Discover
Descend into the conceptual substructure of Dans in Brugge
and root in the inspirational mind-mud of the programmed choreographers and dancers.
YOUR FIRE
YOUR FIRE
season 23-24
season 23-24
"I like to gather people in a space that I want to learn something from. Together we look at things present around us and try to understand how they work, how they behave, what they can and cannot do."
Ingrid Berger Myhrre
"I do all this with glasses on: so-called choreography."
"Spelling Spectacle was created by an amazing team. For this I worked with artist Oshin Albrecht, lighting designer Fudetani Ryoya and musician Lasse Passage."
Marc Vanrunxt
"Every performance is an exploration, a new adventure with the different dancers I work with."
"I look for: what is the essence of this moment and of
this performance? So it doesn't allow itself
to be captured in anything literary or in a narrative."
"I don't want to hide behind other people's images or ideas."
BITS OF DANCE
season 22-23
season 22-23
We caught up with artistic coordinator Sigrid Janssens about the first December Dance she programmed herself.
What can we expect from this edition of December Dance?
"December Dance should primarily be a sampling of the important developments in contemporary dance, nationally and internationally. Besides renowned names, the festival also wants to be a springboard for mid-career choreographers, such as our two Dans in Brugge-Makers Lisa Vereertbrugghen and Michiel Vandevelde. There are also a number of peripheral activities scheduled. These include an afternoon of reflection on artistic judgment in a diverse society, a dance workshop with Haider Al Timimi and a writing workshop for beginning dance critics."
What choreographers or companies are still on your wish list?
"I have a long list, but if I can only name one, I choose Pichet Klunchun. This Thai dancer and choreographer decodes traditional Thai dance in his most recent work, developing a strikingly beautiful dynamic between tradition and innovation. Very pared down and refined. Furthermore, there are also Adam Linder, Ballet de Lyon ... A special project with Michiel Vandevelde is also planned for the 24-25 season. This is not a new name for Bruges, but it is an exciting participatory project that will have a life of its own in the city and in which every inhabitant of Bruges can participate."
"A great performance can be so energizing and you have little to lose!"
It's your first self-programmed December Dance. Which performance from the program are you especially proud of?
"The Romeo by Trajal Harrell was the very first performance I committed to the festival as artistic coordinator of Dans in Brugge . The very night I had cleared my desk at my previous job, I made an appointment with Trajal's agent. She told me about this new creation and I knew I had found the nucleus for my first dance season. Trajal's work exudes polyphony and that is exactly what I had in mind as well. He has chosen a distinct, diverse cast since the beginning of his career. He himself was trained in postmodern dance, but he managed to develop a dance language all his own in which he draws inspiration, among other things, from "vogueing," a dance form created in the 1960s within the black LGBTQ community in New York. There are outspoken supporters and detractors of his work, but last summer he palmed the Cour d'honneur in Avignon with The Romeo with flying colors."
"This polyphony can be found in other performances, by the way. Take HAVOC by Haider Al Timimi. Originally a hip-hop dancer, he danced with Rosas in Cesena, among others. He takes both styles as a basis to develop a very personal movement language. The same goes for Lisa Vereertbrugghen who couples hardcore techno with an exploration of folk dancing."
Do you have a personal top three for December Dance?
"It has a lot to do with personal preference, of course, but one project I definitely want to highlight is Schönheit ist Nebensache by Pol Pi, definitely a hidden gem. Pol Pi is a Brazilian dancer and choreographer who also trained as a viola player. In this work, he is all alone on stage, alternating viola and dance. It is an exceptionally powerful solo and at the same time very simple in form."
Time for the final question! How would you convince doubters to come to December Dance?
"December Dance is the ideal context to explore dance in all shapes and sizes. A fantastic performance can give so much energy and you have little to lose! Just do it: be surprised."
Joshua Serafin
"Miss is a hybrid performance. Both in terms of form, ideology and aesthetics, you can see two worlds merging here. It is of course about the very different geographical locations that are Asia and Europe but also about uniting different identities, about the cruelty of being in between, the suffering of being in two places at once and the diverse forms of violence that come from migration."
"In Miss, I look for new forms of spirituality: I create an alternative, fantastic world from the current issues and climate we live in."
"Through performance you touch your audience, their reactions I always take into my work."
Claire Croizé
"In dance there is not much to understand, actually you have to watch, observe and feel above all."
"I look for authenticity and honesty in dancers. I need to be able to see the vulnerable human being behind the dancer."
"We need to demystify contemporary dance."
"Fabula is an explosive response to a broken world."
"The Bruges audience is a loyal one. That's something to cherish."
