Interviews with AECFest artists

An innovative and immersive work blending dance and technology

We speak with Aoi Nakamura and Esteban Kecoq, co-founders of AφE and the co-creators of LILITH.AEON.

“LILITH.AEON was born from grief. From the particular silence that follows loss, the way someone’s presence lingers in our memories, the things they touched, the sounds they made, the shape they left in a room. We found ourselves asking questions we could not answer: where does a person go when they are no longer here? What remains? What if something could remain? And what is the meaning of life, death and what is in between. The question quickly extended to not only about the human being but extended to Civilisations, languages, time, nature.”

Read the whole interview here

A decade-long project merging documentary and contemporary dance

We speak with Choy Ka Fai, mulitidisciplinary artist and the director of SoftMachine: The Return.

“SoftMachine began in 2012, born from a desire to map the choreographic landscape of Asia and understand the process beneath what we see on stage. I’ve always been intrigued by the dialogue and experimentation that happens behind the scenes. During the initial research phase, I engaged with 84 different dance-makers, and many of those conversations feel even more urgent today. With SoftMachine: The Return, I had never left the process. My collaborators and I have stayed in constant contact, touring together and engaging with one another intellectually, even through the isolation of the pandemic years.

Deciding to revisit this as a 10-year documentary project was a deeply introspective moment for me. I wanted to reflect on my own path over the last decade, and similarly, look at where my collaborators are headed next. The question of what changes and what remains was too compelling to ignore, especially given the vast archive we have created together. When I proposed the idea to them, there was no hesitation. It was simply: ‘Let’s do it—let’s make it smarter, better, and have even more fun than before.

The romanticism of the project lies in the big questions: How many decades do we really get as artists? How is it that we are still such close friends? And why wouldn’t we want to share those stories?”

Read the whole interview

The monumental art installation

Daniel Kok, co-lead artist of Home Bound alongside Luke George, shares more about the monumental art installation, Home Bound, where audiences become collaborators in creating a social tapestry of Utrecht.

“Rope gives us a way to work with relationship in a very direct, physical, and visible form. It allows Luke and I to explore trust, restraint, consent, tension, and care all at once. Other materials can suggest these things symbolically, but rope makes them immediate. It shows what it means for one body to affect another body, and for that encounter to be shaped through attention, pacing, and mutual awareness. The material is simple, but the relationships it produces are not simple at all. That complexity is what keeps drawing us to ropes time and again.

What rope offers that other forms do not is a way to make negotiation visible. When we work with rope, the audience can see that something is being worked out in real time. The body is not just posed or represented; it is in relation. That relation can hold tenderness, discomfort, resistance, stillness, and care all at once. Rope is powerful because it is both practical and symbolic. It binds, but it also connects. It can create structure, but it can also expose fragility. For us, that makes it a rich language for thinking about how people live together, not just how they touch.”

Read the whole interview

An immersive performance blending storytelling and cocktail-making

We speak with 3 artists; Eddie Hara, Serene Hui and Tam Thi Pham of IsLand Bar, an immersive performance blending storytelling and cocktail-making. The latest iteration of the work centres on migrant stories.

“Migration has been an interesting issue in Europe since the 50’s or 60’s. Holland with the new comers of Indo-Dutch, Moluccans, and other pro0Dutch Indonesians who joined the Dutch army in the end of 40’s – after Indonesia declared its Independence in 1945. Then Germany, Switzerland and Austria with Italian and Turkish workers they need for growing industries in the 70s. France with Maroccans and Algierians. England with Pakistanis, Asian Indians, and Jamaicans. Later the Vietnam war also caused big wave of migration towards Canada, Australia, USA and Europe too. The list will go on, and has gone on till now.

There will be always migration happening, whether from political or economical reasons. And now we – the Asian artists who live in Europe – will surely tell and share our personal stories to the European audience during the festival.”