Artist Peter Power will share with the SPRING Festival a small fragment of his work After Light: These Dark Citizens by Sparsile Collective. A meditation on the tensions of urban living, of decay and development and our internal selves. This poetic ode to the city asks us to consider our roles as citizens in dark places, to contemplate the effects of design and architecture on the stories of our lives, to question what a city really is, and to encourage us to find new narratives in the dark.

This sharing of Peter's work will include a walk in the city, guided through an app on your phone. You can do this walk alone or with others. You and Peter will meet at the end of the walk at 22:30 in The SPRING Festival Hart (Stadsschouwburg Utrecht) for a conversation. You decide how long you want to walk for. A recommended time of 1 hour is suggested.

To take part, you will need a smartphone, with an operating system as up to date as possible to avoid software issues. You will also need headphones.

Download the application ECHOES.xyz to your phone. It is freely available on the app store. When you have downloaded the application, search for the walk titled "After Light: Utrecht" and download the walk onto your phone. You will only be able to find the walk on the app after 20:00 on Wednesday 24th of May. Please download the walk as close to the time when you will be doing it as as possible - it allows Peter to have the latest version available for you. 

A small map will be provided digitally of the areas of interest before the performance. Check this site a day prior to event.

Dress accordingly for the weather, with comfortable shoes. A start time is not being given for this walk, but rather an end time so you can gather together and talk with the artist. You will only be able to find the walk on the app after 20:00 on Wednesday 24th of May.

Peter is taking part in the first Gap Exchange programme, organised by Irish Theatre Institute and local partners including SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht. He has been paired with local artist Asa Horvitz. Asa is hosting Peter while in Utrecht and introducing him to the city and the local arts community, and later in the year Peter will host Asa in Cork, Ireland. Gap Exchange is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.

Biography

Peter Power is a multidisciplinary Visual Artist, Composer, Sound Designer and Director from Waterford. He is the Artistic Director of the Award-winning company Sparsile Collective creating immersive experiences led by music. He is also Director of Eat My Noise, a multi-genre audio duo that work in Composition, Event, Film, Television and Post-Production. Currently the Artist-In-Residence in the Cork Midsummer Festival, Peter is the outgoing Artist-In-Residence in the National Sculpture Factory. He is the winner of the Arts Council of Ireland Music Bursary award, Music and Theatre Project Awards, Theatre Bursary Award and most recently the AGF award and Visual Arts Commission Award. His current interests are in the connections between Digital and Live art.

Join Irish playwright, social activist and performer Noelle Brown for a practice-sharing workshop. Noelle’s creativity focuses on theatre as a platform to provoke political change by exploring urgent social issues, and amplifying voices that are missing from contemporary theatre. Her work has explored the Irish State’s treatment of marginalised people, including older people, the LGBTQ+ community, Irish Travellers (an Irish ethnic minority) and survivors of institutions known as 'Mother and Baby Homes'. As part of the workshop there will be an interactive opportunity to learn writing techniques that explore elements of contemporary playwriting and theatre-making.   

http://noellebrown.com/

Noelle is taking part in the first Gap Exchange programme, organised by Irish Theatre Institute and local partners including SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht. She has been paired with local artist Jija Sohn. Jija is hosting Noelle while in Utrecht and introducing her to the city and the local arts community, and later in the year Noelle will host Jija in Cork, Ireland. Gap Exchange is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.

Biography

Noelle Brown has been an actor since 1987 and became a writer and theatre-maker in 2013. As an actor, she has worked extensively in theatre, film, television and radio. Her creative practice is informed by social activism. Her plays, Postscript, co-written with Michèle Forbes, Foxy, Creaking and Spit focused on domestic adoptee experiences, discrimination towards the Travelling Community and attitudes to older people. Her work has been produced in Ireland, Paris, London and Canada. Postscript was nominated for the Fishamble New Writing Award and the Bewley’s Little Gem Award at the Dublin Fringe Festival. She is also an Adoption Rights campaigner.

http://noellebrown.com/

In the last phase of preparation for the premiere of Spelling Spectacle by Ingrid Berger Myhre, one of the performers has been injured. This puts the preparations on hold, and means the performances planned at SPRING cannot take place. On a positive note, Ingrid will be with us this year with her earlier work Panflutes and Paperwork, a beautiful performance in collaboration with Lasse Passage. 

What does “dancing to music” really mean? And how do you create music for dance? In this duet, called Panflutes and Paperwork, Norwegian choreographer and performer Ingrid Berger Myhre and composer and recording artist Lasse Passage playfully examine the relationships between dance and music, using scores as tools to uphold structure over skill, method over indulgence. The title of their duet alludes to the contrast between the wet and the dry: Panflutes, on the one hand, are playful and passionate, Paperwork, on the other, refers to notation and sounds bureaucratic. The tensions between these states play well with tired conventions in the famous choreographer-composer constellation. With both tools at hand, Ingrid and Lasse invent games that re-negotiate their rule.

"The Norwegian Berger Myhre, educated in Amsterdam and Brussels, seems to own this type of dry humor as an inherent part of her dance works.You have to like it (...). It is at the same time laughable and sweet, as they try to share everything (even each other’s talent) in this small hour full of playfully performed nonsense-games."
- Annette Embrechts, De Volkskrant - 4/5 ****

“It felt good to see something succeeding in being humorous, heartfelt and serious at the same time.”
- Nina Helene Skogli, Norsk Shakespeare Tidsskrift, NO

"This is a show that is situated on the border between performance and concert, playing with the disciplines. The playful, nerdy precision points back to the pioneers of contemporary music like John Cage and Ernst Toch and we as audience are offered a nice balance of feel good, poetic images and musicality on a high level."
- Frøydis Århus, Scenekunst.no.

Panflutes and Paperwork was part of the Aeroaves Twenty20 selection, as well as Dansenett Norge autumn 2020. The production is still being performed all over Europe.

Biography

Ingrid Berger Myhre (1987) is a Norwegian choreographer and performer currently based in Brussels. She started out studying modern dance at Amsterdam School of the Arts (NL), and worked as a freelance dancer in the independent scene in the Netherlands and abroad in the following years, before she pursued her interest in choreography. She holds an MA in Choreography; Research and Performance from ex.e.r.ce at the Choreographic Centre in Montpellier (FR) and later deepened her project literacy in dance at the Research Studio’s at P.A.R.T.S from ’17-’18.

Composer and recording artist Lasse Passage started studying composition at Griegakademiet in Bergen and went on to complete a BA in Sonology from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. His work is coloured by his background from the electroacoustics, his work as a songwriter - and the symbiosis of these influences. He has been a central feature in the Norwegian performance art scene the last 5 years with his innovative approach to composition and curiousity for the performative aspect of live music.

SPRING and Utrecht University go way back, so it cannot be a surprise that several SPRING performances served as example in Doing Dramaturgy: Thinking Through Practice (Palgrave 2023). This new book, written by prof. Maaike Bleeker, speaks about making theatre as a process of thinking through practice. Doing dramaturgy, according to Bleeker is attending to this practice of making-thinking. She investigates how we can conceptualize doing dramaturgy in ways that acknowledge today’s wide diversity of practices of theatre making. Which dramaturgical strategies emerge alongside new developments in performing arts and how can we reflect on themes like ‘new materialist’ and ‘more-than-human’ dramaturgy?

Join us for this festive launch of Doing Dramaturgy: Thinking Through Practice. Dr. Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink will interview Bleeker on the themes off her book. A conversation on contemporary theories and practices of dramaturgy. This interview will be integrated in the ever growing Dramaturgy Database: a database packed with interviews, essays and other archived materials that show how (Dutch) dramaturgy has developed in the past decennia.

Developing robots and their behaviour presents challenges that are not only technical but also involve what might be called the dramaturgy and design of the robot as social agent: how do social robots address their human co-performers and afford interaction with them, what scripts do they follow, how to design and choreograph their appearance and movements? In the Acting Like a Robot research project, we bring together theatre makers and roboticists to investigate how theatre can contribute to the design of robot behaviour and the interaction between humans and robots and, vice versa, how robotics opens new terrain for theatre-makers. During this afternoon in Het Huis we will present our current research as well as projects of others that inspire us. We will start with three short lectures by Evelyn Ficarra (University of Sussex), Edwin Dertien (UTwente) and Maaike Bleeker (Utrecht University). After that, visitors can take a look at (and interact with) various projects-in-progress including an installation that allows you to perceive the world as a robot, and a duet between a dancer and a robot.

The lecture and open studio presentations are open to anyone with an interest in the topic.

Acting Like a Robot is a collaboration between Utrecht University (Theatre Studies/ research group Transmission in Motion), de Vrije Universiteit (Computer Science/ research group Social AI), de Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht (Performative Creation Processes), theatre company Ulrike Quade Company and SPRING Performing Arts Festival. This project is financially supported by NWO (SMART Culture ClSC.KC.205) and Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, through an innovation grant issued to Ulrike Quade Company.

There will be informal drinks afterwards. 

Read more on this page by Utrecht University. 

Tip: visit the VR installation Ascension by Leon Rogissart and Paul Boereboom after this lecture.

What can AI do for the arts? What can the arts do for AI research? How can AI and the arts help to answer each other’s questions? These are some of the questions that will be addressed during this roundtable organized by the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) and the Special Interest Group AI in Cultural Inquiry and Art with the SPRING Performing Arts festival. We will speak with Festival Fellow Chris Salter (Professor and Director of the Immersive Arts Space of the Zurich University of the Arts), Kim Vincs (Professor of Interactive Media and director of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University), Asa Hovitz (composer and performance maker) and Mehdi Dastani (Professor and chair of Intelligent Systems and co-chair of the Human Centered AI focus area at Utrecht University). The discussion will be chaired by David Gauthier and Maaike Bleeker

This Roundtable is organized in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) and the SiG AI in Cultural Inquiry and Art at Utrecht University.

If you are interested in this topic, we recommend the following performances: 

• GHOST van Asa Horvitz
• SNN #2: Light/Space/Prop van Chris Salter en Alexandre Saunier

Curious for new developments & new makers? A look behind the scenes of their artistic processes and considerations? In OFFSPRING, you are invited to react to work-in-process, the proposals of a new generation of makers. In 2 double bills with aftertalk, you will be surprised, tickled and challenged to talk with the artistic voices of tomorrow.

OFFSPRING is a part of SPRING Academy. The programme is created in cooperation with our partners SoAP, DansBrabant, Dansateliers and Het Huis Utrecht. These four production companies each put forward (a) maker(s) they have been working with for a longer time.

Talks will be moderated by Joost Segers. OFFSPRING will take place twice this year. For updates on participating artists, keep checking this page. 

Double bill #1: 

1: Sarah Kaushik - Of Journeys (Het Huis Utrecht) 

“An archipelago, sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands.”

Sarah Kaushik’s  scenography practice involves connecting the space and the spectator. 

Her interest as a researcher lies on a thread between rituals & belonging.
What emerges as a common point between the two is the presence of a community. 

She considers the community as a fluid entity.
Porous. Transformable. Having a space for imagination.
This work-in-progress offers a moment to go on a collective journey of personal associations and new places.

Biography: 

Sarah Kaushik (she/her) is an alumni of the MA Expanded Scenography (HKU 2020-2022) and has been working as an artist and designer since 2010. The work she will share at OFFSPRING has been part of Kaushik’s artistic research on Liminal Spaces during her residency at Het Huis Utrecht, which she will continue in October 2023.

2: Anthony van Gog (DansBrabant)

For the next few years, Anthony is researching 'selfless body' for the next few years as PLAN-maker at DansBrabant and at Veem House for Performance. This is the idea that we, as humans, do not have a fixed core, but instead our identity is formed as we mirror ourselves to what is happening in the outside world. Self-development is thus not something that grows steadily, but something that moves in all different directions, without any solid support - a constantly mutating body. For OFFSPRING, Anthony presents an insight into his movement research on muscle tension, fluidity and ecstasy, together with performer Evangelos Biskas.

Biography:

Anthony van Gog (Antwerpren, 1996 - he/him) graduated from the Performance course at the Toneelacademie Maastricht in 2019. His work is situated on the boundary between theatre and visual arts. In his work, he lets body, sound, and space enter into a game with each other.