DECEMBER DANCE TIPS BY CONNOISSEURS
'Not to be missed is The Köln Concert by Trajal Harrell. The performance reminds us of the need to stay close and not slip into loneliness. Perhaps one of the most important messages we took away from the covid period. Together with his dancers, Harrell explores the line between the extravagance of vogueing and the unheimlichkeit of Japanese butoh, to the hypnotic sounds of Keith Jarrett's iconic piano recording.'
- Sigrid Janssens, artistic coordinator of dance for Concertgebouw Brugge & Cultuurcentrum Brugge
''We have been following contemporary dance for more than 50 years: from Maurice Béjart and Jeanne Brabants over Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. So we invariably sign up for December Dance. We want to be surprised and enjoy organic movements.'
- Nico Monserez, loyal dance fan
season 21-22
season 21-22
Ula Sickle
Relay draws inspiration from street protests as choreography, and shows how much power is inherent in beauty.
"I want to work with the 'present' as choreographical and performance material.
'It's actually quite simple:
Relay is a solo funnily enough performed by a group of people who together, in a sort of relay race, try to keep one single black flag in motion.
Cassiel Gaube
'It's actually quite simple:
I want to show how movement can elicit joy.'
We are always exploring new things: footwork, groove, breathing... In this way, house dance becomes a sort of language that allows us to discover how much joy is hidden within it.'
"I like to start from existing physical practices, that have been developed over a long time by a wide community. For this performance, that's house dance. Mia and Diego, my partners in Soirée d’études, are top street dancers from Paris. With a plenty of skill and almost acrobatic talent, we end up with a very upbeat show."
Patricia Guerrero
la fuerza y la resistencia
"My strength is my intuition
I know where I want to go; I am like a tree I’m like a tree which, from the moment its first roots emerge, knows where the very top of its crown will end up."
Patricia Guerrero
—
It's actually quite simple:
In Dystopia, I "dance" a woman who lives all alone, wrapped up in her own world. She tries in vain to free herself and in the end descends into madness.
"flamenco is so much more than the clichés that exist about it
I want to follow my own turbulent energy and push boundaries within the genre."
Koen Augustijnen
generous
baroque
plenty
cross-pollination
eclectic
emotional
LAMENTA
it is actually quite simple:
→ while dancing, 9 dancers explore all the emotions we feel when we lose something
→ there are also musicians who will perform songs of mourning
→ yet it is not a sad performance
→ for those watching, it's more like being on a roller coaster
Future:
"when I think of the near future, I see a kind of release, an explosion of the creative bubble, a cultural orgasm."
"I want my work to be energizing. People work so hard. Most of us do know what we need to make a better world, but we are just so tired. I hope that my performances and my playful approach can give back some energy and vigor to the audience."
Liz
Kinoshita
mechanisms of the musical
playful
sincere
the reflective power of culture
It's actually quite simple:
There are three people on stage: singing and dancing and playing the trumpet. Sometimes they do all three things at once. That's tricky. Each song has its own story, its own world. The songs are about who you really are. About the moment when you stop pretending. And there's special lighting making the whole thing more exciting.
Jan Martens
jan martens
-
any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones nineteen-hundred-and-eighty-four
-
art as an act of resistance, theater as a place to hide from an ever-accelerating world
any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones
1 performance about the joy of dancing and moving together, and what we can learn from each other across generations.
it's actually
quite simple:
→ 17 dancers
→ 17 individuals
→ 17 lives
→ 17 people
"People sometimes think that I wear out the dancers because my work often deals with physical exhaustion. But I am actually quite gentle with them during the rehearsal process."
"In my work, I really look for the joy and fun of dancing. Moving together with people of very different ages can be very educational. The show Any Attempt. tfeatures seventeen people between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five on stage. That in itself makes for a very exciting moment, as these parallel lives come into contact with one another."
Katja Heitmann
archive
nineteen-hundred-and-eighty-seven
walk-in catalog of a movement space with people, for people
Motus Mori as an institute for preservation
movement interviews
"People often find dance and movement abstract. Actually, they find everything abstract that doesn't involve words. Actually, I find movement very concrete."
"It's actually quite simple: I want to show that every person has their own and personal manner of moving, that also changes over the years. Through my work I want to preserve these movements and turn them into a kind of archive, a sort of collection."
Lisa Vereertbrugghen
hardcore gabber beats
nineteen-hundred-eighty-six
how "soft" is hardcore?
how political is drum'n'bass?
"I want to remind people that they have a body."
It's actually quite simple:
When you listen to certain music, it can make you move in a completely unique way. A way of moving that is different from how you were taught to move, that is more direct, without over-thinking or constructing."