In this piece for three dancers, Ola Maciejewska draws her inspiration from Loïe Fuller, one of the pioneers of modern dance and performance art. She explores the relationship in the arts between human beings and physical matter by creating movement in large pieces of fabric. She plays with the confluence of bodies and objects and the battle that these wage.

The visual artist Fabrice Samyn presents five of his seven Breath Pieces, which take breathing as their starting point. To the rhythm of the breathing, a number of different actions are performed that intensify your awareness of time, while attention is focused on all that is fundamental and uncontrollable about breathing. This show has been cancelled and rescheduled to season 2017-2018.

Especially for Performatik17, Grace Schwindt creates a performance for the theatre stage. She draws inspiration from Bernini’s sculptural group Apollo and Daphne. Starting from the dynamic of this frozen scene, she creates a striking overall picture with music, song and acrobatics.

In addition to Dorothea von Hantelmann’s opening talk and Grace Schwindts opening performance Opera and Steel – made especially for Performatik – the festival kick-off showcases performances by Hedwig Houben, Kristof Van Gestel and Heike Langsdorf, and Miet Warlop. Laure Prouvost completes the evening with an installation.

In 2012 Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne visited the Atlas Film Studios in Morocco. They rented a group of camels, which they tried to coax into dancing in amongst the old film sets. With Atlas Revisited, the artists take a look back at this quest for an image of freedom – with brand new video material.