Double bill #2:

1: Ashley & Domenik - I HAVE LIVED EVERYWHERE BUT HERE
a nomadic intervention (dansateliers)

Where can you find yourself at home? Can we build a home together wherever we go? Who determines what this home will be?

A piece of dance floor is peeled off the stage, and carried out of the theatre into an unstable world. Wherever it unrolls, the floor and its inhabitants begin to build themselves a new home.

Outside, the floor evolves into a shapeshifting body. Temporary sculptures form and fade, becoming shelters, cavities of intimacy – a living landscape.

—

ashley and domenik feel at-home and are out-of-place at the same time. In this performance, they question what home means to them in a world that is always shifting. How can they find belonging in impermanence?

Biography:

Ho Yuhan Ashley (she/they, 1999) is a Singaporean artist who works from the perspective of movement. Her work plays across performing, performance-making, writing, graphic design, sound-tinkering, filmmaking, and scenography. She is presently preoccupied with documenting practices, martial arts, and technologies of caring. As a performer, their experience includes processes with Ingrid Berger Myhre, Zarah Bracht, Ula Sickle, David Weber-Krebs, Marjolein Vogels, Coralie Vogelaar, Lee Mun Wai, Dunja Jocic, Dario Tortorelli, and Keren Rosenberg.

Their first poetry collection, without sound now, was published in 2019 by Math Paper Press. Ashley is supported by the Singapore National Arts Council Scholarship in her dancer/maker studies at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Domenik Naue (he/him, 1998) is a transmedial artist with a background in gymnastics, dance and theatre. He grew up in Weimar, Germany, where he was surrounded by many cultural institutions. This was intimidating at times, yet it stimulated his interest in creating and experiencing art. His work(-ing) combines physical movement, music composition, graphic design and videography. Throughout his teenage-hood he created theatre performances at a youth theatre in collaboration with his friends.

Domenik’s movement background spans dance, gymnastics and circus practices. He has worked as a performer with artists such as Nicole Beutler, Dunja Jocic, Keren Rosenberg, Dario Tortorelli, Corneliu Ganea, Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo and Kazue Ikeda.

2: Sjaid Foncé (SoAP in collaboration with the AHK mime-training)

In the graduationsolo 'NOT YET HERE',  the space of the performance gets reflected by magical elements and body language from a dark imagination, in order to be fully present. A look to the past, the present, and a new future. “A blueprint of doing and other ways of being.”

For this work, Sjaid gets inspiration from elements of Afro-futurism, traditions, myths and fables from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. 

Biography:

Sjaid Foncé (he/him), performer and maker, graduated this summer from the Mime course at the Academy for Theatre and Dance (AHK). His work is interdisciplinary and usually starts from movement. He mostly looks at how the body can transform itself, and how he can show the beauty of this everyday movement. He departs from a personal source. Humans are looking for their own identity. He asks questions like: what will my work trigger in another body that is present in the space? What connects us as humans? What makes us human?

Partners:

In collaboration with the "Mime-opleiding" - mime-training.

We notice the emancipation of black bodies on stage, but the audience is predominantly white. What does the white gaze do to the black body? Is an emancipation from this gaze possible and (how) is the theatre a good context for this? How do we go beyond reproducing notions of exotism? And how do artists deal with these questions?

SPRING Artists Ligia Lewis, Harald Beharie, and Dries Verhoeven will discuss with each other, the moderators and the audience. Ligia Lewis presents two performances during SPRING 2023: Still not Still and A Plot / A Scandal, both in the Stadsschouwburg. Harald Beharie's Batty Bwoy will be performed twice at Het Huis. Dries Verhoeven's work Dear beloved friend, will play at the Stadsschouwburg. 

Topic Talks are deepening conversations on SPRING themes: current issues that matter. What trends do we notice in the contemporary performing arts scene and how do they relate to the world around us? Besides 'Black Body - White Gze', this year's Topic Talks include the topics 'Between Provocation and Invitation' and 'Performing Care'. Moderator Merel Heering will engage with artists from the festival and/or interesting guest speakers. The Talks are for the curious listener, the critical expert, the student and the professional. They are easy to combine with a visit to a performance, but can also be attended separately. They are free and open to everyone. 

Topic Talks are a part of SPRING Academy. 

Several contemporary artists use notions of care as a poetics to question how we deal with the people and world around us. Where does this urgency come from? How do these poetics work? Does/should this affect the way we organize performing arts? What proposals do these artists do about the way we should live together, the way we should care for each other and how our health care system could look?

SPRING Artists Jija Sohn, Paweł Duduś and Kim Ramona Ranalter will discuss these themes in relation to their work. During SPRING 2023, Jija Sohn's work together with Aleksandra Lemm and Julia Reist, Landing on Feathers, will play twice at BAK.  Paweł Duduś en Kim Ramona Ranalter are, together with Lucy Wilke, makers of SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP, which will play at the Paardenkathedraal twice during the festival. 

Topic Talks are deepening conversations on SPRING themes: current issues that matter. What trends do we notice in the contemporary performing arts scene and how do they relate to the world around us? Besides 'Performing Care', this year's Topic Talks include the topics 'Between Provocation and Invitation' and 'Black Body - White Gaze'. Moderator Merel Heering will engage with artists from the festival and/or interesting guest speakers. The Talks are for the curious listener, the critical expert, the student and the professional. They are easy to combine with a visit to a performance, but can also be attended separately. They are free and open to everyone. 

Topic Talks are a part of SPRING Academy. 

The center of gravity in performing arts is shifting. Where provocation was at the center of the avant-garde, it now appears to make place for something else: Futurity, care, emancipation, education, collectivity? It always seems harder to find the right words for current turns than to narrate on the past. Is there still space for provocation? What words can we use to describe current developments? How do different generations of makers relate to provocation and/or invitation as a strategies and terms?

The guests of this Topic Talk are Samara Hersch, Amparo González Sola, Julian Hetzel and Ntando Cele. Samar Hersch's It's Going to Get Dark is performed at Het Huis on the 19th and 20th of May. The conspiracy of forms from Amparo González Sola is performed on the 20th and the 21st of May in De LiK. Julian Hetzel and Ntando Cele collaborated on SPAfrica, which is performed at Theater Kikker from the 21st to the 23rd of May. 

Topic Talks are deepening conversations on SPRING themes: current issues that matter. What trends do we notice in the contemporary performing arts scene and how do they relate to the world around us? Besides 'Between Provocation and Invitation', this year's Topic Talks include the topics 'Performing Care' and 'Black Body - White Gaze'. Moderator Merel Heering will engage with artists from the festival and/or interesting guest speakers. The Talks are for the curious listener, the critical expert, the student and the professional. They are easy to combine with a visit to a performance, but can also be attended separately. They are free and open to everyone. 

Topic Talks are a part of SPRING Academy. 

Kim_Twiddle is the artistic name of Kim Ramona Ranalter. She is a theatre maker, performer, e-musician and feminist activist, well known to the audience of electro music events in Munich and Berlin. She regularly works with theatres and often performs her music live in performances. This includes performances such as Amsterdam at Münchner Volkstheater, as well as THE SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP, one of the performances of SPRING 2023. With her solo set, Kim_Twiddle concludes this year’s festival, late at night at the Stadsschouwburg.  

In May 2021, exactly a year after the Belarusian civil revolution burst out, Jana Shostak stood in front of the European Commission Building in Warsaw and screamed for a full minute. This was the first scream for Belarus of many.

The public performance, continued in the following days, was an act of commemoration of those who had been tortured and in many cases killed in persecutions led by Belarusian dictatorship. Shostak also mildly addressed the fact that broader European society had no awareness of the bloody acts in Belarus by targeting the building of the European Commission.

Since its first public appearance, the young Belarusian artist continued her protest-performance in different locations. The past year she spent almost entirely at the Polish-Ukrainian borders, facilitating the arrival of refugees from the attacked country - often using different artistic strategies in public space. Today Shostak continues her ‘artivism’ while further supporting refugees from the Russian invasion, to build awareness of the political situation both in Belarus and Ukraine.

Screaming for Belarus will sound in the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht to mark the third anniversary of the uprising of the Belarusian society against dictatorship.

The Screaming for Belarus residency is supported by the European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists – EFFEA, co-funded by the European Union. This performance is a cooperation with partnerfestivals Berliner Festspiele and Santarcangelo Festival.

Biography

Jana Shostak is a Belarusian artist and activist, currently based in Warsaw, Poland. She tries to raise awareness for political issues in an artistic way. She has received the Critics Award at the Maria Dokowicz Competition for the Best Diploma Project of the University of the Arts Poznań, and the Grand Prix of the Young Wolves festival. In 2015 she established a Polisch Guiness Record. She has participated in multiple exhibitions, including Goodbye Ai Weiwei (2018), Attention!Border (2017) and Form resistance: Non-exhibition (2017). 

Celine Daemen's new VR opera, Eurydice: een afdaling in oneindigheid , is inspired by the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. When our soul leaves our body after we die, will  it continue to wander? Do you ascend to heaven or are you uploaded to the Cloud? The infinity of the soul: it’s an age-old theme that has held humanity in its grasp since ancient times. The longing for a satisfactory answer stems from the discrepancy between the material world and a higher reality.

In Eurydice: een afdaling in oneindigheid , you travel to a place where time is transient and the rules of space are no longer relevant. You walk through a labyrinth of corridors and ruins, while being accompanied by the hypnotic singing of Eurydice. Along dizzying depths and vast vistas, through a poetic in-between world filled with enchanting music. The performance exposes the tension between our desire for unlimited infinity and temporary, earthly materiality.

You can experience this individually in timeslots of half an hour. Curiosity is your best compass!

Celine Daemen won the prestigious Reflet d'Or at the Geneva International Film Festival! Read the 4-star review in the Volkskrant here. 

"The frightening and at the same time magical virtualreality-experience by director Celine Daemen is different for everyone."

She was a friend of someone else is a performance by Polish playwright Gosia Wdowik. In the play, she explores the link between burnout and activism: the fear that rights cannot be acquired for life, and the moment someone is not paying attention, they can disappear. Using a personal story, she describes the commitment to women's rights in Poland. With subtle choreography, the viewer is drawn into the life of a woman who decides one day, instead of protesting, to stay in bed, only to get out again someday.

The project originated in a country where women have limited access to contraceptives and where abortion was declared illegal in January 2021. Despite immense protests, women's rights still remained disregarded. The original idea behind She was a friend of someone else was that women could unite and publicly admit that they had had an abortion, without feeling guilty or afraid, and that this would change or affect the law.

Wdowik brings the story from Poland as a universal warning for a need to protect democratic values, as well as a portrait of exhaustion and resignation - as main enemies in her long-lasting activism.

Biography

Theater artist and current GILDIA (Union of Polish Theater Makers) member Gosia Wdowik was born in 1988. Despite having her heart in Poland, she often imagines herself elsewhere. She worked with the subject of burnout and explored the area between exhaustion and agency during her Master's studies at DAS Theatre (2020–2022) by incorporating activism-related techniques into her artistic practice. In her performance Shame (Nowy Theater in Warsaw), she explored social shame related to working-class origins in her own family over three generations of women. Her main concern was how to create both theater and change from a place of exhaustion.

Samara Hersch is an Australian theatre maker who spent the last years sharing her time between her country of origin and Europe. She developed a unique and fascinating technique bringing conversation between strangers, not only as a methodology of work, but also as its subject.

In her productions, Hersch focuses on stories of marginalized communities and promotes dialogue on social and political issues between different generations. Her latest performance It's Going to Get Dark, which will premiere during SPRING, is an exploration of the possibilities of exchange and intimacy, especially between different age groups. On stage, intergenerational conversations take place between teenagers and seniors, who collectively reflect on how time shapes us and affects our future. Against a backdrop of shifting shadows and apparitions, the performers ask difficult questions about change, uncertainty and the approaching darkness.

It's Going to Get Dark is a prophecy, a promise and a prediction for a future that feels uncertain and overwhelming. Ultimately, the aim of the work is to cultivate curiosity, vulnerability, intimacy and resilience through coming together and listening. By exploring how darkness and theatre can expose alternative modes of interaction, Hersch invites us to rethink our relationship with the unknown and embrace new possibilities.

