Live encounters at the SPRING Festival

Picture: Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid by Dries Verhoeven (c) StephenWilkes

The year 2021 asks for creative solutions from the performing arts as well as its audiences. Rooted in a strong belief in the magic of the live encounter between the artist and the spectator, SPRING will do everything in its power to make this possible at their Performing Arts Festival from 20 to 29 May 2021.

During the festival, (international) top artists will experiment with innovative artistic forms in search of new connections with the audience. Think of intimate one-on-one encounters, sensory experiences, art installations and theatre productions adapted to become continuous experiences.

Tailor-made encounters
In his latest work Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid (Brothers Raise to Freedom), Dries Verhoeven asks the question what function is left for our working body in this day and age. Together with a group of Bulgarian performers with experience as migrant workers, he created a requiem for the working person. The stage of the Stadsschouwburg will serve as a work floor, where you can see a 'living installation' for eight hours every day. Julian Hetzel also takes us on a factory visit and confronts us with our own ideologies in his performance Mount Average. Statues of rulers, dictators and tyrants are being pulverized to provide them with a meaningful new purpose.

The festival programme also includes artists who are looking for intimacy and one-on-one experiences during a time in which we are only allowed to meet so few people in person. Marte Boneschansker made BLOOS in 2018, an audio performance in bed about female intimacy. Now, at the SPRING festival, the long-awaited sequel BLOOS de mannen will premiere. For this sequel, Boneschansker talked to men aged 10 up to 100 about intimacy, sensuality and desire. You can listen to their tantalizing stories in a one-person cocoon that moves, rotates and vibrates.

Choreographer Katja Heitmann offers a different intimate experience in Motus Mori: meeting the archive. With this project she is building an archive of human movement to which already over 700 people have contributed their movements. For the SPRING Festival, Heitmann and her dancers are looking for personal encounters within this archive: a dancer works with your personal movement in a unique one-on-one meeting. Finally, all your senses are sharpened in the individual journey Spectrum by Schweigman&, designer Cocky Eek, light artist Matthijs Munnik and composer Yannis Kyriakides.

The ticket sale for SPRING Performing Arts Festival starts Wednesday 30 April at 10:00 a.m. Click here to visit their website and get your ticket.