In the late 1920s, Nâzım Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkish poetry, and he was thus the first modern Turkish poet. He wrote the majority of Human Landscapes, his magnum opus, while in prison. The five hundred-page epic was only published posthumously, divided into five ‘books’. Michiel Vandevelde staged Book I last year, commissioned by steierische herbst. Book II now follows.

Vera Tussing invites the string quartet Quatuor MP4 to join four dancers onstage for a playful encounter between movement and sound. At the point where the orbits of dance and music intersect, you are invited to enter the kaleidoscopic score. Lend a hand, or an arm!

The vocal ensemble HYOID and artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater Benjamin Vandewalle are adapting Indianerlieder (1972) by Karlheinz Stockhausen, an iconic but rarely performed work. They are creating a gesamtkunstwerk that aims to reveal the vitality and timelessness of Stockhausen’s music. They are abandoning the original scenography in order to place the audience at the very centre of the three-dimensional ritual.

In In Many Hands, artist-in-residence Kate McIntosh explores tactility. She invites you to test and to touch, but also to listen and to smell. Along with other visitors, but without speaking, you will experiment with materials in a series of sensorial ‘situations’. In Many Hands is part laboratory, part expedition, part meditation: follow your nose and your curiosity!

Trials of Money turns the theatre into a court of justice which does not yet exist. You’re invited to take part in the Special Tribunal for Semi-Human Persons in order to undertake the trial of the thing called ‘money’. The trial is conducted as a collective exercise: while the performers deliver their testimonies, they will respond to any question the audience has. Should money be found guilty, it leaves us with a very problematic question: what could be a just sentence?

In his latest performance, Benjamin Vandewalle is again accompanying you into the city. He takes the lead in a series of purposeful actions: some are banal, while others are completely unconventional. You leave as a group of individuals and gradually transform into one collective body.

Saving and processing the daily tsunami of information is a time-consuming occupation. Based on this fact, Michiel Vandevelde analyses the role of thought. With an exuberant choreography full of re-appropriated dance, fragments of text and bizarre music, he articulates a critique of our time, carefully searching for new modes of thought.