• Belgian premieres: Germaine Acogny & Mikaël Serre with Somewhere at the Beginning during Moussem Cities Dakar; Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki / fieldworks with gone here (yet) to come; Magical and Elastic by Cuqui Jerez
• Talk: The Wonders of Multilingualism presented by Kaaitheater & Passa Porta 
• Dance:The Divine Cypher by Ana Pi 
• Performance: Anna Franziska Jäger & Nathan Ooms with Bartlebabe

Moussem Cities Dakar

The annual Moussem Cities festival focuses on a different metropolis from the Middle East or North Africa. Artists from the region and diaspora offer a look at their city and their work. After editions around Beirut, Casablanca, Damascus and Algiers, this time Dakar is in the spotlight. The capital of Senegal is considered as the economic, political and cultural hub of West Africa, and boasts a fascinating independent and alternative art scene. For the fifth time in a row, Kaaitheater partners with Moussem Cities, giving a stage to the performing arts programme within the festival.

Germaine Acogny / Mikaël Serre
Somewhere at the Beginning - Belgian premiere

Through dance, stories and the projection of photos and film, the Senegalese dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny evokes both the history of her family and that of West Africa in this committed autobiographical solo. The performance questions the place of women, the friction between tradition and emancipation and how identity is more of a path than an end point.

The 77-year-old Germaine Acogny is considered the founder of contemporary African dance. She received the Lion d'Or and presented this performance at the dance Biennale of Venice and Lyon. 

Kaaitheater | 19/02 | dance | in French (surtitled in English)

Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki / fieldworks
gone here (yet) to come - Belgian premiere

gone here (yet) to come is an investigation into the materiality of darkness and how it relates to space. During the performance, Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki transform the theatre space into a canvas onto which they project different realities. The digging deeper and deeper into the theatrical space and time exposes lost memories.

Yukiko Shinozaki and Heine Avdal are choreographers and dancers, who work with dance, performance, video and visual arts. Since 2000, they have been creating multidisciplinary work together under the name fieldworks.

gone here (yet) to come premiered in Oslo and has since been touring across different theatres in Norway. At Kaaitheater, we are presenting the Belgian premiere.

Kaaitheater | 3, 4/02 | dance

Cuqui Jerez
Magical and Elastic - Belgian premiere

To get to grips with the relationships between music, choreography, images and narrative, Cuqui Jerez bends the conventions of the musical genre to her will: silences and tension, singing and dancing, lyrics and storytelling... you name it. She manipulates, plays and deconstructs, in good company.  Until she arrives at a magical performance where a story emerges from an image, a choreography comes about thanks to the music, and the music starts from a story…

Cuqui Jerez studied dance in Madrid and New York and has for several decades been working as an artist, choreographer and performer. It is the first time we welcome her to Kaaitheater.

The Belgian premiere of Magical and Elastic will be presented at the Kaaitheater a mere two weeks after its world premiere in Madrid.

Kaaitheater | 25, 26/02 | performance

The Wonders of Multilingualism

presented by Kaaitheater & Passa Porta

Last year Passa Porta and Kaaitheater organised an evening of discussions on 'multilingualism' with writer Sulaiman Addonia and theatre maker Ahilan Ratnamohan. For the remainder of this series, we will let the audience set the agenda. The initial question reads: What are the hot topics and opportunities around multilingualism that we should pay attention to right now? The evening will be moderated by an experienced facilitator of the Open Space conversation format, a proven method of giving all attendees the right to speak.

Kaaistudio's | 08/02 | Debate | multilingual

Ana Pi
The Divine Cypher

Choreographer and urban dance researcher Ana Pi returns to Kaaitheater with a performative and cinematic creation on Haitian sacred dances. In The Divine Cypher, she enters into a dialogue with the experimental filmmaker Maya Deren, Haitian popular cultures and the ancestral religious movements of the Voodoo and Candomblé, celebrating their pioneering spirit and power.

Ana Pi is a choreographic and image artist, urban dance researcher, dancer and teacher. In 2020, she received a grant from MOMA for her project The Divine Cypher in Haiti. She recently visited Kaaitheater with the lecture performance A world tour of urban dance in ten cities.

Kaaistudio's | 10, 11/02 | dance

Anna Franziska Jäger & Nathan Ooms
Bartlebabe

What is the impact of increasing digitalization on our lives? Meet Bartlebabe, a creature by Anna Franziska Jäger and Nathan Ooms, a figure between human and algorithm. It unleashes a mass of online content on the analogue reality of the theatre, until it becomes so distorted that it takes on a monstrous face.

We are delighted to welcome these young makers to Kaaitheater for the first time!

Kaaistudios | 4, 5/02 | performance | in English