Opening show: The Basement

De Dansers (NL)/ Theater Strahl (DE) / Wies Merkx

De Dansers is a Utrecht-based company of dansers and musicians, led by choreografer/dancer Josephine van Rheenen and composer/musician Guy Corneille. They create and perform dance performances, or rather dance concerts: organic meetings of modern dance and live music.

They’re living on the wrong side of the road, in then gutter of the world. It is dark there, you keep the door locked. You have to be tough, very tough. Disciplined and unafraid to show your teeth. If you let everybody come near you, you’ll be trampled, hurt.

The Basement is about young people that have built up a barricade around themselves. Six performers, musicians and dancers, give them a voice and a body. They are unstable and extreme. During the performance, the defensive walls are broken open. The theme of The Basement is the process of disarmament: fighting and wrestling to regain a little bit of innocence. In the midst of being desperate and bitter, there are small victories; looking somebody into the eyes can already be a beginning of something more. Such moments pierce everybody’s armor, through which a human contact leaks in. From the first, hesitating ray of light until a certain form of liberation. ‘Maybe we can be friends.. maybe’.

“Conclusion: a strong piece of dance theatre, that blows you away in such a delightfully forceful way, that it leaves you gagging for more. “ – Zitty Berlin

★★★★ – Fritz de Jong, Het Parool

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