• Belgian premiere: Domestic Violence by Markus Öhrn;
  BRUNO by Alix Eynaudi; 
• We Hear You(th): Flemish Primitives by Chokri Ben Chikha & Action Zoo Humain
• learning day: The Big BOK Multiplication by bodies of knowledge (BOK)
• dance: Duet for two string trios by Claire Croizé / ECCE & The Goeyvaerts String Trio
• performance: Livre d’images sans images by Mette Edvardsen
• Read the Room - a festival by Mophradat, a Brussels organisation creating opportunities for artists from the Arab world
• film: Ciné Place-making, curated by Robin Vanbesien & presented by The Post Film Collective, Marta Popivoda, Ana Vaz, Subversive Film (Mohanad Yacubi & Reem Shilleh), Raphael Grisey & Bouba Touré, Olivier Marboeuf & Avery F. Gordon;
  Sahraa Karimi, Reflections on film, gender and politics in Afganistan: a Machteld De Metsenaere lecture by RHEA, Crosstalks, Fatima Mernissi Chair & Kaaitheater

Markus Öhrn
Domestic Violence - Belgian premiere

Along with his team, Markus Öhrn explores the dark side of intimate relationships, patterns, role models and gender stereotypes. This five-hour performance by the two actors Jakob Öhrman and Janet Rothe and Arno Waschk as the pianist is based on real statistics and court cases related to domestic violence. Without needing dialogue, Öhrn unravels the banality and brutality of domestic violence.

Markus Öhrn is a Swedish visual artist whose work comprises video, sound installation and performance. Along with the theatre groups Nya Rampen and Institutet, Öhrn’s performances dissect mechanisms of repression within middle class families. His work was previously featured during the Kunstenfestivaldesarts. We are welcoming him to Kaaitheater for the first time.

To accompany Markus Öhrn's performances, Kaaitheater will present Art & Violence/Dangerous Liaisons a workshop on the limits and (il)legit uses of violence in art and performance by Axel Pleeck. Additionally we present the conversation How to recognize, fight and prevent domestic abuse? in which we ask three professionals in the field (Triene Mie Lecompte, Anne Groenen & Olivier Solsse) to shed their light on the realities of domestic violence as portrayed in Markus Ohrn’s piece. Last but not least, you can also visit a thematic library composed by RoSa vzw at LaVallée.

LaVallée | 11, 12/03 | performance + debate

Alix Eynaudi
BRUNO - Belgian premiere

Imagine a tower of countless lamps and light sources. It comes to life buzzing, creaking and crackling to the rhythm of switching sounds. Named after the light designer Bruno Pocheron, BRUNO brings together series of dances oscillating between figuration and abstraction with three dancers trying on their movements as if they were clothes: every touch, every gesture, however fugitive, forever printed. 

BRUNO premiered in October 2021 in Tanzquartier Wien and will be presented at far° Nyon in Switzerland later this year. 

Kaaitheater | 09, 10/03 | performance

Chokri Ben Chikha & Action Zoo Humain
Flemish Primitives

Under the watchful eye of the public, eight young Flemings - sharing only their desire for success and their immigrant background – will undergo a series of experiments. Flemish Primitives shines new light on flashy talent shows and the malleability of success. Together with eight young performers, director Chokri Ben Chikha explores the relationship between the urge to excel and the spectacularization of difference.

Action Zoo Humain is the theatre company around Chokri Ben Chikha, and strives to make intercultural issues negotiable. The company was in residence at NTGent until 2021. Last season, the company performed at Kaaitheater together with Theater Antigone in Métisse.

This performance is part of the Kaaitheater programme line WE HEAR YOU(TH), in which artists give voice to children and young people and discuss their views of the world and of the future. These performances, intended for adults, invite us to listen to the voice of youngsters and surrender to the wisdom of the youth. > read more about it here.

A first version of Flemish Primitives was presented at the Dubai World Expo. The theatre version is premiering at NTGent on 10 March, then the show will be presented at Kaaitheater before starting its tour across Flanders and the Netherlands. 

Kaaitheater | 24, 25/03 | theatre | in Dutch and English (surtitled in English)

bodies of knowledge (BOK)
The Big BOK Multiplication

bodies of knowledge (BOK) considers the city as a rich source of valuable knowledge. Every passer-by could teach you something from their own background and life-experiences. BOK seeks to share this invisibilized or suppressed knowledge through oral transmission, that potentially could give rise to a socially more just society. 

The Big BOK Multiplication tells the story of one and a half year of BOK in Brussels. Feel welcome to join and learn along. BOK has been travelling as a nomadic classroom space through various parks and squares in Brussels for the past 18 months. Each week, passers-by and regular visitors could participate in the free programme, where they could learn about issues that don't get a place, or not enough, in our schools, in mainstream institutions and in the media. The learning day consists in the gathering of this learning community.

