© Zoe Love Smith

If you know what I mean

Doke Pauwels
Fri 24 Apr ’26 and Sat 25 Apr ’26
When words fall short, three dancers seek consolation in the non-verbal.
Fri 24 Apr ’26
and
Sat 25 Apr ’26

With hypersensitive movement and radical tenderness, three dancers transform the space to a sensorial landscape of consolation.

Don’t we constantly fail to find the right words for what we mean exactly? When we want to be understood, or comfort a friend. In If you know what I mean, Liel, Marion and Rachele embody precisely this moment in their friendship. Somewhere between hope and awkwardness. By lack of adequate words, they fall back on their instincts and let themselves be moved by their physical intelligence in the quest for consolation.

Prizes and nominations

  • Dans Magazine Award 2024
  • Best Emerging Choreographer AmsterDans 2024
  • duration: 50 min

Credits

choreography Doke Pauwels performance Líël Fibak, Rachele Chinellato en Marion Bosetti music Floris van der Vlugt vocals by Jeangu Macrooy, Pitou en Isabel Pronk light Bogi Bakker dramaturgy Fabienne Vegt technique Mirko Lazovic with support of Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Norma Fonds, Janivo Stichting, Broedplaats Bloos, Het Verbond Frascati, Theater De Landing

Doke Pauwels is a dancer, dramaturg and choreographer. In 2024, she got noticed with her second piece, If you know what I mean, for which she received the Dans Magazine Award and the price for Best Emerging Choreographer at AmsterDans. At the core of her practice are the invisible forces that shape human behavior: desires, impulses, and ideas that operate beneath conscious control. Rather than illustrating these forces, she works with them physically, allowing the body to become a site where the unseen takes form.

She made her debut as a choreographer in 2021 with The Hatred of Poetry, described by Het Parool as “an exciting short performance.” Doke is a resident artist at Theater Ins Blau, key holder at Frascati's Het Verbond, and she’s involved with the Dance Safe Alliance (Alliantie Dans Veilig). In 2026 she is one of the recipients of the New Makers Subsidy by Fonds Podiumkunsten. She trained at the Dance Department of the Royal Conservatoire and studied dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam and directing at The New School in New York City.

She has worked for, among others, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Toneelschuur Producties, Het Nationale Ballet, mime company Golden Palace, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and has collaborated with artists such as Jessie L’Herminez, Elisa Zuppini, Emke Idema, and Sofie Kramer. In 2019, she founded the arts initiative Antidote, through which she develops experimental festivals and performance events (such as the dance party Warm Bad), creating unexpected encounters between audiences and artists.

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