
55 minutes

A Meditative Journey

© Nathaniel Brown

Director and visual artist Tianzhuo Chen crafts a minimal yet compelling setting for dancer and choreographer Siko Setyanto, the protagonist of this evocative performance inspired by the stage of Japanese Noh, the oldest theatre art still performed today. They explore the intersection of ancient traditions and expressive dance improvisation to narrate the captivating tale of an encounter between the ancestors and a whale.

Joined by musicians Kadapat and Kakushin, Setyanto leads the audience on a meditative journey, drawing upon the fluid, expansive narratives of the ocean. The use of simplicity and stillness in the choreography contrasts with the intensity of the music. Together, they create an immersive experience that dissolves the boundary between reality and the spiritual.

Chen and Setyanto create two performances, independent of each other but linked by a thin thread, like opposite sides of the same planet. We can choose just one of the two, or travel to both. Chen gained recognition in recent years for his exceptional visual language. Now, he and Setyanto bring this extraordinary work to Brussels for the first time, offering us a glimpse of their visionary artistry.

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DACH region Benelux France

Thomas Hauert – Troglodyte

March 28th – 30th, 2025 Festival dansa metropolitana, Barcelona
November 17th, 2025 TANZINOLTEN, Olten
April 3rd – 4th, 2026 Théâtre de la Cité internationale, Paris
April 14th, 2026 Le 140, Brussels
April 17th, 2026 Internationales Bonner Tanzsolofestival, Bonn
60 minutes

A Solo for Himself

© Olivier Miche

In his new solo, Thomas Hauert intends to deepen a creative process already present in his last two creations: making psychology, inner life, emotions and the unconscious a driving force behind movement. The starting point for Troglodyte is a kind of complex psychological enigma, expressed in the working title and subtitle of the solo Zaungast/Zaunkönig, focusing on the experience of the position of the outsider, the one who is not part of the group, the one who looks on from the outside. Zaungast is a German word that describes someone who attends an event to which they were not invited, behind the fence (literally: “guest of the fence”). Zaunkönig, literally “king of the fence”, is the German name for the wren, a small songbird. Tiny but kingly at the same time, it is imagined on the fence, ‘staying on the fence’, in the figurative sense of someone who does not take a stand, does not make up their mind and does not commit themselves accordingly.

The word troglodyte originally refers to a living creature that inhabits a cave or dwelling dug into the ground, like the little bird Zaunkönig/troglodyte. The term Troglodyte also sounds like an insult, one associated with the “Cave Man”, the boorish, uneducated, coarse man.

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Eva Reiter / Michiel Vandevelde – The Rise

March 26th, 2025 Concertgebouw Brugge, Bruges
March 29th – 30th, 2025 Kaaitheater, Brussels
May 21st – 22nd, 2025 Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg
September 17th, 2025 Musiktheatertage, Vienna
90 minutes

An Experimental Opera

© Bea Borgers

In The Rise, composer Eva Reiter and choreographer Michiel Vandevelde focus on the coexistence and interchanges of various worlds as they unfold on stage successively. Thereby it is the process of translation that lead to the emergence of such new worlds. Throughout translating and re-contextualizing symbols, signs, gestures and sounds, new languages are created that eventually transform our perspective on a particular world.

The Rise is based on the poetry of Nobel prize winner Louise Glück. Specifically her publication Averno serves as the main material for the libretto.  Averno, a crater lake in Italy, was believed to be the entrance gate to the underworld. In her poetry Glück connects and interchanges the two worlds of the living and the dead, returning from one to another and evokes images of life and death, of eternity and the profane. Similarly to the surface of the lake which serves as a permeable membrane into that parallel world, we will create parallel and intermediate worlds throughout the way these poems are performed.

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Eszter Salamon – MONUMENT 0.10: The Living Monument

February 20th – 22nd, 2025 Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Brussels
March 26th – 28th, 2025 Chaillot / Théâtre de la Ville, Paris
135 minutes

A Dreamlike Journey

© Øystein Haara/ Carte Blanche

Monuments are cold, static, soundless; human bodies are warm, breathing, chanting. Carte Blanche’s new performance is undoubtedly both long and remarkable.

Springback Magazine

in collaboration with Carte Blanche – the Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance and composer Carmen Villain

The Living Monument unfolds worlds that have their own logic. It is a dreamlike journey, at times a beautiful nightmare, playing with duration and space like a landscape in which slowness creates its own music. Shifting sceneries, inhabited by fictional figures, reveal images and sensations which evoke glimpses of memories, fragments of narrations and futuristic visions.

Developed together with fourteen performers, the choreography is created from bodies, fabrics and objects, which continuously transform and reconfigure to form new physical, mental and visual environments. Guided by the ecological principle of recycling, materials and voices are reused and reshaped. Songs blend with natural, instrumental and digital sounds. Bodies are hidden or exposed, figures appear only to transform. Voices intermingle, they stir up sensations and carry stories that anyone can inhabit.

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Daniel Linehan – Not about Everything

January 20th, 2025 BOZAR, Brussels
30 minutes

Double Bill with Bryana Fritz

A Magnificent Solo

© Michiel Devijver

Daniel Linehan created “Not About Everything” in 2007 in New York shortly before moving to Brussels. It meant his international breakthrough and he has continued to perform his solo to this day.

He reflects on the creation and it’s meaning from today’s perspective:

I made “Not About Everything” as a young artist in a world with an abundance of information, in search of an answer to the often-repeated question “What is your work about?”. Any attempt to define this felt like a limitation. The pieces I had created up to that point were about a million things, sometimes in a span of ten minutes. What do I want to talk about?