Samara Hersch is also part of the Topic Talk between provocation and invitation. 

Biography

Samara Hersch is an artist and theatre director whose practice explores the intersection of contemporary performance and community engagement. Her current research is an exploration into public acts of intimacy, proposing new artistic frames for non-professional performers and audiences to inhabit. Her recent body of work focuses on trans-generational dialogue with an enquiry into conversation as performance. These works include: Body of Knowledge, a work that invites teenagers to host conversations with adults regarding questions they have about the body and body politic, Sex and Death, an intimate encounter led by performers in their seventies and eighties and For the Time Being, a remote, inter-generational encounter created during the pandemic. Samara is currently an artist in residence at Theatre Rotterdam and is part of the EU Network; ACT; Art Climate Transition. She completed her Masters at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam (2019) and is based between the Netherlands and Naarm (Melbourne).

https://samarahersch.com/

Milla Koistinen, Paul Valikoski and Ladislav Zajac join together, bringing their respective backgrounds in choreography, music and visual arts in the performance Pas de deux #1 - Constructing Love. Two people are led through a passage of encounter, separation, unification and ultimately, exit. Simple objects and sound invite interaction from the pair, which generates a distinctive choreography, and allows for individual reflection and shared moments. The performance is based on a question of the philosopher Alain Badiou: “What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one?”  The performance offers the audience a unique opportunity to explore the complex themes of identity, love, and power dynamics through a dynamic and engaging performance.

The performance can be experienced in pairs for a time slot of 12 minutes. It is a performance that can only take place if two (and only two) viewers come together in the same location at the exact same time. Additionally, it won't happen unless they fully immerse themselves in the world the artists have built for them.

Pas de deux #1 - Constructing Love is the first part of a series by Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, a Berlin based group of musicians and performers.\

Biography

Milla Koistinen is a Finnish choreographer based in Berlin. She graduated from the Theatre Academy in Helsinki and has worked with Kristian Smeds, Hiroaki Umeda, Peter Verhelst, Christine Gaigg and Cie Heddy Maalem. Since 2008 she tours internationally with her own work. In 2020-2024 Koistinen’s work is supported by apap – FEMINIST FUTURES – a project co-founded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

http://millakoistinen.net/

Paul Valikoski studied violin at the Glenn Gould Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Since 2006 he lives and works in Berlin as an instrumentalist and composer. Interested in collaborative performance settings, Valikoski plays as a member of Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, and as a guest with Ensemble Resonanz in Hamburg. He has collaborated among others with Susanne Kennedy, Martin Eder, Sasha Waltz & Guests, FC Bergman, Sabrina Hölzer, Mouse on Mars and Georg Nussbaumer. Since 2017 he has worked closely together with Milla Koistinen as a sound designer.

Ladislav Zajac was born in 1978 in Košice in the former Czechoslovakia and studied in 2000-2007 in the Academy of Arts in Nürnberg and in Palermo. His work has been awarded several times, in 2009 by the Kunstförderpreis des Freistaates Bayern, 2011 by the debutant prize of Freistaates Bavaria and the Space Art Award Düsseldorf. In 2013 he was awarded the US Research Fellowship of the Freistaates Bayern. Since 2009 he has regularly worked for musical stage and stage productions, among others with Sabrina Hölzer, Philip Bergmann and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop.

Ascension is a VR installation created by Paul Boereboom and Leon Rogissart that extends the borders of opera and the way we look at reality. Ascension started from the concept of a floating tank: a saltwater pool in which you receive no stimulus, allowing your mind to unwind. You experience weightlessness, which is essential in order to reconnect with the self. This concept translated into a VR experience in which Boereboom and Rogissart set out to find a balance between the heart and the head. How do you achieve that balance? How do the two interact with each other?

With Ascension, the artists create a space to answer these questions, offering a canvas on which the visitor may reflect and associate for themselves. A place where we may briefly let go of the desires of our physical bodies and the outside world and do no more than exist.

The VR experience releases you from time and space through a delicate combination of images and opera music. Afterwards you will be gently taken out of the artificial world and brought back to reality.

Biography

Leon Rogissart is a Belgian theatre director. He graduated from the directing course at the Academie voor Theater en Dans in Amsterdam in 2021. For him, the theatre is the ultimate place to create a collective experience where intuition and resonance prevail. Besides theatre, music and VR are therefore important pillars in his work. The combination of the three allows him to unravel the abstraction in reality and deconstruct the concept of time. In 2021, Leon together with his colleague Paul Boereboom received the award for best VR production at the KABOOMFestival in Utrecht with the VR prototype Ascension.

Paul Boereboom is a Dutch scenographer living in Amsterdam. He studied scenography at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. After being on stage himself for a long time, Paul decided to question space (on stage) not with his body, but as a designer. His work includes theatre design, installations and costume design, as well as video design and work in virtual reality. In November 2021, Paul won the Harry Wich Stipendium from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds to further develop his work. 

What moves humankind? In the multi-year art project Motus Mori, Katja Heitmann collects and preserves human movement. Since 2019, more than 1,000 people have already donated their personal movement to this embodied archive, an ever-growing foundation from which the choreographer creates new artworks.

In the 'movement opera' RELIQUIEM, you experience other people's motions in the most direct and touching way possible: through your body. In an intimate ritual, you put yourself in the shoes of the archive's many donors and incorporate their personal "movement relics" into your motion repertoire. Katja calIs this 'kinetic empathy'. Which movement would you like to inherit?

Katja Heitmann is fascinated by the human attempt to escape their own mortality. This paradox is the muse of the movement archive Motus Mori. As movement goes and vanishes, we are at the same time epi-central master of our own life ánd just a spark in eternity.

With RELIQUIEM, Katja Heitmann takes her archive research to the next level; creating a collective shared movement heritage to secure it for the future. The archive will be transferred to 'everyone'. After all: doesn't every human being want to keep moving, for eternity?

The press on Motus Mori:
New York Times (USA): "The archive is our body"
De Standaard (BE): "Kinetic empathy at its best"
deVolkskrant (NL): "Highly original"
NRC (NL): "The beauty and vulnerability of dance in one thoughtful concept"
Museumtijdschrift (NL): "More direct, effective and poignant than any video, photo or text can ever be."

Trouw (NL): "Katja Heitmann and her dancers tour Europe with the 'living archive' Motus Mori. They collect everyday movements from all types of people. to ensure they do not get forgotten. Read the Dutch interview here. 

Theaterkrant (NL): "Choreographer Katja Heitmann is working on a special archive: over 1500 people have donated their movements. From these movements she created a new performance, in which the audience puts themselves in the shoes of people from the archive. What type of contact do we have to our own body, and that of others? Bodily awareness, empathy and emotion are all present. Reliquiem is a layered journey to what the body tells us at its deepest." Read the Dutch article here. 

Biography

Katja Heitmann (1987, DE) investigates in her visual-choreographic work what moves humankind in the current era. Katja Heitmann's choreographic work consists of extreme aesthetics, in sharp contrast to human fallibility. Her minimalistic and minutely designed imagery confronts viewers with a frantic flood of insights. This distinct, perceptible tension returns in all her work.

As a choreographic sculptor, Katja is constantly searching for the care of her material. By means of radical concepts and well-considered farms of performance, she strips her artistic material of any noise. Only that what really matters is shown with astonishing sharpness. In every detail of her work lies the grand gesture.

Katja Heitmann wants to move her audience. Through her work she constantly seeks interaction with society, with the city, with people. The universa! character of her work makes it possible for anyone who wants to find their own entrance to the work. Katja Heitmann creates unique performance installations and theatrical exhibitions that appeal to an astonishingly varied audience and regularly brings them to tears.

In 2016 Katja was awarded the Prize of the Dutch Dance Festival. In 2020 she was honored with the prestigious Gieskes Strijbis Podium-award, Netherlands' largest performing arts award.

http://www.katjaheitmann.com/

Creation of live arts, as everything else in our lives, always comes with surprises. Unfortunately, not all of them are positive. In the last phase of preparation for the premiere of Spelling Spectacle by Ingrid Berger Myhre, one of the performers has been injured. This puts the preparations on hold, and means the performances planned at SPRING cannot take place.

On a positive note, Ingrid will be with us this year with her earlier work Panflutes and Paperwork, a beautiful performance in collaboration with Lasse Passage. They playfully examine the relationships between dance and music, using scores as tools to uphold structure over skill, method over indulgence. The title of their duet alludes to the contrast between the wet and the dry: Panflutes, on the one hand, are playful and passionate, Paperwork, on the other, refers to notation and bureaucracy. Read more info here.

"Unparalleled tour de force of the queer body" - Annette Embrechts; critic's choice in the Theaterkrant

"Batty Bwoy”, literally “butt boy”, is Jamaican slang for a queer person. In this performance, Harald Beharie explores how blackness and queerness are perceived. He attacks and embraces sedimented  narratives around the fear of the queer body as a perverse and deviant figure. He does this by using his own nude body in an expressive way.

The work twists and turns cruel myths to unfold vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. Both the horror and joy of Batty Bwoy are unmasked. Batty Bwoy focuses on bodies and languages, on how we take in and reject the fictions projected onto our skin.

Batty Bwoy is an extremely intensive theatrical experience, in which Beharie collects topics of his current research - the fear of the queer body in public space, his non-white personal heritage in a predominantly white society, the borders of proximity between performer and audience, the limits of performer body exhaustion, but also the liberated power and joy coming through and by the body. With the original music of the Norwegian rock band Ring van Möbius  it is a manifestation of pride and power over the oppression of “normativity”.

The work has found inspiration in mythologies, disgusting stereotypes, feelings and fantasies of the queer body and identities, homophobic dancehall lyrics and 70s Giallo films from Italy. Furthermore, it is inspired by resilient “gully queens” and voices of the Jamaican and Norwegian queer community who have contributed to the process of this solo creation. The performance is an endless celebration of freedom of the queer body, as well as a provocation to the audience – an invitation to be confronted with prejudices with a manifestation of sensuality and sexuality. In the Topic Talk black body - white gaze, Harald will further discuss the use of the black body on stage. 

Batty Bwoy earned Harald a nomination for the Norwegian Critics Association prize.

Biography

Harald Beharie (NOR/JAM) is a performer and choreographer based in Oslo. His practice applies various formats and contexts to look into alternative modes of being, dancing and existing together while questioning notions of normativity. Harald holds an interest for the unpolished, the DIY and the vulnerability of being in the unknown. Harald has also received a nomination for the Norwegian Critics Association prize for the performance Shine Utopians (2020) with Louis Schou.

https://haraldbeharie.com/

During the opening of SPRING 2022, while the world was still in shock by the attack on Ukraine, artistic director Grzegorz Reske promised the audience that SPRING would do everything to bring Ukrainian artists to that same stage as fast as possible, to give them the opportunity to report the realities of war themselves. A year later, the Russian invasion still carries on.  Some theaters have been destroyed, while others are trying to function to bring some normality to a fundamentally abnormal time. Some artists are trying to create, whereas others are serving the army. Among those trying to share their time between Ukraine and the outside world is music quartet DakhaBrakha. DakhaBrakha is playing around the world to support Ukraine: they bring a report from the front lines, as well as a message of resistance and hope, love for freedom, longing for love and sorrow of death - all topics which traditional Ukrainian culture is full of.

A concert by DakhaBrakha is the opening performance of SPRING 2023. DakhaBrakha creates unexpected, contemporary music: their specialty is “ethnic chaos”. In the old Ukrainian language, “DakhaBrakha” means “give/take”, but it is also a play on words for their place of birth: DakhaBrakha was created at the Kyiv Centre of Contemporary Art: DAKH, the most experimental theatre of Ukraine.

DakhaBrakha creates so-called world music. Having experimented with Ukrainian folk music, the band has added modern electronic rhythms to their music.  They utilize these elements to create a bright, unique and unforgettable image of the band. They hope that this image will help to open up the potential of Ukrainian melodies and to bring it to the consciousness and hearts of the younger generation, both in Ukraine and in the rest of the world. Accompanied by traditional instrumentation from different countries, the quartet’s powerful and uncompromising vocal range creates a trans-national sound rooted in Ukrainian culture.

