Straight from the heart: Julidans 2026
Whether implicitly or explicitly, many of the dance artists Julidans welcomes this year ask these questions. And it’s high time they did! Because they believe wholeheartedly in the power of dance, they look for answers in the body.
After all, what is the body? Surely more than just ingenious machinery with an endless range of motor possibilities? It is our personal archive, our physical mouthpiece and our antenna. What the mind cannot yet conceive, the body senses, thanks to the knowledge stored within it.
Choreographers devote their entire lives to exploring that knowledge. They start from feeling. Their body shows the way, and dance is their language. Jefta van Dinther even creates, quite literally, a new and visible form of communication out of sign language and dance. Each choreographer tells in their own way what moves them. Through movement, rhythm, spatial patterns and forms, they give expression to the unspeakable. Sometimes small gestures, repeated to intoxicating effect, stand for a great emotion or a memory of the past, as in the hypnotic choreographies of Sharon Eyal and Armin Hokmi.
The urge to create dance runs deep. It simply has to come out. Sometimes this happens through a ritualistic, minimalist approach that makes transformation possible and clears the mind for a glimpse of the future, or instead for contact with the past. Think of a coffee ritual from Ethiopia, a sacrificial ceremony in the African jungle or a Chinese trance ritual.
“The urge to create dance is deeply rooted – it simply has to come out.”
But the body also points the way to new paths and forms, and to freedom. In the search for a free future, Serge Aimé Coulibaly honours his roots and shows that folklore is no frozen tradition, but alive and kicking and open to renewal. Alan Lucien Øyen uses contemporary dance theatre to show that Sophocles’ classic drama about moral duty versus political power is timeless. Dancing and singing beautifully, François Chaignaud, Nina Laisné and Nadia Larcher transform into a new form of life during their deep immersion in the dance and music traditions of South American peoples.
Dance as physical archaeology and an exploration of the future. It is often said that to know where we are going, we must first know where we come from. The body has that knowledge. That is why dance can tell us so much. From heart to heart.
Anita van Dolen and the Julidans team
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