Everyone who visits The Big BOK Multiplication will have the opportunity to engage in a small learning moment with a “body of knowledge”: a life-expert who’d like to share specific and often invisibilized knowledge with others. Here you will find an overview of the different subjects composing this "living corpus". Who do you want to learn from? 

Kaaitheater | 13/03 | learning day | in English and French

Mette Edvardsen
Livre d’images sans images

For reasons directly and indirectly linked to COVID, Mette Edvardsen has had to postpone the premiere of Livre d’image sans image. The shows at Kaaistudios are cancelled and will take place on a later date – to be confirmed soon.

In the new creation Livre d’images sans images, Edvardsen collects song lyrics and texts that you hear in various forms – live and recorded. The unstable dramaturgy allows things to exist side by side, without necessarily creating unity. How can you un-write something?

Over the past ten years, choreographer, dancer and performance artist Mette Edvardsen has created a refined series of performances around the human voice. Almost all of them were staged at the Kaaistudio's. During the Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2019, she joined forces with Matteo Fargion, resulting in the memorable Penelope Sleeps.

Kaaistudio's | 02, 03/03 | performance

Claire Croizé / ECCE & The Goeyvaerts String Trio
Duet for two string trios

How do you translate the intensity, complexity and physicality of a piece of music into dance? Can you read the movements of a composition through the body? For her new creation Duet for two string trios, Claire Croizé teams up with the Goeyvaerts String Trio, looking for answers to these questions through two string trios by the contemporary composer Charles Wuorinen. The first piece was made in 1968, and the second, which is dedicated to the Goeyvaerts String Trio, in 2017. Inspired by the turn-of-the-century musical influences of Wuorinen and the verses of Pavese and Rilke, Duet for two string trios tells a story that is as intense and disruptive as the times we live in.

Claire Croizé graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in 2000. Since then, she has been creating impressive solos and carefully choreographed group pieces, often as a pair with Etienne Guilloteau. Duet for two string trios premiered in September 2021 in Bruges and has since been touring across Flanders. 

Kaaitheater | 03, 04/03 | dance & music

Read the Room
presented by Mophradat & Kaaitheater

Read the Room is the kick-off of a biennial collaboration between Mophradat and Kaaitheater. For three days you are invited for a programme around 'the mother'. It is built around a series of monologues and dialogues, screenings, workshops, and all of this swinging on live music. A number of lines of force structure this three-day event, such as mother tongue, motherhood, motherland and mother nature.

This multidisciplinary Read the Room festival explores the questions that both artists and public collectively should ask through various forms. The title implies that we need to be confronted with our complacency - or need to be nudged to do it. In essence, the project highlights where and how we remain stuck in social norms. 

Mophradat was founded in 2004 in Brussels as an organisation that wants to create opportunities for artists from the Arab world, through funding, the awarding of commissions, collaborations and encounters. Since 2015, Mophradat has been led by visual arts curator Mai Abu ElDahab.

Kaaistudio's | 24 - 26/03 | dance & performance

Ciné Place-Making
presented by Stoffel Debuysere, Avery F. Gordon, Raphael Grisey & Bouba Touré, Lara Khaldi, Olivier Marboeuf, Marta Popivoda, Daniela Shreir, Subversive Film, The Post Film Collective, Robin Vanbesien, Ana Vaz and Ana Vujanović

In this two-day study circle with Belgian film premieres*, panel talks, and lectures, touching on the imaginaries and practices of place-making in film, you will meet several filmmakers who consider film practice as a form of place-making that contributes to a relational geography of connected struggles, imaginaries, and resources.

How can film help shape a radical consciousness about place-making? How can it offer a reflection on the day-to-day struggles of those that work from the homely premise that freedom is a place? How can we think of cinema as a way of coming together, in which mutual exchange, shared knowledge production, and an ethic of connectedness are the starting points? 

Kaaistudio's | 04, 05/03 | colloquium & film | in English

Sahraa Karimi
Reflections on film, gender and politics in Afganistan 

a Machteld De Metsenaere Lecture organised by RHEA, Crosstalks, Fatima Mernissi Chair and Kaaitheater

What role do film and art have in contexts of political and societal change? The night before International Women's Day, Afghan director Sahraa Karimi will discuss this question during the Machteld De Metsenaere lecture. In this lecture, she will discuss the experiences of artists in Afghanistan and the protection of their artistic freedom, incorporating her own life experiences, as she herself fled Afghanistan. Afterwards, Sahraa Karimi will be in conversation with Gie Goris and answer questions by the audience. On Tuesday the 8th of March, Karimi's movie Hava, Maryam, Ayeshe will be shown at Bozar.

• Sahraa Karimi is an Afghan film director who has obtained a PhD in cinema and was the first woman to lead the national Afghan Film Organization. She has been a very prominent contributor in putting the Afghan film industry on the map.

The event is organized by RHEA, Crosstalks, Fatima Mernissi Chair and Kaaitheater.

VUB | 07/03 | talk | in English
 

The Big BOK multiplication by Sara Vanhee is co-funded by ACT & the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union