Biography

DakhaBrakha (UKR) was created in 2004 by the avant-garde theatre director Vladyslav Troitsky. The band consists of Marko Halanevych, Olena Tsybulska, Iryna Kovalenko and Nina Garenetska, who each sing and play multiple instruments. They have previously performed in big classical venues, such as the Lincoln Centre in New York City, and at outdoor musical festivals such as Glastonbury.

In 2020, DakhaBrakha won the Shevchenko National Prize in the musical arts category. In 2009 they won the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize.

Please note: The concert of blind & lame has been moved to the festivalheart in the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht Zocherfoyer and is therefore free of charge. So buying a ticket is not necessary!

"The Blind Man and the Lame" is a fable that recounts how two individuals collaborate in an effort to overcome their respective disabilities. Stories like this occur in Asia, Europe and North America, and have inspired many.

Gika and Lucy Wilke, mother and daughter, are the musicians in the incredible band blind & lame. The name is meant to quickly tick off the issue of their disabilities: Gika has been blind for 15 years and Lucy is in a wheelchair due to her spinal muscular atrophy. But that, they say, has nothing to do with their art. Ever since Gika Wilke can remember, music has been in her life. As a teenager, she discovered rock music, but she soon went in a different direction: in the south of France, she got to know the scene of rumba flamenco and "gipsy" music. She played guitar and danced. Lucy learned to sing even before she started talking. Mother and daughter sang together, in two voices. The relationship between the two is close, and so they decided three years ago to form a band.

Lucy's idea to call them blind & lame was actually a joke. ”We are not disabled people making music, we are musicians who have a disability. We don't want to hide that, but that's not the focus for us. If our music sends a signal that you can do anything, that's a nice side effect, but not our goal.”

Simply put, blind & lame is about producing great songs. Gika and Lucy compose, shoot music videos, maintain their website and are preparing their next album. The music is diverse, genuine, uncomplicated, natural and passionate. Styles - swing, jazz, rumba, country - and languages - German, English, French, Spanish - are mixed. Their sound is meant to bring people in a good mood.

Biography

Lucy Wilke is a multi-talented artist known for her work as a singer, actress, dancer, author, and director. She is also the lead singer of the band Blind & Lame and tours extensively throughout Germany. Despite her SMA, she continues to pursue her passion for the arts and dark humor, which is evident in her screenplays, short films, and plays.

Wilke received her education from the International Munich Art Lab, where she developed her singing and voice acting skills. She has played various leading roles in productions such as Extaze and Swan Lake with the dance ensemble Abart. In 2017, she performed in Fucking Disabled by David von Westphalen, followed by Anthropomorphia and Sein - Show der Begegnung. In 2020, Wilke staged her own piece, SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP, in collaboration with Paweł Duduś at Schwere Reiter in Munich and the Münchner Kammerspiele. This production won the prestigious " Der Faust" Award for Best Dance Performance in 2020 and was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen in 2021 and will be shown during SPRING Performing Arts Festival 2023.

Gika Wilke is Lucy's mother. Together they form blind & lame.

http://blindandlame.de/

Today, many of us are driven by the fantasy of a golden age: a utopia in which there is an abundance of resources, available to all. We strive to gain as much wealth as possible, happily take part in mass consumption, and aim to live in as much comfort as possible.

But is this fantasy as good as it looks? In the trilogy Golden Age  Igor Cardellini and Tomas Gonzalez question the foundations of our capitalist and globalized society. This is done through a guided tour: during SPRING, spectators visit shopping center Hoog Catharijne in the way tourists stroll through archeological sites. Elsewhere, other editions of this project take place in banks and administrative offices.

These everyday places normally escape our attention, although places like these embody the capitalist forces that shape our contemporary world. Based on the architecture of these buildings, which can be found in any city, the three visits form an archaeological trilogy of the present. The trilogy focuses on three major points inside capitalism’s recent history: consumption for the shopping mall, finance for the bank, and wage labor in the office.

The tour will reveal the depths of our post-industrial Western societies. In the tour, particular attention is paid to the relationship between the local and the global. Once we become visitors and spectators of the shopping mall, different layers of that space come to our eyes. Is it a commercial space which hijacks the public space, or is it a commercial space which becomes a public space again? Are we being controlled or do we control the space? Do we make choices or follow suggestions? Golden Age helps to look critically on our daily steps and choices, but also embraces contemporary life and the way we live it.

Biography

Tomas Gonzalez (SUI) studied Arts and Humanities at the University of Lausanne and graduated from the University of Performing Arts, Manufacture-HEARTS, where he has been teaching since 2018. His research focuses on the processes of copying, imitation and reactivation. He also works with directors such as Jérôme Bel, Milo Rau, Yan Duyvendak, Stefan Kaegi, Mohammad Al Attar and Sara Leghissa as an artistic collaborator.

Igor Cardellini (SUI) graduated from the University of Lausanne in Anthropology, Sociology and Political science. His research focuses on established power relations and the way in which performative devices allow them to be questioned and open up ways towards their subversion. He writes for several Swiss newspapers and is a member of the committee of the Belluard Bollwerk festival. In 2022-23 he is resident at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome. Through queer perspectives, he explores monstrous human figures and the political dimensions of the body, drawing inspiration from Roman statuary.

Inspired by the death of his father and many members of his father’s family, in GHOST Asa Horvitz and his colleagues sing texts created by an AI system trained on hundreds of books related to death, loss, and mourning. Horvitz is joined onstage by New York musician Carmen Q. Rothwell, Vienna-based performer Ariadne Randall, and legendary avant-garde pianist Wayne Horvitz (Asa’s uncle), with text created by an AI system designed by Seraphia Tarrant (University of Edinburgh) and Alejandro Calcano (AI Now). GHOST attempts to create a space in which the audience can drift, dream, and associate on the topics of death, loss, memories, archives–the permanent presence of the past. An installation of the AI system which generated the text for the performance in Het Huis during the festival will round out the experience. 

After A DREAM THAT BELONGS TO NO ONE, presented at SPRING in Autumn 2022, GHOST is pre-premiere of the second part of the trilogy THE SAVED NIGHT, an exploration of non-human presences. GHOST is co-produced by SPRING, in a long term commitment with the artist.

“The Rabbis in the Talmud can’t agree if the living can contact the dead or not. Some say yes, others say no, others say yes but you shouldn’t, one says there are 5000 dead on your right shoulder and 10,000 on your left, but if you saw them it would just be too overwhelming. A thousand years later Walter Benjamin tells us that if we suspend the present moment and allow the past to fill up the room, then each moment might become a gap through which a future we can't even imagine imagining might arrive.

We took books we loved connected to death and loss and memory and mourning, trained an AI system on them, and made music from the words it gave us. It sounds a little bit medieval and a little bit contemporary electronic and maybe too much 20th century America and it’s organized like dance and there are some dances too. It’s a New York uncle and his nephew and two friends but it’s not about family or friends, in fact it’s several hours to be none of those things but rather tend a field together without our names. 

It’s the first try of a new music dance performance called GHOST. It’s singing words, words from the living and words from the dead, words that belong to no one, words connected to other words, words all the way to the 10,000 mile horizon. We’re never fully human, and anyways the dead aren’t gone (but not as ghosts or spirits or memories or anything like that). A rainbow hue, a book of texts, purple and silver, lots of round food, gold and brass, dim desert brown, definitely not a funeral. You can settle in, drop way down, let it wash over you, it’s serving, being with forms so that something else might arrive, in the corner, over there, and it might last forever, but to find out you’ll just have to come and see… “

 – Asa Horvitz 

Biography

Asa Horvitz (US/NL) is a performance maker and composer/musician. Horvitz studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton and graduated from DAS Arts/DAS Theatre in 2021. Recent work has been supported by The New Museum, Microscope Gallery (NYC), deSingel, Het HEM, Het Muziekgebouw, Frascati, wpZimmer, etc. He led the band VALES; collaborations include Ben Seretan, Anna Webber, Kalup Linzy, Scott Gibbons/Romeo Castellucci, Pavel Zustiak. Horvitz is a MacDowell, Fulbright, and Camargo fellow, and is supported by Standplaats Midden Utrecht. He previously lived in New York and Warsaw where he was active in DIY and professional art contexts and later studied psychoanalysis and various ways of working with dreams, before moving to the Netherlands.

https://asahorvitz.com/

"Theatremaker and artist Julian Hetzel did it again: after 90 mind-boggling minutes during SPRING Performing Arts Festival, you are outside with a pit in your stomach and a brain full of moral and artistic dilemmas." - ★★★★☆ in De Volkskrant

With SPAfrica, Julian Hetzel delves into the dark politics of water and examines the complex intertwining of ethics and economics. Using water as conflict material, the performer shows how closely racism is linked to capitalism. The performance, which was created in collaboration with South African performer Ntando Cele and musician Frank Wienk, combines theatre, music and video. This creates a hybrid experience that exposes the relationships between a product and the social struggles in the country where it comes from, between consumption and inequality.

SPAfrica critiques extractivist practices and value creation using water as a model. In response to the incongruity of privately owned freshwater resources, despite the human right to clean drinking water, Hetzel questions the problematic mechanisms of empathy. SPAfrica offers a sustainable luxury product - sub-Saharan drinking water exported into Europe - as a contradictory yet sustainable alternative to the commodification of water by multinationals such as Nestlé, Unilever, and Coca-Cola. SPAfrica is the world's first ‘empathy drink’.

While provocative, Hetzel's projects are poetic, moving and humorous. With a tight visual language he brings complex moral, social and political dilemmas close to the audience. Julian Hetzel studied a decade ago with Ntando Cele at DAS Theatre. After his studies Hetzel settled his studio in Utrecht, Ntando Cele is developing her further projects in Switzerland. Two individuals, who focus their artistic practices on a critical approach towards their own communities: artists who constantly try to push us out of our comfort zone.

SPAfrica, like many earlier  productions by Studio Julian Hetzel, is a co-production with SPRING. Since the collaboration with Julian Hetzel started in 2014, several of his significant productions have been presented at SPRING. This year again, Julian works closely together with SPRING. Together with Ntando Cele, he is part of the Topic Talk between invitation and provocation. 

★★★★☆ in De Volkskrant

Biography

Julian Hetzel is a multidisciplinary artist who works in performance, music, and visual art. He explores the intersection of these disciplines with a political and documentary approach. Hetzel is the artistic director of Studio Julian Hetzel, based in Utrecht, which produces and realizes his works internationally. He has presented his work in over 20 countries worldwide and has been recognized with awards such as the VSCD-Mimeprijs in 2017 for The Automated Sniper (by Frascati productions and Ism & Heit). In 2019, SELF by Julian Hetzel was the Netherlands' national entry for the Prague Quadrennial. He is an associated artist at Art Centre CAMPO Gent (BE) and has received structural funding from Fonds Podiumkunsten (FPK) and the City of Utrecht since 2021.

http://julian-hetzel.com/

https://www.instagram.com/studiojulianhetzel/

https://www.facebook.com/julianhetzelstudio

Ntando Cele was born in South Africa and is based in Bern, Switserland. She studied acting in Durban and also attended DasArts in Amsterdam. Her work overturns the borders between Physical Theatre, video installation, concert and performance. She combines music, text and video to recreate her own identity on the stage.

https://ntandocele.com/

https://www.instagram.com/ntandocu/

"In The conspiracy of forms, Amparo González Sola and concrete conspire together to show you things you do not expect to see, of which you do not know where they come from or whether they were ever there at all: matter as concrete, metafysic, and metaphorical magic." - Devika Chotoe, Theaterkrant

The conspiracy of forms is a dance performance and political manifesto by the Argentine choreographer Amparo González Sola. During the performance you see three women and a block of concrete. They hold the block, hammer it, knead it, rub it, swallow it, transform it into something else. The audience is invited to watch closely and be slowly drawn into the ritual, immersed in the sound, touched by the dust. The concrete block functions as a concrete object and as a metaphor. We see concrete everywhere in our urban life, it supports the structures in which we live, shapes the world of today. But how do we relate to this heavy material?