My answer is a dance. A dance that starts with words. The cadence of sentences triggers a loop of circular movements. And a dance that asks questions as well. What is the value of a piece and what impact does it have on me, the audience and the world outside the theater? The answers work their way through my body and find expression in movement and sound. In all my creations, sound plays a crucial role. The vocal cords are as important as any other muscle and dance continues into words that in turn evoke new movements.

In the solo, I come to an essence by clearing out layers of text and movement, tangible but unspoken.

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Thomas Lebrun – L’en­vahisse­ment de l’être (danser avec Duras)

January 18th, 2025 Théâtre Francine Vasse, Nantes
January 31st & February 1st, 2025 Les Brigittines, Brussels
March 18th, 2025 La Castélorienne, Montval-sur-Loir
March 25th, 2025 Gallia Théâtre Cinéma, Saintes
March 27 – 28th, 2025 Le Moulin du Roc, Niort
70 minutes

Dance with Marguerite Duras

© Thomas Lebrun / CCNT

Drawing on readings and interviews with the writer archived by the INA, Thomas Lebrun brings a staggering solo performance that defies all categorisation.

Somewhere between embodiment and a personal confession, the phrases intertwine with the movements in a fragility that only serves to exalt the poetry. In this inner journey, the whole landscape of Durassian literature explodes, sometimes with humour, often full of nostalgia, but always with the constant accuracy of what this writing intrinsically holds.

L’envahissement de l’être is a suspended moment that lands on an unexplored and fascinating shore of representation…

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Ingrid Berger Myhre – Spelling Spectacle

December 17th – 18th, 2024 Kaaitheater, Brussels
December 21st, 2024 Theater Rotterdam, Rotterdam
65 minutes

A Game of Three Performers

© Tale Hendnes

With each move, they peek into the immediate future, attempting to avoid the pitfalls of individual whims and stringent collectivism. By being loyal to the game rules, they risk steering into walls, hopelessly going in circles, missing their marks. By being loyal to their individual ideas, they risk sabotaging the collective effort. This productive dilemma drives the work forward.

The goal is to build the piece in real-time. Everything becomes material, as movement trajectories are woven thanks to coincidence and careful considerations. And as the map is drawn, the mysteries unfold.

Every next frame is the result of a previous stepping stone. 

Each stone carries the baggage of the ones before. 

In con-sequence, they spell out both the obvious and the magical:

The next step, the next room, the next door- continuously leaving one space to make another appear.

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Chunky Move – 4/4

November 15th – 16th, 2024 Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Brussels
November 22nd – 24th, 2024 Dansens Hus, Olso
December 3rd, 2024 PLT Theater, Heerlen
December 6th – 7th, 2024 Teatro Municipal do Porto, Porto
December 10th – 11th, 2024 Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
60 minutes

A Uniquely Australian Performance

© Gianna Rizzo

4/4 is Chunky Move’s blueprint for choreographic precision, physical endurance, minimalist design and rugged street aesthetics.

Eight dancers perform a stark symphony of mesmerising movement against the backdrop of minimalist design. As episode after episode builds upon the last, quartets and duets converge and diverge in ever more hypnotic configurations.

Described by audiences as meticulous, mesmerising and exhilarating, and collecting 5- and 4-star reviews and a Green Room award and nomination, 4/4 is a stunning and unrelenting display of Chunky Move Artistic Director Antony Hamilton’s distinctive choreographic language and methodology.

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Alexander Vantournhout – every_body

November 12th, 2024 CC sint niklaas, Sint Niklaas
November 14th, 2024 Theater Malpertuis, Tielt
November 21st – 23rd, 2024 Les Brigittines, Brussels
November 28th – 29th, 2024 La Soufflerie, Rezé
January 24th – 25th, 2025 3 bis f, Aix-en-Provence
Feburary 8th, 2025 cultuurcentrum Hasselt, Hasselt
Feburary 12th, 2025 CC Het Gasthuis, Aarschot
Feburary 13th, 2025 Belgica Theater, Dendermonde
Feburary 19th – 22th, 2025 kunstencentrum Nona, Mechelen
Feburary 25th – 26th, 2025 Festival DañsFabrik, Brest
60 minutes

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

© Bart Grietens

In every_body, choreographer Alexander Vantournhout, alongside collaborator Emmi Väisänen, delves into everyday movements. They elevate simple actions like handshakes and walking into a complex canvas of bodily dynamics. The duo crafts a tapestry of choreography, turning even the subtlest of movements into something remarkable.

The performance is further enriched by the sonic landscape created by composer and guitarist Geoffrey Burton. Fashion designer and scenographer Tom Van der Borght designs both the costumes and the surreal setting where every_body takes place.

Over the last decade, Alexander Vantournhout has built a diverse oeuvre, from ensemble pieces to solos. Every_body (2024) is his fourth duet, following projects like Through the Grapevine (2020). The new creation marks his next step to dissect and reinterpret everyday movements, redefining the limits of human physical expression.

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Thor / Thier­ry Smits – Pinkie Ponkie

November 7th – December 7th, 2024 Studio Thor, Brussels
60 minutes

A Cabaret with Gaytitude

© Thor Company

Using Gilbert and George’s The Ten Commandments as a narrative backdrop, Thierry Smits revisits the gay aesthetic underpinning his work: Genet and Fassbinder, Pierre et Gilles, Francis Bacon, Sylvester, and Brokeback Mountain.

Set in a cabaret with a giant pink carpet, two dancers clash with humour and lightness as they reinterpret the iconic expressions of the LGTBQIA+ movement. From disco to country to ambient, this choreographic celebration is as wild as it is overly sexualised, as chromatic as psychedelic. From one scene to the next, the dancing takes us back to the world of camp.

Dynamically and insubordinately, it reminds us of the sources of a gaytitude that exalts our imaginations today.

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