Creating Joy

Creating Joy is a record of daily actions, in search of meaning, pleasure, and the will to go on. How you can find comfort, strength and peace in your mind in simple, physical actions: baking a loaf of bread, a massage, sunshine in the spring, a good conversation. It also lends an insight into theatre-making in uncertain times. Postponement or even cancellation hangs over every performance like a sword of Damocles. Then it is a real challenge to start a new project with joy and good spirits. It's all about creating joy!

In Ann Van den Broek's earlier work, a tendency towards the dark and tragic side often prevailed. It was time for the balance to tip to the other side. To lightness and feeling good, to laughing together, hugging each other, being melancholic about past but pleasant memories: creating joy! And then a pandemic broke out. The corona crisis put considerable pressure on Van den Broek's ideas. The epidemic tilted the perspective: the universal became personal instead of the other way round.

-|-This is why Creating Joy is no ordinary performance. It is a mix of real-time and pre-recorded images with a performance in the audience. Forged together by a host who leads the evening like a master of ceremonies. There are screens, a compact setting, one and a half metres of distance, and dancers working from home who are present via a live stream.

"Although the concept of the production predates the pandemic, the current situation gives it more urgency." - Movementexposed.com

At the beginning of Ann Van den Broek's career, the focus was mainly on pure dance, raw and minimalistic. Gradually, the use of live film, live music and language became ever more important. Van den Broek's performances increasingly became a cinematic total experience. Julidans has been following her artistic path for years. From Julidans NEXT, Van den Broek moved on to the festival's main stages. In recent years, she has left her own distinctive mark on Dutch and international dance. "Van den Broek's work is the textbook example of the new dance practice, in which people no longer think in terms of pigeonholes or national borders," Trouw wrote - thereby expressing why Van den Broek fits in so well with Julidans.