In a poetical and feminist way, the work addresses the question of how we relate to the world we have built. What relationship is possible between destroying and recycling, between digesting and exorcising?

“Along a perceptive, emotional and conceptual movement, we conspire against ourselves, to become others.” Amparo González Sola presented a first version of this work in Buenos Aires in 2018. A new version of this work will premiere at SPRING 2023.

During the Topic Talk between provocation and invitation,  Amparo will delve deeper into her work. 

Practical information: The material in the piece releases dust. It does not present risks for the audience or performers. However, for those of you susceptible to dust, please feel free to wear the masks provided at the entrance.

Biography

Amparo Gonzalez Sola is an Argentinian choreographer and performer, currently residing in the Netherlands. Her art is influenced by her involvement in feminist activism in Buenos Aires, her ancestral cosmology, and migration experiences. She completed the DAS Choreography Master Program at Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in 2022 and has been working on the Exploring Reciprocity project with Residenties in Utrecht since 2019. Last year she premiered her solo work If every rock is a hole, which was co-produced by SPRING Performing Arts Festival. Amparo receives support from various international institutions and collaborates with artists and researchers in both Argentina and the Netherlands. The conspiracy of forms is a continuing collaboration with Argentinian artists Claudia Ganquin and Carolina Stegmayer.

https://amparogonzalezsola.com/

If All Else Fails is a production by the well-known British theatre collective Forced Entertainment and explores the theme of failure and the role it plays in our lives. It’s performed by Cathy Naden, one of the founding members of Forced Entertainment, and dancer and performer Seke Chimutengwende, who’s a close collaborator of a.o. DV8 Physical Theatre. The piece is a dialogue of speech and movement, questions and answers, absurdism and irony.

The audience is presented with a series of characters and scenarios struggling with some form of failure. The show aims to challenge our perception of failure and explore how we can learn and grow from our mistakes. It encourages us to embrace failure as an inevitable part of life and see it as an opportunity for personal growth.

Using their unique technique on the cross section between storytelling and verbal improvisation, this new production - as many others in the long history of the group - is as much a tribute to the complexity of human existence as much as an ironic comment to its evanescence.

"[If All Else Fails] has a tight format: based on a few sentences, Chimutengwende and Naden keep changing infinitely, always neatly one by one, in which they keep questioning and stretching the meaning of their thoughts a bit further. This way, each statement gets looked at from all sides, gets questioned, turned around, and restored again."- Marijn Lems,  NRC

"Naden and Chimutengwende keep changing their sentences just a tiny bit: in words, intonation, and rhythm. It is interesting to hear how a sentence with such little change can get a completely new meaning."- Juliette Georges, Theaterkrant

"In January, I traveled to Lagos, Nigeria to make a work about the possible future African exodus. But the performers of Kininso Koncepts were not keen on showing themselves as potential migrants. Rather, they reversed the long history of stereotyping, and centered their gaze on us Europeans. A camera team from Nollywood, the center of the African film industry, jumped on board. Armed with cameras, film lights and a high-speed Internet connection, they created a work about our European self-image as our future expectations here begin to falter. How persistent are images of ourselves and others? How long will we cling to our comfortable position of power?"

Dear beloved friend, is a performance played at the Seaside Cottage theater in Lagos and screened live over the Internet at Utrecht's Stadschouwburg.

"Verhoeven is a great master at coming up with the right form to go with the right subject... It has become one of his most political performances, about a continent that will flee en masse and another continent that doesn't know what to do with it." - De Volkskrant

After the performance on the 20th of May there will be an aftertalk with the performers. This aftertalk will be moderated by Maurice van Turnhout. 

Biography

Dries Verhoeven is a theatre maker and visual artist. He has been a member of the Academy of Arts since 2020. He creates installations, performances and happenings in museums, on location and in a city's public space. On the border between performance and installation art, he challenges the relationships between spectators, performers, everyday reality and art. The spectator is directly involved in the work or given the opportunity to direct his own experience.

In his work, Verhoeven marks aspects of the social reality we live in. He is not concerned with conveying a position in relation to that reality, but much more about activating the viewer's thinking, urging critical reflection. He hopes to cast doubt on the dominant systems that imperceptibly define our lives and thinking. In recent years, it has included current crisis thinking and the influence of digital media on interpersonal relations that have prompted a work.

https://driesverhoeven.com/

SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP is about togetherness. Artist Lucy Wilke, who was born with a hereditary muscle disease, queer dancer Paweł Duduś and e-composer Kim_Twiddle explore the liberating power of their friendship in a tender, playful and extremely sensual way. In seven chapters, the performers sketch an intimate portrait that offers insight into an alternative way of living and being. The audience beholds a tender pas de deux of touch. In a soft, cloudy landscape, Wilke and Duduś meet with investigative gestures and descriptions, and fathom a field of tensions and contradictions. They expose the norms of society and work to remove their physical boundaries.

Wilke was born in a body that is often read as a handicap. Duduś was born in Poland in 1989. They identify queer, non-binary, migrant, feminist and ally. Together they expose themselves to the public's gaze and respond to voyeurism with a radical intimacy. Male/female, victim/perpetrator, active/passive: in the imagination of these performers, such oppositions are no longer relevant. With this performance, Wilke and Duduś take a hard stand against the social exclusion of minorities. The piece defies stereotypes and common beliefs and offers the audience a glimpse of a utopia in which human interactions are filled with tenderness and honesty.

It is a story about caring and taking care; a story about constant clashes with society, and the strength that’s built to withstand them. It is a performance about sensuality and intimacy, and finally it is a celebration of friendship.

SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP was invited to the Theatertreffen Berlin 2021 and has been awarded with the German Theatre Prize DER FAUST in the category Performer /  Actress Dance. 

Paweł Duduś and Kim_Twiddle will discuss the concept of caregiving in its relation to their work in the Topic Talk performing care. Lucy Wilke is part of blind & lame, whose concert is also part of SPRING 2023. 

This tour is supported by the Kulturreferat München

Igor Shugaleev is known for his interdisciplinary approach to art and his use of new technologies and video to create immersive and interactive experiences. His works often explore the ways in which new media transform our relationships with each other and the world around us, and his performances blur the lines between reality and fiction. 375 0908 2334 / the body you are calling is currently not available is a response to the harassment of protesters in Belarus.

In the summer of 2020, the protests of Belarusian society came to a climax. They rose up against the dictatorship and the Russian-controlled corruption and autocratic government. The revolution was suppressed with blood, dozens were killed in the streets and nearly 40,000 citizens were arrested and tortured for ‘disobedience’. Shugaleev fled to Ukraine, to Poland and finally to Germany, and was fortunate not to be arrested, but to ‘merely’ become a refugee. The violence and abuse continue to this day. In his performance, Shugaleev opens a window to the horrific reality of the demonstrators' conditions. It’s a desperate cry for help and a plea for global awareness of the atrocities committed by the Belarusian government.

The performance grew out of the idea of resisting long-term stress, dealing with fear and anxiety, and overcoming feelings of guilt. Shugaleev creates a fairly simple way of communicating with the public: he identifies with the detainees, "simulates" the physical torture and transforms a unanimous person into a living, physical presence.

In his performance, the artist pays homage to his compatriots who ended up in the hands of the secret service, paying the highest price for their desire for freedom and democracy.

Biography

Igor Shugaleev is a Belarusian artist and performer who graduated from the Belarusian State Academy of Arts. During his studies, he developed a passion for performative practices, physical theater, and contemporary dance. He furthered his training by participating in workshops led by renowned teachers in Europe, exploring the fields of performance, partnering, contemporary dance and happening.

From 2019, Shugaleev began creating solo projects that draw on his multidisciplinary background, collaborating with artists from various creative fields to develop his own unique language of artistic expression at the intersection of dance, drama theatre, and performance. Currently based in Poland since 2021, Shugaleev continues to create thought-provoking and innovative works that push the boundaries of traditional art forms.

Igor Shugaleev

SNN #2: Light/Space/Prop is an interactive and dynamic art installation designed to be displayed in a public space. It is inspired by the "Light Prop for the Electric Stage," which was created by the Bauhaus artist Lazslo Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s.

The installation consists of a tower with five moving lights. These lights have so called lenticular lenses attached to them, which distort the images they project onto the walls surrounding the tower. The lights move in a way that allows the images to shift across the walls at different speeds and rhythms. The visuals displayed are controlled by spiking neural networks (SNNs), which are projected at a large scale within the space. SNNs are a type of artificial neural network inspired by the way neurons in the brain work. Data is transmitted in the form of "spikes" or pulses, similar to the way neurons in the brain communicate.

The artist's goal is to create a new kind of light environment that incorporates motion and light as creative elements. The use of SNNs creates an ever-shifting and almost contemplative environment that slows down the viewer's perception of space and time. Overall, the installation is an updated version of Moholy-Nagy's vision for a new "electrified moving image," and it showcases the possibilities of creating interactive and immersive public art using technology.

SNN#2 is an immersive light and sound experience giving tribute to technology in service of the arts. It will be shown on the square in front of the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht and will be on display for two nights.

The installation is made by Festival Fellow Chris Salter and Alexandre Saunier. 

A plot exposed, a foul deed enacted invites scandal. In the spirit of revolution or romantic musings, scandals provoke an imagining of the impossible. Utopian or mundane, how might scandal reveal what lies unwittingly close to our fantasies? And how does it expose where society places its limits? If life is a scandal waiting to be plotted, how do we position ourselves within its matrix? Immoral and lacking propriety, scandals are incidents where fantasy and pleasure take center stage. Guided by the questions of whom this pleasure is for and at what expense, Lewis's new plot explores the stage where scandals abound. 

Weaving together historical, anecdotal, political, and mythical narratives − ranging from an interest in the Enlightenment thinker John Locke, Maria Olofa (Wolofa) in the slave revolt of Santo Domingo in 1521, Cuban artist and revolutionary Jose Aponte, and Lewis’s great grandmother, a figure Lewis turns to within her plot as a guide of resistance − the choreographer constructs the poetics of refusal at the edges of representation. A dance between affect and embodiment, seeing and being seen, A Plot/A Scandal is a scene in the making where the excitement for that which does not fit might find its place.

The work unfolds through the following parts:

• Prelude
• Plot 1 : John Locke
• Plot 2: Rebellion
• Intermezzo: John Locke cleans up his mess
• Plot 3: Story of Lolon / fuck up the plot
• Outro: Repair ?

"In three parts, Lewis shows with powerful mime, body use, and comedy how we cannot 'plot against' scandals from the (neo)colonial history, which are furthermore legitimized by liberal theories of pioneers of capitalism, like English philosopher John Locke." - ★★★★☆, De Volkskrant

Another work by Ligia Lewis, Still not Still, is also part of SPRING 2023. A Plot / A Scandal is a natural continuation of Still not Still and other earlier works. During SPRING, Ligia will also participate in the Topic Talk black body - white gaze. 

Biography

Ligia Lewis (Dominican Republic, USA) works as a choreographer and dancer. Lewis’s works, often marked by expressions of physical intensity and humor, animate subjects through physical expression that disrupts normative conceptions of the body. She negotiates the ghostly traces of history, memory, and the unknown. Through choreography, she develops expressive concepts that give form to movements, speech, affects, thoughts, relations, and the bodies that hold them.

Her work was presented in multiple venues across Europe and the US. She was managed and produced by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater from 2017 until 2021 and was a tanzhaus nrw factory artist from 2017 until 2019. She is the recipient of the Tabori Award in the category of Distinction, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants Award, a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, and more. She was also featured on the German Dance Platform shortlist in 2022 and 2018. 

https://ligialewis.com/

Can a history full of bad faith and gaps be left to the past? Can history die? Since history is fallible, and often determined by the victors, what might emerge when it is laid to rest?

In Still Not Still, choreographer and dancer Ligia Lewis deals with the heavy history of black and non-Western communities. The exclusion of these groups in the past  is covered in a dance full of dark humor and surrealist imagery. Seven performers play in a world at a standstill, in which the fantasy of historical progress is critically looked at. Lewis reflects on the past and presence of non-white and non-western heroes in the global narrative still led by the European point of view.

