Residentie: slow and steady wins the race - research II: DEATH

Milou van Duijnhoven & Merel Severs / Frascati Producties

Wed 15 Apr ’26 and Thu 16 Apr ’26

A performative exploration of softness in an increasingly hardened world.

Wed 15 Apr ’26

and

Thu 16 Apr ’26

Wed 15 Apr ’26

18:00

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 3

Past event
Thu 16 Apr ’26

18:00

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 3

Past event

A performative exploration of softness in an increasingly hardened world. A physical and poetic search for art as a form of medicine within a system that continues to undermine its value. Through dance, martial arts, literature, poetry, and conversations with specialists, they create an unapologetic call for comfort and healing in times of unrest and division. Across different chapters such as FIGHT, NATURE, and DANCE, Merel Severs and Milou van Duijnhoven explore tactics for slowing down and fostering connection.

For this program, they delve into Research II: DEATH. This research focuses on trauma and resilience: the body as an archive, the complexity of the nervous system, and the emotional landscape. The central question is which forms of embodied knowledge too often remain within a small circle, and how performance can help make this knowledge accessible and shared with a wider audience.

During the residency, they explore performative tools for healing in times of political, social, and personal tension. The starting point is how the body can be experienced emotionally and psychologically, and where this tension is stored and can be released. Through somatic practices, massage techniques, and conversations with trauma specialists, they investigate how the body itself is a source of knowledge—seeking new forms in which care, vulnerability, and collective resilience become visible and tangible within a shared space.

slow and steady wins the race will premiere as a performance at Julidans Festival 2027.

Onderdeel van (Searching for) Radical Care

Part of

Residences

About the makers

The two met in 2021 through a shared commitment to martial arts—specifically Muay Thai—as both a physical discipline and a creative tool. Their collaboration began with Try Not to Know What You Know (2022), a duet in which they developed a shared language of strength, tension, and intimacy. The rehearsal space became an arena: a place for confrontation, trust, and transformation. The performance was nominated for the BNG Bank Award at the Dutch Theatre Festival.

Since then, they have continued to explore how martial arts can open up space for softness, play, and care. They co-created the short dance film rocks and stones, broken bones (2023), examining discipline and pleasure through a punching bag, a skipping rope, and a pop song. Their collaboration continued with Coerced & Freely Given (2024), in which they deepened their exploration of physical tenderness and resistance in the face of political despair. The work received critical acclaim for its urgent physicality and poetic directness. Their latest project, slow and steady wins the race (2025), is a performative exploration of the body as a site of healing, resilience, resistance, and hope.

Milou van Duijnhoven (1992, she/her) is a performer, dancer, and martial artist. She graduated from the Toneelacademie Maastricht and SNDO (AHK), and her practice has developed around the relationship between body and voice. In her work, Milou is inspired by the cycles of nature, in which the body is driven by birth, growth, decay, and death. She works with resilience, endurance, transformation, and the sensuality of the body, creating performances that explore the dualities between control and surrender, humor and drama, dance and martial arts.

Merel Severs (1991, she/her) is a choreographer, performer, and martial artist. She graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts and uses the language of the fighting body to question the violent systems that shape our lives. Rooted in intersectional feminism and body politics, her performances are acts of resistance and resilience, and attempts to build community.