In his latest production, Kris Verdonck plays with the question of what people would talk about if the world around them started disintegrating. How do we deal with the end? And what does it tell us about our worldviews today? A collage of texts and music paired with an eccentric sense of humour, beauty and language, creates a sense that everything has passed. Pitch-black but hilarious, or bittersweet as Verdonck and dramatist Kristof van Baarle prefer to call it.

The location-based performance HUIS by Suze Milius will start in Brussels on 10 November 2017, and you can be part of it. We are looking for two-parent families with three or more children between the ages of 9 and 14 who want to take part! In each performance, you will welcome a new guest – a man or a woman – who will become a temporary member of your family.

For Performatik 17, the latest edition of Brussels’ Biennial of Performance Art, the variability of the genre was conspicuous. From the many artists comfortably working at the intersection of dance, theatre and the visual arts, to their mutable works and the range of sites in which they were presented, this is perhaps the one unchanging aspect to the widening field of Performance, and more specifically Performatik’s program over the years. What then can be said of Performance in 2017?
Etcetera, 15/06/2017

As a possible counter reaction, Han advocates a revaluation of the contemplative. Bring the neoliberal positivity machine to a halt to create time and space! Time and space in which meaning can surpass knowledge, use is prioritized over consumption, impartiality supresses economic expediency, the playful hand is joined to the working hand, an event is more meaningful than the project, in which ‘not doing’ or ‘not knowing’ also have value, and in which the negative can be looked in the face, even unto death. RE:RITE winds through our programme like a chaplet of contemplative practices, new rituals, and spiritual inspiration.

How are we to ‘remake’ society at the dawn of the 21st century? This central question formed the leitmotif throughout the 2016-2017 Kaaitheater programme. An overview of everything we've collected along the season.

In an old gymnasium in Mechelen, theatre director Thomas Bellinck is working on his new production Simple as ABC #2: Keep Calm and Validate. The performance is the second part in a series about the Western migration machine, a theme that has dominated Thomas’ personal interests for quite some time, and which he will examine through various media over the coming years.

The Belgian Maarten Vanden Eynde and the Cameroonian Alioum Moussa are building a two-part mobile structure, of which one side is the other’s opposite. Yet the structures depend upon one another to stay in balance. During Performatik17 they set up shop at Place de la Monnaie, where you are invited to visit them – in pairs – for a discussion about dependence and independence.

Theatre director Philippe Quesne, visual artist Müge Yilmaz and philosopher/writer Maarten Doorman discuss possible meanings of the image of nature in art. Notions such as the romantic, the sublime and the search for authenticity will be questioned along the way.

Why do artists make work outside of the black box or the exhibition space? Which place can art take within the flux of daily life in the city? Choreographer Meg Stuart, scenographer Jozef Wouters, dramaturg Jeroen Peeters, performance artist Ant Hampton, theatre maker Lotte van den Berg, and choreographer Benjamin Vandewalle attempt to give some answers.

Mette Edvardsen talks about oslo ((2017), trilogies and opening spaces.

Especially for Performatik17, Grace Schwindt creates a performance for the theatre stage. She portrays the dilemma of an ornithologist studying the effects of oil pollution on seabirds. The victims he records symbolise the efficiency of capitalism. (in English)