She highlights the shameful straight lines from the hidden scandal of the colonial past, to the contemporary scandal of everyday reality disclosed by the BLM movement. She confronts the audience with our illusions about a „post-class” and „post-race” contemporary society. Lewis speaks straight from the middle of the so-called progressive West, and her diagnosis is directed straight onto the people around her, exposing everyday hypocrisy, and knocking us out from our liberal comfort.

“By invoking the world of the dead and reintegrating it into our present, Lewis creates a fictional-performative alternative world, which defies discrimination and degradation. It is at once a wild celebration, a ritual, and a melancholic lament” - Andrej Mirčev, tanzschreiber.de

"The dancers seem imprisoned in history which keeps repeating itself, which cannot be overcome. It troubles, it chafes, it screams. This is where Still Not Still steals your breath." - Iris Spanbroek, de Theaterkrant

 At SPRING 2023, Ligia Lewis presents not one, but two works. A Plot / A Scandal plays after Still Not Still, on the 26th and 27th of May. Ligia will also participate in the Topic Talk black body - white gaze.

Biography

Ligia Lewis (Dominican Republic, USA) works as a choreographer and dancer. Lewis’s works, often marked by expressions of physical intensity and humor, animate subjects through physical expression that disrupts normative conceptions of the body. She negotiates the ghostly traces of history, memory, and the unknown. Through choreography, she develops expressive concepts that give form to movements, speech, affects, thoughts, relations, and the bodies that hold them.

Her work was presented in multiple venues across Europe and the US. She was managed and produced by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater from 2017 until 2021 and was a tanzhaus nrw factory artist from 2017 until 2019. She is the recipient of the Tabori Award in the category of Distinction, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants Award, a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, and more. She was also featured on the German Dance Platform shortlist in 2022 and 2018. 

https://ligialewis.com/

How do we care for each other? What does this do to ourselves, and our relationships with others? Jija Sohn, Aleksandra Lemm, and Julia Reist attempt to answer these questions in Landing on Feathers.

In this performance, caregivers and artists share their vision on body-oriented caregiving through dance. Care constitutes relations between individuals in society as a necessary element in building a community. Landing on Feathers is a performance for those who are in need of care, and those who are hired to care. It is a performance where the audience can also experience the first steps in making their approach to care more conscious and attentive, even to strangers.

The performance is based on creative research that started back in 2021. Choreographers and performers Jija Sohn and Aleksandra Lemm and dramaturg Julia Reist sat down with artist Elmer Kouwenberg, whose body has been paralyzed due to a car accident that happened 28 years ago. In Landing on Feathers, the artists share their research in a safe and intimate setting. They do this together with performer Nica Roses. 

The audience witnesses the interaction between their dance training and the physical dimension of their work as Elmer’s caregiving team. Within their caregiving practice, limitations are not simply experienced, but deeply acknowledged as an intrinsic part throughout the process.

It is a performance about awareness and attentiveness. Jija and her associates bring the notion of care from the sphere of market value back into the condition of building a relation between people and constituting a community. The artists invite you to reflect on care, closeness, and our relationship to the other. Jija will discuss the topic of caregiving further in the Topic Talk performing care.

Francien van der Putt from the Theaterkrant on Landing on Feathers: “Landing on Feathers is both humorous and serious: it is a combination of a very personal realism with dramatirgical tecnieuqes and a minimal design, which ensures that the paradoxes of an emancipated self-image related to intimacies and care pop up.”

Practical information: In this performance, there will be an invitation to take off your shoes and partake in a small physical exercise. You are free to choose whether or not to participate.

Landing on Feathers takes placein BAK - Basis voor actuele kunst. In April and May 2023 UPS (Ultradependent Public School) transforms BAK into a schoolhouse with distinct study areas: a gymnasium, a copybar, a bootleg library, a gift hall, a microcosmicroom, and a cafeteria. Sixteen artworks as learning objects are located here and around the city of Utrecht, activated by an intensive public program of trainings. Symposiums, rituals, field recordings, workshops, day-long radio shows, lectures, skill-shares, assemblies, beauty salons, bootleg distros, beauty salons, and cook-offs are only some of the ways UPS configures the act of training.  

If you have time before or after the performance, go take a look! Read more here. 

Biography

Jija Sohn (JPN/KOR) is an artist based in Amsterdam. In 2015 Jija graduated from the SNDO (School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam) and was selected for the Moving Forward Trajectory - residency project that supports the upcoming artists. In 2017 she was awarded with the ‘3Package Deal’ by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. 2019-2021, she was supported by DansBrabant and had an opportunity to re-think her practice from a fundamental base, and started focusing her practice on wellbeing, care and the fullness of life. From rethinking her artistic roots and starting from the principles of care, she decided to also start working as a caregiver. This side job (as a caretaker) is a mirror to how we are in daily life and at work as artists - shaping our relationships with friends, family members and with ourselves, with systems, beliefs and cultural values.

https://www.jijasohn.com/

“Ambient Theatre Fury is completely analogue, with just text, bodies and minimal decor. […] It makes you laugh, but it is also disturbing.” ★★★★☆ – DeMorgen

"In their clear form, Jäger and Ooms express the (non)emotions of today, but in their core they also cover something timeless. The balance between this is beautiful. "- Etcetera

Netflix series, social media feeds, or popular songs: we encounter so-called ‘ambient experiences’ like these every day. Modern digital media provide users with frivolous pleasure, but can also lead to a form of absence. Consuming these media is a pseudo-activity that numbs the sense of time and demands a certain stillness from the subject.

Ambient Theatre Fury: The Death Of Dialogue and How To Avoid It covers these immersive experiences and how they affect their users. The makers do this by searching for a dialogue between two flamboyant, but also anxious subjects. It is scripted entirely on quotations from social media and virtual chat rooms. Often funny in anecdote, the production by the young Flemish artists is in fact a very sad picture of our contemporary cellular society. The talented duo draws an ironic portrait of their own generation, with a bitter reflection: a world in which we would rather talk next to each other, than actually communicate.

Ambient Theatre Fury is created by Anna Franziska Jäger and Nathan Ooms (BE). The two have worked together three times previously. This piece follows up on their earlier work Bartlebabe, which explores similar themes in monologue-form. Bartlebabe received the Mathilde Horlait-Dapsens prize. Together they also created As a matter of fiction (2018) and Some Things Last A Long Time (2019).

Biography

Anna Franziska Jäger (1996, BE) is a theatre maker, actress and performer who obtained her master degree in Drama at KASK School of Arts in Ghent in 2020. She is part of performance platform Ne mosquito pas. She has written articles and essays about theatre, acting and digitalisation for Etcetera magazine and online platform Sabzian.

Nathan Ooms (1996, BE) is a performer and theatre and dance maker. He obtained his bachelor (2018) and master (2019) degree in Drama at KASK School of Arts, Ghent. In 2019 he enrolled in the master program in choreography STUDIOS at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, where he graduated in 2021 with the performance The Honey House. In 2019, Nathan was one of the initiating artists of Ne mosquito pas, a performance platform inviting artists to create short solo performances starting from worst ideas.

Ambient Theatre Fury is produced by CAMPO, a Ghent (Belgium) based arts centre which creates and shows theatre, dance, and performance by new makers and international voices. 

https://www.campo.nu/nl/artist/5823/anna-franziska-jger-nathan-ooms

A body that is outwardly still and inwardly vibrating – what processes does the energy undergo before it breaks through? How does it change when the body matures?

MELLOWING is the first collaboration between the Berlin based international ensemble of professional dancers over 40 and the Greek contemporary choreographer Christos Papadopoulos. The dancers of the Dance On Ensemble come from leading contemporary dance groups around the world and look back on a long dance biography. Incorporating their knowledge and experience into the creation, together they explore moments of perception and intensities of the moment that create a lively restlessness, a permanent vibration in which the spectator is inevitably involved.

With minimalistic music by Coti K,  Papadopoulos gradually leads the group of dancers into a collective practice of repetitive and synchronic ballet technique. But with the presence of these dancers - not only their bodies, but also personalities and characters, this marked attempt „fails”, and from the mechanical group composition, manifestations of individualism take the lead. An energetic dance project celebrating movement and being together on stage, and at the same time embracing the diversity and individuality of every dancer involved.

alaa minawi is a Dutch-Lebanese-Palestinian artist working between visual and performing arts. After the success of his performance That breath we held… in 2021, alaa has now returned with a new performance named 2048 - identity in dissolution.

alaa invites the audience “to a house which is not his house, on a street which is not his street”. He will host the meeting, not being there. A small, intimate audience is taken on a journey of questions that involves them, their childhood, family and identity. As such, they become not only witnesses, but also co-creators of the performance. Together with his audience, alaa discusses societal violence that results in the exclusion of certain members of society, for example by the absence of a valid identity card.

2048 is the name of the artistic research of alaa around the notion of belonging and whatever stems out from it, especially for those who are invisible, whose identities need to be hidden for different reasons. This research is manifested in the form of performative installations all under the same title; 2048, however the subtitle changes. 2048 - identity in dissolution is the fourth performative installation, that deals with the notion of visibility and invisibility. This performance started as a research from the ramifications of the inability of the Lebanese mothers to grant citizenship to their children.

2048 - identity in dissolution  had its Dutch premiere in January 2023 during De Brakke Grond's festival Beyond the Black Box. The international premiere took place on January 15, 2023 in Beirut (Lebanon). The Arabic version of the performance will be played at SPRING on the 24th of May. 

Disclaimers:

1- This performance is based on using WhatsApp. Audience members interested in the performance need to have their own WhatsApp number in their phones. A WhatsApp group will be created consisting of the audience members (10 - 12 persons). Your phone number will be part of that WhatsApp group. Some of the mediums you share in the Whatsapp group will be part of the performance. The location will be announced on the day of the performance, in the WhatsApp group.

2- This performance uses phone flashes in certain parts.

3- This performance starts outdoors.

4- This performance requires a certain literacy in using WhatsApp. it is not possible to participate without using your own WhatsApp number. Please make sure your phone is charged before the performance starts. 

Biography

alaa minawi, a Dutch-Lebanese-Palestinian artist based in Amsterdam, started his career as a light designer and scenographer. He then shifted towards making his own installations and performances. Since 2016, alaa has been exploring the possibilities of merging installation and performing arts. He tries to involve the audience in his work, not only as active participants, but rather as an integral element in the structure of the performance, for that alaa diminishes the role of the performer and highlights the presence of the spectator. Subjects like belonging, presence, absence, arab-futurism, wars, traumas, and heeling were tackled within his works. alaa has studied at the Hogeschool voor De Kunsten Utrecht. He also attained a certificate from Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts London (RADA) to train light designers. He is a lecturer at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, and the Sandberg Institute and the founder & Program Director of the Beirut Summer School for Theater & Performance.

https://www.alaaminawi.com/

The Portuguese theatre maker Raquel André collects people. Having compiled collections of lovers, collectors and artists, it’s time now to create a collection of spectators. Who are these spectators? How do they relate to art? And what do they experience when they attend a show?

Collection of Spectators is a show and an exhibition rolled into one. On stage, Raquel André initiates a probing conversation with a group of people who are regular visitors of Stadsschouwburg Utrecht. She plans a series of intensive workshops with them during the preceding week, during which they talk about how they look at art, what art means to them, and what striking works of art have made a lasting impression on them. And there’s room to talk about the hidden story of the theatre itself.

Be part of the performance Collection of Spectators
Collection of Spectators is a show and an exhibition rolled into one. On stage, Raquel André initiates a probing conversation with a group of theatre goers who are regular visitors of Stadsschouwburg Utrecht. She plans a series of intensive workshops with them during the preceding week, during which they talk about how they look at art, what art means to them, and what striking works of art have made a lasting impression on them. And there’s room to talk about the hidden story of the theatre itself. Do you want to be part of Collection of Spectators? Click here for more information.

