#Repertoire

Past and present classics

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas, Alain Franco & Pavel Kolesnikov

The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

dance music

Wed 01.09 - Sat 18.09.21

The Goldberg Variations belong to Bach’s late period in which the composer pushed the possibilities of musical themes to the extreme in an interplay of variations, canons, and fugues. After The Six Brandenburg Concerto, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues her journey with Bach in dialogue with these variations. Along with pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Alain Franco she brings The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, a solo performance danced by herself. Here too, the musical score forms a blueprint for the choreography.

Trajal Harrell

The Köln Concert

dance

Fri 08.10 - Sat 09.10.21

Trajal Harrell has come up with a plan he has been pursuing for years: a choreography to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, the most successful piano solo recording of all time. The Köln Concert seeks a language that allows for closeness despite the times of physical distancing. The joint experience of tender, vulnerable, dancing people, is a reminder of the need to remain close to each other despite everything.

Needcompany

Billy’s Violence

theatre

Fri 29.10 - Sat 30.10.21

Shakespeare is the most widely read and performed author in Western literary history. Yet many of the Bard's texts are almost unplayable because of the violence, horror, racism and misogyny. What does violence mean in art today? For Billy's Violence, Victor Afung Lauwers researched ten tragedies by Shakespeare and rewrote them into violently loving, intimate dialogues in which women are central. You may never have seen Shakespeare this boned and dusted.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas & Ictus

Drumming (live)

dance

Tue 14.12 - Sun 19.12.21

Drumming (1998) is returning to Kaaitheater! It’s one of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s most iconic choreographies, written to the eponymous, minimalistic percussion score by Steve Reich. A wave of pure dance and pure sound, a vortex of vital energy. For this run of Drumming, the music is performed live by Ictus: don't let this unique opportunity pass you by.

tg STAN & de Roovers

Infidèles

theatre

Thu 13.01 - Sat 15.01.22

Infidèles is a performance about a love triangle that ended disastrously, and about the impact of lies and deceit. In this homage to Ingmar Bergman, four actors present a tragedy about ordinary life which exposes human aspects all too familiar. All this is presented in the well-known STAN style: with the necessary lightness and detachment. In 2018, Infidèles premiered in a French language version – now you can experience the show in Dutch for the first time.

Timeau De Keyser/tibaldus & Toneelhuis

Operette

theatre

Fri 18.03 - Sat 19.03.22

In Operette, Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz presents the history of the 20th century as a series of costume changes. As a contrast, he uses the human being who wants to withdraw from this process in order to be able to be 'naked’. Tibaldus is now staging their third Gombrowicz: a performance that philosophises lightly about the cogwheel of history, with the passion and holy stupidity of an operetta.

Guy Cassiers/Toneelhuis

Antigone in Molenbeek + Tiresias [double bill]

theatre

Thu 04.06 - Sun 07.06.20

These performances are cancelled because the tour has been postponed due to the coronavirus.

Maatschappij Discordia & de Roovers

Liebe Jelinek

theatre

Wed 29.04 - Thu 30.04.20

Warning: this show is cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Looking for insights about love, Maatschappij Discordia decided to consult Elfriede Jelinek. While last season, Marguerite Duras accompanied them in a lifelong attempt to articulate the first experience of love, with Jelinek, Discordia has immediately encountered provocation. What is the image that this author – a virtuoso at unmasking clichés – sketches of love… and the female experience of love?

Michiel Vandevelde/Platform-K & Philippe Thuriot

The Goldberg Variations

dance music

Sat 25.04 - Sun 26.04.20

Warning: this show is cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

The title The Goldberg Variations not only evokes the famous music of Bach, but also the iconic dance solo by Steve Paxton. Along with a dancer, a ballet dancer, and an accordionist, Michiel Vandevelde works with this material. Three bodies, each with very different potentialities, delve into dance history and question the potential of dance today.

Gorges Ocloo

Moby Dick

music theatre

Sat 04.04.20

Warning: this show is cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

For this adaptation of Moby Dick, Gorges Ocloo called on Ben Okri, who adapted the novel into a magic-realist story about the gulf between high and low, rich and poor. Josse De Pauw and the soprano Nobulumko Mngxekeza-Nziramasanga take to the stage to perform an energized and jazzy opera about the need for rapprochement in an increasingly polarized society.

Alejo Pérez & Krystian Lada

Symphony of Expectation

music

Wed 18.03.20

Warning: this show is cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Symphony of Expectation combines two iconic, 20^th-century compositions: Sinfonia by Luciano Berio and Erwartung by Arnold Schönberg. One second of the maximal spiritual excitement of a female main character explodes into an intense theatrical experience.

Khadija El Kharraz Alami

Nu ben ik Medea

theatre

Wed 11.03 - Thu 12.03.20

In this personal performance, Khadija El Kharraz Alami blends perspectives from Euripides’ Medea with her own story about growing up between both the Western and the Moroccan world – and about the clash of forces within the self.

tg STAN & Kloppend Hert

Move (on)

theatre

Thu 13.02 - Sat 15.02.20

The building blocks of Move (on) include the dialogues of the English playwright Dennis Kelly, a dull growling that expresses the sense of uneasiness in our society. Voices will rise above this, such as those of the characters created by the Egyptian author Alaa El Aswani. They speak of corruption, and of the economic, social and religious straitjacket in which they are imprisoned. They blend with voices from the work of the Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish or the Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous, bursts of wild hope but simultaneously exclamations of shared powerlessness.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas

Achterland

dance

Wed 29.01 - Sun 09.02.20

Achterland (1990) is a seminal choreography in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s oeuvre. The minimalism and prevalent femininity of Rosas’ early pieces gave way to an ambiguous no-man’s-land in which boundaries and symbols were blurred. Last season, the reprise of Achterland starring a new generation of Rosas dancers made a tremendous impression: don’t miss this opportunity to see it again.

Rosas

Zeitigung

dance

Wed 11.12 - Sat 14.12.19

Almost ten years after Zeitung (2008), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Alain Franco used the building blocks of that production to make a new one: Zeitigung. Against the backdrop of a changing world and channeled through the bodies of eight young dancers, they updated their own work – aided by the young choreographer and dancer Louis Nam Le Van Ho. Zeitigung is returning to the Kaaitheater stage, where it premièred in 2017.