What if theater refused to be safe?
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Fri 30 Jan ’2617:23Frascati, AmsterdamFrascati 4
Ongeplaceerd/Free seating Standard ticket € 25,00
The gathering begins at 17:23, the exact time of sunset on January 30th, and continues until around 3:00 AM. With the setting sun, we enter a liminal time in which different forces emerge, those that resist the rational, the measurable, the quantifiable. Boundaries blur, and different realms begin to merge. Theatre as an undefined space capable of shaking existing narratives and imagining possible new ones. At its core, it is a dangerous space. Not because it wounds, but because it lives. Its attempt to create community is ‘dangerous’, as it threatens to question the isolation and atomization of our times. It gathers bodies breathing the same air, bodies that might collide, resist, or transform one another.
From its Dionysian origins, theatre was a public space where societies wrestled with ethical, political, and spiritual questions. A space of ritual, danger, and collective catharsis. Antonin Artaud imagined theatre as a purifying violence; Bertolt Brecht as a space of critical awakening. Through the rise of the nation-state and the comfort that followed, theatre slowly drifted away from its ecstatic, communal roots and became a safe cultural commodity. Something to be consumed, not lived. Once, theatre lived close to danger: to death, to pain, to ecstasy. Now it often survives as a tame, polished form.
This evening program is a space of risk where control fails, where every gesture is uncertain and every silence is charged. A place to reflect, to celebrate, to scream, to move, to practice what it might feel like to imagine no borders, to bring in voices that are not physically here; a moment to twist time, to sit together in exhaustion, but also in joy, intimacy, and celebration: loud, communal, and unpredictable.
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Credits
co-curators Flavia Pinheiro & Simomo Bouj
About Flavia Pinheiro
Flavia Pinheiro is an Amsterdam-based choreographer, educator, and researcher from Brazil. Her work explores networks of resilience and resistance to dominant systems of knowledge through fabulative speculations in interspecies choreography. In her artistic practice, she continuously seeks to create breathing, vital conditions; an unstoppable dance that fosters improbableexchanges with nonhumans, including bacteria, plants, birds, antelopes, and ghosts. Navigating across multiple media: photography, video, performance, urban interventions, installation and writing; she highlights how diversity and transversality can contribute to (un)learning colonial pedagogies.
She holds a Master’s degree from DAS Choreography (2022) and participated in the DAS Third research program (2022–2024) at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK). Her graduation piece, 7 Abiku Solos for 11 Bacteria Falling Through, was supported by the Aart Janszen Fund and awarded the André Veltkamp Beurs Grant. In 2022, she also received the 3Package Deal fund for International Talents by AFK as part of the 'Engaged Art' coalition. Her piece The Unborn was supported by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) and integrated into the program of the Holland Festival.
About Simomo Bouj
Curator and choreographer Simomo Bouj moves, moves others, and is moved by others in many different contexts: inside and outside, professional and non-professional. Simomo holds space and helps activate it collectively, with diverse (cultural, professional, and movement) skills rooted between Morocco and here. With a background that spans years as a self-taught artist immersed in street-style hip-hop and dynamic art communities, followed by formal training at the Royal Conservatory of Contemporary Dance in Antwerp, Simomo brings both intuitive and institutional knowledge into their work.
Simomo has also completed a two-year Master’s research program at ISAC (Institut Supérieur des Arts Chorégraphiques) within the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, continuing their research, coaching fellow artists, dancing, and co-directing with artists such as Aukje Decker, Fazle Shairmahomed, and Bruin Jackson. As a pluralist practitioner, Simomo is also active in various collectives and alliances such as Sexyland WORLD and Queer 365.