Four performers are standing on four different performing area's in different spaces. They are exploring the space. Their presence is captured and a representation of their positioning is projected inside the two other blackboxes. The performers are individuals, each with a physical body of their own, who are connected to form a collective through the installation and its technology. This creates a fourth entity, a new individual; not a person with a physical body, but a virtual representation of the installation itself. What follows is an interplay between the individual and the collective. Being a part of it, or taking a distance. A space filled with entities, spirits and people who are present but not in the flesh. Is the physical body even required to form a collective within the installation? Do we exist by the grace of the physical body, or does our representation have an identity as well? 

Theatre collective Le Fou (Jorrit Thijn, Tony Schuite and Carolien Dokter) are a group of artists connected to HKU Theater. They are pushing the boundaries of the theatre in collaboration with students and alumni, in search of new art forms in which old theatre blends with new performing art. Earlier pieces by Le Fou include the research performance Quand 1, inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Quad. In Quand 3, Le Fou delve deeper into the encounters generated in Quand 1 until they form meaningful actions. 

The versatile Argentinian choreographer Ayelen Parolin is on a quest to find the simplicity of dance. She intends to return to the pure, unashamed primal joy of dancing, stripped of all pretence and seriousness. Using only a handful of different dance moves, three performers play an infectious and extravagant game of rhythm and structure. A musical game without music, but with the deeply human power of honesty – like a fool, a naive person, a child. A colourful game in which anyything is possible. Absurd and dreamy.  

In this piece we witness the pure joy of movement. Simple. Essential. 

As a child in Casablanca, from under the skirts of his two grandmothers, choreographer Khalid Benghrib watched lilas, ritual gatherings of the Moroccan Sufis. This mysterious world of ancient trance ceremonies, dance, music, spirits, fairies, and devils made a deep impression on him. In L'Haal, Benghrib revives his childlike excitement. Together with nine dancers and four percussionists, led by Hassan Boussou, the famous guembri player and master of the Gnawa genre, he gives a contemporary twist to Moroccan sacred music and Sufi dance. This is a performance in which both dancers and audience are enraptured.

Khalid Bengrib was born in the suburb of Casablanca, and lives between Morocco and France. Initiated to classical dance by Lahcen Zinoun and Colette Milner and to contemporary dance by Karin Weiner, Christine Gérard, Bertrand Papillon, Régine Chopinot and Didier Deschamps. Previous presentations of Benghrib in The Netherlands had been produced by Dancing on the Edge festival.

Interview with choreographer Khalid Benghrib
“The connection with my child-life is very important. I want to share my childhood memories of the lilas and how I experienced them as magical. I want to share that story, but I won’t just tell it to you… I’ll show it to you. During my childhood, the door to the lila ceremony was always open. So, if you want to come to this ritual, come. Whatever your beliefs, you are welcome. The door is open.“
Read the entire interview in the digital magazine of SPRING in Autumn 2021.

Gnawa Trance workshop by choreographer Khalid Benghrib
Khalid Benghrib gives an exclusive workshop inspired by the traditions of trance in Gnawa music and by the old, traditional Sufi traditions and rituals. The choreographer, born in Casablanca, mixes these styles in his own unique way. Anyone can participate, regardless of age, experience, condition or body type. Here you can read more information. 

Memory Lapse is a caustic theatrical sound installation featuring some old-fashioned tape recorders. It deals with a series of brief anecdotic monologues, personal memories from different phases in life. The monologues are played on various tape recorders, which in time begin to slow down and warp the recorded sound. This analogue process is a painful demonstration of the way we slowly warp and lose our memories as time goes by during our lives.

The monologues have been written and recorded (directed) by Guiot Duermeijer; the tape recorders have been prepared by Wouter van Veldhoven.

The language in this installation is Dutch.

Dance Me! is a dance battle that sees two generations doing battle in loving rivalry. The stage is set up like a boxing ring. The She She Pop dancers take on the role of the elderly; their opponents are a group of young artists. Mutual incomprehension, otherwise known as the generation gap, is given the shape of a strictly regulated dance ritual. The teams take turns. The team that’s not in the arena has the microphones and makes music. Not only do they force their rhythms onto the dancing group, but they also add a long list of prejudices and insults. Or are they expressions of admiration?

What is a generation? Does it even exist? And if so, what can we learn from each other? These are the questions raised by the energetic Dance Me!.

Just before sunset, you seek out your spot, where you will find some blankets and pillows. You lie down, take a full body stretch, and breathe. There’s a booklet there that you can read. And as the sky begins to darken, seven performers will evoke a meditative mood with sound and movement. You allow time to just pass. Memories come and go, images appear before your mind’s eye, you watch them fade in and out, and every now and then you drift off. Can we dream together, without sharing the same dream?

A Dream That Belongs To No One is an extended version of the show Asa Horvitz’ created for his graduation from DAS Theatre in 2021. A performance about the ways sound and music can invoke something indescribably far off, and yet so very intimate. Asa creates a temporary community where people come together to share an intense and indefinable experience.

Artist statement: “Sometimes a dream gets all over my body and won't leave me alone. It's sticky or rough or just a constant pressure on my chest, stomach, and groin. The image and feeling linger for days and something, slowly, almost imperceptibly, changes in me. Then I think Ibn’Arabi, who wrote of the Alam-al-Mithal, a layer of reality in which dreams and images exist without us. The presences in the Alam-al-Mithal are not made up but have their own desires and needs. (There's a similar idea in Plotinus, in Ficino, in some forms of contemporary psychoanalysis, in Chiara Bottici). It’s interesting that a dream is always whatever image. It's specific, absolutely exact in its details, but it doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that it arrived, grabbed me, and came from somewhere, I can't say where, but I can feel that it needs attention. Performers bow long wires tuned to the resonant frequencies of the space, creating a sonic landscape in which the audience is invited to sink in and let the hours pass. Through a process (score) in which songs, gestures, and physical actions are rearranged and looped, performers create an environment for whatever images to arrive, be listened to, argued with...” – Asa Horvitz

Theatre is not only a mirror of the present, it also represents possible futures and offers reasons to reflect on major themes. In the installation Memory Lapse, we see how fallible old-fashioned tape recorders attempt to conserve the past. In Quand 3, we see how performers follow a choreography based on works by Beckett. One performer shares physical space with the audience, the others are elsewhere. Their movements are visible in space with the help of technology, in real time. Who or what determines the course of things here and has agency? The deceased writer? The performers? The technology? The creators? Or, after all, the audience? Technology not only follows human action, it also guides it. We need to have a good discussion about that. Caspar Nieuwenhuis, director HKU and catalyst internationalization at LIKEMINDS, moderates a conversation on relationships between society, technology and the future. 

Stefan Roolvink, Marijke Hessels and Jorrit Thijn join the SPRING Topic Talk. Stefan has been working as a researcher at the Rathenau Instituut since 2021. Currently, he is investigating the upcoming metaverse and the societal risks and opportunities that might come along with this new technology. Marijke works as a tech dramaturge at Ulrike Quade Company. She works on various research projects on (puppet) theatre and robotics, and has set up a expert meetings called Future Stages. Jorrit is a creative writer, speculative designer and forester without a forest. He writes and designs for interaction, theatre, geo-based audio experiences, installations and short stories. He teaches Interactive Narratives at the graduate programmes Writing for performance and Interactive performance design at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht.  

SPRING Topic Talks are deepening conversations on SPRING themes: current issues that matter. The moderator will engage with artists from the festival and interesting guest speakers. The Talks are for the curious listener, the critical expert, the student and the professional. They are easy to combine with a visit to a performance, but can also be attended separately. The Talks are free and open to everyone. Making a reservation is recommended.

 
Stefan Roolvink en Caspar Nieuwenhuis

 
Marijke Hessels en Joris Weijdom

SPRING Topic Talk: What Technology Wants is supported by Likeminds.

What are you taking on board for the future? Various artists will be waiting by the ARK with trays full of pens, pencils and felt-tip pens, ready to talk with local residents and discuss their dreams, desires and ideas about the future.  The artists will transform your own personal story into a work of art: a poem or drawing that you can then take home with you as a souvenir. A pocket-sized piece of the future.

You can meet Elias, Ricardo or Christiaan up close in a large cube of mirrors measuring two by two metres. The three men share personal stories about their own feelings of loneliness. You can also join in a life-size game of Jenga, listen to audio stories or draw a portrait of the person you're sharing the cube with.

This performance will be held for a small number of audience members. Free tickets are available at the square.

A talk show for every neighbourhood: listen live or from the comfort of your home. Host Dorothy Blokland and our neighbourhood ambassadors welcome different local residents to discuss their experiences during the pandemic and outlook for the future. With performances by local artists including Catching Cultures Orchestra, Jeugdorkest Leidsche Rijn and rapper Dwinna. Radio ARK is broadcast live from the Ark on the festival site or can be enjoyed at home via a Facebook livestream from @springutrecht. 

This intimate performance in a living room near the ark involves an awkward encounter over coffee. A story about loneliness, social divides and connection, based on conversations with residents at Rijnsche Maan, a shelter for mentally vulnerable people whose lives have been (temporarily) turned upside down. Over coffee can be painfully familiar, but is mainly comforting and engaging. It inspires the audience to visit someone over coffee more often.

The performance will take place in a living room at walking distance from the ARK Square, with space for a small number of audience members. Free tickets are available at the square.

There are so many feelings we all share but never talk about. For example, that feeling of loneliness you can experience when surrounded by a large crowd of people. You will receive a booklet, a pen and a mirror that you can attach to the artwork. By the end of the ARK Utrecht event, we will have created an artwork that reflects us all.

Listen to people's stories about the year of the pandemic. Guiot has created a sound installation for ARK to mark the end of a lonely period. Listen to Utrecht locals' relatable lockdown experiences, filled with moments of despair and relief.

Rapper Dwinna has already reached one million streams on Spotify and was FunX's featured artist of the week in 2019. Now, he's set to perform on the ARK stage. Born in Amsterdam but raised in Ondiep/Zuilen, he released an EP/mixtape entitled 'Ondiep'. Dwinna is active in the neighbourhood and city, and uses his music to bring people - especially kids - together and highlight Utrecht's diversity. Bounce along to this rapper from our very own city.

We now live in a world where it's no longer normal to dance together. Still, people are always eager to party, touch each other and celebrate life. Step into the DOX nightclub and enjoy a hypnotic mix of European and African/Oeghan music: we're all one big family for a night. Let the beat take you on a journey and feel the energy: this is what we've been missing so much!

Utrecht-based dance company De Dansers will be closing ARK Utrecht with an exciting performance about trust. Two people lifting each other up in the air, supporting each other and playfully daring each other, all on a 2 by 3 metre carpet. They both need one another, but who is really helping who here?

Five young musicians from BUI drew inspiration from their environment, travelling through all the city's neighbourhoods on behalf of ARK Utrecht. They managed to blend music, spoken word and dance with the sound of the birds and wind and the sunlight shining through the trees. Expect to see your own neighbourhood in a new light.

Artist Betina Abi Habib will be at the square collecting signatures for her ''No First Class Travel on the Ark'' campaign. She believes everyone should be able to board the ARK as equals. You can sign the petition to show your support for a future without discrimination. Once all the signatures have been collected, the petition will be raised in the form of a flag, marking the end of the festival.

Bounce to tracks from every corner of the world. You'll be sure to hear the Bankra Bike DJ crew approaching from far away as the ark arrives in your neighbourhood! DJing from sound systems on bicycles, they play tropical and global bass: world music with some serious beats. The crew will join forces with the Social Dance Club for a party at the end of each neighbourhood programme: groove along from the comfort of your own seat.

You may have seen us out and about, asking people to take part in the ARK greeting card relay. We asked local residents to write their wishes for a fellow local on a postcard. Did you already get a postcard with a wish? If not, visit our Wish Bar to receive a personal wish from a fellow resident of Utrecht. You can then write down your wishes for someone else on an empty card. Visit this mobile bar - organised in cooperation with Resto van Harte - and get a free snack or drink in exchange for your wish!

