In June a new generation of dancers and choreographers will be graduating from P.A.R.T.S., the international dance school headed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. This group of seventh-generation students comprises 20 dancers and choreographers from 13 countries. At the Kaaitheater, P.A.R.T.S. will also present a student version of Rain, one of the key works in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s oeuvre, and 12/8 by Thomas Hauert.

Hiphop is alive and Zulu Nation is its prophet. For six years now this Belgian organisation has presented the Battle of the Year contest at, and in association with, the Kaaitheater. For the last two years Zulu Nation has also been responsible for the highly popular hiphop dance acts at our Long Night of Dance events.

KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS 08 - Over the last ten years Thomas Hauert has, both at home and abroad, shown himself to be a choreographer with a voice of his own. His latest piece, Accords, is an abstract choreographic composition that one experiences like a piece of music. The dancers physically transpose, amplify or distort the dynamics, harmony, melody and counterpoint in their bodies.

PRODUCTION CANCELLED! The new production by the American choreographer Jennifer Lacey and the French artist Nadia Lauro has modest beginnings: a simple curiosity about the shared space between the soloist and the group. Charles Fourier, Anne Lee, the Marquis de Sade, Roland Barthes and others are astonished to find themselves sitting together around the same campfire.

A tale of manners mutated into a science-fiction story. The two characters are initially difficult to comprehend. Are they campers, tramps, friends or lovers, humans or animals? Meg Stuart and Benoît Lachambre are speleologists who investigate the underground landscapes of the body. FORGERIES... was selected for the 2005 Theatre Festival. It is time for a repeat performance!

Four ‘identical’ female dancers hang like marionettes in a huge ‘machine’. Together with them performance artist Kris Verdonck generated a passage of choreography: a solo, a duet, a trio and a pas de quatre. They sought the greatest possible freedom from the machine, but sooner or later it sent them in the direction it decided upon.

As five-year-olds they had already appeared together at a folk dance festival in their native Slovakia, went on to train as dancers and came across each other again while working with Rosas, Ultima Vez, Akram Khan and other excellent companies. This shared background forms the basis for their first piece of collective work. Les SlovaKs present energetic dance in a new version of the traditional, with a generous dash of poetry.

Until she was twenty and while studying classical dance, Eszter Salamon performed traditional Hungarian dance, part of the family heritage. In Magyar Tàncok she links back to this tradition. She has invited her mother plus several dancers and musicians and goes in search of the roots of her work, more specifically the improvisation techniques she learnt as a child.

Choreography for three dancers (Marie De Corte, Eva Kamala Rodenburg and Etienne Guilloteau), based on contributions by the writer and theatre-maker Bart Meuleman, the artists Robert Cash, Sophie Nys, Danai Anesiadou and Koenraad Dedobbeleer.

The brothers Roberto and Gustavo Ramos set up D.A.M., which stands for Desenvolvimento Animico do Movimento (Animistic Development of Movement). D.A.M. has made a name for itself on the Brazilian contemporary dance scene and is now coming to Belgium for the first time, with two productions. Breathtaking, hypnotic, easy-flowing performances.

Susanne Linke, one of the pioneers of German dance theatre, presents a reconstruction of Schritte verfolgen, a choreography from 1985. She considers it to be her artistic credo. In this solo she returns to experiences from her childhood and gives it an extra import: the process of aging, reaching maturity, and the joyful confirmation of the desire to ‘be’ at every stage of life.