Theatre artists Linda Bosch, Jordy Roeten, Veerle van Dieren and Marieke Heerema ventured into six of Utrecht's neighbourhoods in search of residents with hopeful stories. They managed to find an ARK Ambassador in each neighbourhood; a local resident whose commitment to their neighbourhood makes everyone proud. Sara and Esther from Lunetten, Ahmet from Kanaleneiland, Sabiet from Leidsche Rijn, Dwight from Ondiep, Adam from Overvecht and Wafae from Lombok. Utrecht-based illustrator Joozy Art created portraits of the ambassadors. Pick up a free copy of the ARK Newspaper with stories and portraits of the ambassadors at the square. In the newspaper you will also find inspiring quotes from these figureheads in response to the question "What from the past year will you take with you into the future?"

Our theater makers have spoken to a lot of local residents. Read here the quotes/inspiring answers from more residents of Utrecht.

The square features a large ark, a mobile vehicle in the form of a boat created by artist Ruben Arents. Over the course of ARK Utrecht, the ark will be transformed into a colourful flagship containing locals' valuable lessons for the future. Every visitor can add a flag with their own answer to the question 'Which valuable lessons will you be taking on board for the future?' A stage at the centre of the ark will host the ARK Radio talk show and other performances.

Choreographer Afra Ernst was born in Indonesia and grew up in the Netherlands. Despite having grown up in a Muslim family, she still struggles to practice her faith in a way that suits her while coping with the many prejudices of her environment. Dressed in white, the colour of neutrality, Afra goes on a quest to explore her relationship with religion. 

Playful Robots is an interactive installation where participants can interact with robots through movement. Inspired by rule-based dance improvisation, this installation offers the visitor the opportunity to engage in three games with two Pepper robots. No previous experience is required, just the willingness and curiosity to explore how we can move with and alongside machines. Playful robots is part of the larger project Acting like a Robot, where we investigate how robotics and theatre can inspire each other. This interactive installation arises then from our interest and curiosity about human-robot relations, and about how they could be designed and conceived differently. Join us in discovering more embodied and playful ways of relating to machines!

You can apply via this form.

What's your name? And why? What does it mean? How do you experience having the name you have? Does it define you? Do you have a nickname?

Michikazu Matsune’s ongoing project Between my name and me is based on the simple idea of asking people to share small episodes about their own given names. Full of unspectacularly spectacular anecdotes, these personal stories evolve into a collective portrait of diverse individuals. The project is currently in progress with an aim to result in an installation, book and performance, that features name-stories of 100 people from various cities in the world.

We call for and welcomes all people regardless of background, age and gender identity to contribute one’s own name-story to the video and audio archive of the project!

HOW:
The participants are invited to an individual interview-session with Michikazu Matsune. Your name-story will be recorded in video and audio. A session takes about 20 – 30 min. No special preparation is necessary.

WHEN:
Please register and arrange your own time-slot. Your session can be booked for a time between May 18 – 20, 1.30pm – 6pm and May 21, 10.30am - 6pm The sessions will take place in Stadsschouwburg Utrecht.

REGISTER:
Send an e-mail to kassa@springutrecht.nl with your date/time preference.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Michikazu Matsune is a performance-maker who develops works in his signature style that incorporates documentarist and conceptualist practices. He utilizes diverse approaches which range from stage-performances, interventions in public spaces, to creating text-paintings. His personal method, characterized both playful and critical at the same time, examines the tension around our cultural ascriptions and social identifications. Matsune is originally from the seaside town of Kobe and has been based in Vienna since the 1990s.

The topic of “name” has been essential to some of Matsune’s works, such as Mitsouko & Mitsuko based on stories of two Japanese women with almost the same name, and Dance, if you want to enter my country! featuring a bizarre yet true story of a dancer who was forced to dance as part of a passport control in an airport because of suspicions caused by his Muslim first name. In All Together (which will be presented at this year’s SPRING Performing Arts Festival), three performers talk through a list of names of people who cannot come and see this actual performance.

www.michikazumatsune.info

How do you, as a theater director, deal with the colonial past and its resonance in the present? How do you work as an antroplogist-choreographer and prevent cultural appropriation? Under the guidance of moderator Amal Alhaag (curator and researcher) makers Choy Ka Fai, Eko Supriyanto and Sadiah Boonstra (curator and historian) will enter a dialogue. Eko will participate via an online connection. At the end of the talk, there will be a viewing of a short documentary Antara Dua Bulan van Arnaud Kokosky Deforchaux and Beyond Walls about the visit of Eko and the dancers of IBUIBU BELU: BODIES OF BORDERS to SPRING in Autumn 2021. You can visit this talk separately but it is also well combined with the performance Postcolonial Spirits by Choy Ka Fai.

OPEN EXPERT TALKS are in depth conversations on urgent themes of the SPRING festival. The moderator will talk to artists of the festival. The TALKS are there for the curious listener, the critical connaiseur, the student and the professional. They are well combined with visiting performances but you can also visit them separately. The Talks are free of charge and open to everybody.

Marina Otero opens SPRING with a powerful feminist statement and that’s not the end. Only in the first weekend work of Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Boukje Schweigman, Mette Ingvartsen is presented. Works that relate to feminism in diverse ways. Under guidance of moderator Arianne Perez-Koeleman, teacher at Utrecht University, Boukje Schweigman and Khadija El Kharraz Alami will talk about the relevance of feminism for their work and vice versa.

OPEN EXPERT TALKS are in-depth conversations on urgent themes of the SPRING festival. The moderator will talk to artists of the festival. The Talks are there for the curious listener, the critical connaiseur, the student and the professional. They are well combined with visiting performances but you can also visit them separately. The Talks are free of charge and open to everybody.

This year at SPRING you can experience a provoking experiment with radical economies. Studio Julian Hetzel’s new project There Will Be Light repurposes his own cultural funding as a basic income given to one person for one year. In other words: someone will receive €15.000. Something for nothing. Taking this project as a point of departure, we open the discussion around wealth distribution and Universal Basic Income with Julian Hetzel, Denise Harleman from Collectief Kapitaal and Marianna Takou from Casco Art Institute, moderated by Evelyn Wan, Assistant Professor in Media, Arts, and Society in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. We welcome anyone to join and think with us. Let’s open up the discussion. Let’s gather, talk, and think together.

THE OPEN EXPERT TALKS are in-depth conversations about central themes at SPRING: urgent themes that matter. The moderator will engage in a conversation with artists from the festival. We invite all the curious listeners, critical connoisseurs, students and professionals to join. You can easily combine the talk with a visit to one of the SPRING performances.

There Will Be Light is open to the public every day from 12 - 19 May between 14:00 - 20:00h at the former bicycle depot MENU (Kanaalweg 50, Utrecht) (closed on Monday 16 May). The Grand Finale takes place on Saturday 20 May at 20:00h. Read more

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Julian Hetzel works as performance maker, musician and visual artist. He develops works along the intersection of theatre, music and media that have a political dimension and a documentary approach. He is artistic director of Studio Julian Hetzel, an Utrecht based organisation that realises and produces his artistic work. Hetzels creations are produced internationally. His work has been presentend in more than 20 countries all around the world. In 2017 Hetzel received the VSCD-Mimeprijs for The Automated Sniper (by Frascati producties and ism & heit). In 2019 All Inclusive (by CAMPO and Ism & heit) was part of the official selection of the Nederlands Theaterfestival. SELF by Julian Hetzel was the national entry of the Netherlands at the Prague Quadrennial 2019. In August 2019 Hetzel presented three works at the Venice Biennale del Teatro. Julian Hetzel is associated artist at Kunstencentrum CAMPO Gent (BE). Since 2021 Studio Julian Hetzel receives structural funding from Fonds Podiumkunsten (FPK) and the City of Utrecht.

Collectief Kapitaal started as a social-financial experiment on financial (in)security. The project started in the summer of 2021 when 100 people contributed €400 each to offer to five other people €1000 for eight months. Apart from the legal frameworks, no conditions are attached to the use of this income; it doesn't matter what choices are made, it's about the possibility of choices. By keeping track of how the experiment goes, Collective Capital not only tries to improve the living standards: in the long run it also wants to connect the knowledge gained from the process with the ‘system-world’. Collectief Kapitaal is an independent experiment, working together with partners, including: the Municipality of Amsterdam, Tolhuistuin, Nibud, Protestant Diaconie and Aanmelder.nl.

Casco Art Institute envisions more just ways of living together through practicing art and fostering the commons. Through co-exploration and study with collective art projects, as well as organizational experiments, our projects grow from posing critical questions and practicing radical imagination – forming community and generating art and knowledge as common resources. Marianna Takou is a researcher and organizer from Athens, Greece. She is currently based in Utrecht, where she works as a producer, organizer and researcher at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons. She first became part of the ecosystem of Casco as a volunteer in 2013. Since 2019, as part of the team, she has been working on different aspects of Casco’s operations and is a member of the Arts Collaboratory network.

Dr. Evelyn Wan is Assistant Professor in Media, Arts, and Society at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. She also conducted postdoctoral research at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society at Tilburg University. She graduated cum laude from her PhD programme with her dissertation, “Clocked!: Time and Biopower in the Age of Algorithms”, and was awarded a national dissertation prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation in the Netherlands in 2019. Her work on the temporalities and politics of digital culture and algorithmic governance is interdisciplinary in nature, and straddles media and performance studies, gender and postcolonial theory, and legal and policy research. Her writings has appeared in International Journal of Communication, GPS: Global Performance Studies, Theatre Journal, and International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, amongst others.

In two consecutive Fridays you will follow several workshops and talks on work-in-progress and research on the use of new technologies in performing arts and you will visit a performance on the (lack of) ethics in Silicon Valley: The Silicon Passion by SETUP.

The first Friday is all about Quand, a performance that was made two years ago by Jorrit Thijn and Tony Schuite. It’s a small performance on the basis of a choreography by Samuel Beckett, Quad. Four locations with different performers were connected through the internet. Together, these performers followed the Quad choreography, using tracking technology and projections. They repetitively met in the center of the space, but who were they meeting?

Jorrit and Tony will be working with the participants in the installation, researching material for their new performance Quand 3 that will be presented in SPRING in Autumn, October 2022. What is the experience of disembodied performing? What obstacles, possibilities and philosophical implications lie in this technology? Thinking along with the makers and the other participants will spark inspiration for both the makers of Quand and Masterclass participants.

On the second Friday, participants will be introduced to the NAO Re-Wired and Improvising Robots research projects, that are being developed as part of Acting Like a Robot: Theatre as Testbed for the Robot Revolution (https://performingrobots.sites.uu.nl/acting-like-a-robot-theatre-as-testbed-for-the-robot-revolution/). This research is about the way theatre and robotics may mutually inform and inspire one another.

NAO Re-Wired is an ongoing research into where robotics and puppetry meet. By deconstructing a broken NAO robot and bringing it back to life using countless separate electricity wires, the project explores the borders between programming and puppeteering as well as collective thinking and expressing through the robot.

Improvising Robots is a project that explores the potential of rule-based dance improvisational methods for programming robots and designing human-robot interactions in a more creative, flexible, and playful way.

During this session, we will introduce both projects and the overarching Acting Like a Robot project. Participants will be invited to interact with the work in progress, and together with makers and guests we will discuss the possibilities opened up by these new technologies.

Acting Like a Robot is a collaboration between Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, Artificial Intelligence at VU University, Ulrike Quade Company, the Lectoraat Theatrale Maakprocessen at HKU and SPRING Festival. Acting Like a Robot is funded by NWO.

If circumstances dictate it, it is also possible to join 1 of the 2 days, please consult the e-mail address above.

Have you always wondered how the brain of an artist works? After the first two series of the podcast SPRING in het Diepe, art journalist Luuk Heezen gives for the third time a digital, but very intimate exploration of the weird and wonderful ways of thinking of the artists featured at SPRING. Immerse yourself in their world.

This time he will talk to Michikazu Matsune about his performance All Together. Next to that, the journalist speaks with Bruno Beltrão (New Creation), Mette Ingvartsen (The Dancing Public), Eisa Jocson (Manila Zoo) and Ezra Veldhuis & Bosse Provoost (Indoor Weather). What fascination underlies their work? How did the performance take shape? Which scene cost the most blood, sweat and tears? Sit back and let yourself be carried away by the brainwaves of the most eminent creatives. An in-depth conversation that is interesting to hear both before and after seeing the performance.