Small Miracle #6: Dances
Line up: Toni Steffens, Zaher Hamzat, Ainhoa Hernández Escudero and Aion Arribas, Raoni / Muzho Saleh, Teresa Jaldón, Junadry Leocaria, nisha ha, Dayna Martinez Morales, La Uyi, Fernanda Libman

Dutch below

We invite you to explore what happens when different dance languages come into contact in our bodies, and how gestures, memories, and sensations accumulate through movement.

ENG:

Small Miracles 

Small Miracles is a series of interdisciplinary programs, part of the Plein Theater program for co-creation, that tend to the existing and possible communities of Plein Theater. Taking place across different Saturdays throughout the year, the series brings together diverse artistic practices in extended, durational formats.

Each Saturday is dedicated to a word—or a word-mode—that serves as an invitation to explore the possibilities a theater offers for coming together. With a focus on desirable abundances and communal luxury, the programming of Small Miracles leans toward words aligned with these notions.

#GetInvolved

We believe that a theatre is not only a showcase platform, but also a meeting center where artists, local residents, communities, and audiences collectively shape what is presented. Our co-creation programme, where shared ownership and participation are key, can be recognised by the #GetInvolved label.

Are you a dancer who’d like to share your practice with us? Let us know!

If you would like to participate, please contact Community Producer Lorenzo García Andrade (getinvolved@plein-theater.nl). Read more and view recaps of past events on our page Community >

Small Miracle #6: Dances

We welcome you to the next Small Miracle, dedicated to the word Dances.

For this programme, we are inviting ten practitioners from different dance and body traditions and research practices to share a thirty-minute class or excercise with participants, each immediately followed by the next.

As different forms of dance tend to inhabit separate social spaces, classes, celebrations, and gatherings, they dont often coexist in close proximity. Through this format, we are interested in befriending them in space and time, allowing their gestures, rhythms, memories, and sensations to accumulate and enter into relation with one another through the bodies taking part.

Participants include

Toni Steffens

Zaher Hamzat 

Ainhoa Hernández Escudero and Aion Arribas

Raoni / Muzho Saleh

Teresa Jaldón

Junadry Leocaria

nisha  ha

Dayna Martinez Morales

La Uyi

Fernanda Libman

Biographies of participating artists:

Ainhoa Hernández Escudero makes performances, creates contexts and connections, and works as an artist, educator, curator, advisor, producer, and host in the cultural field. The core of their artistic practice lies in finding other ways of making sense by reimagining belonging and grieving inherited structures. Trained in theatre, dance, circus, and philosophy, with an MA from DAS Theatre, they approach performance as a site where embodied and speculative knowledge intersect. Ainhoa Hernández Escudero, a.k.a. blueberriboi, is part of the drag king House of Løstbois. They feel drag is a radical mode of existence that facilitates other ways of socialising. SPRING Festival supports their work, which has been presented internationally at venues such as Grec Festival, Tanzquartier, Frascati, Bâtard Festival, Beursschouwburg, Gessnerallee, Kikker Theatre Utrecht, CPR NY, and Museo del Chopo.

@noixih 

Dayna Martinez Morales is a Bolivian-born dancer, choreographer and performer whose work and practice moves between ritual and performance. Rooted in her Andean heritage and the ancestral ritual of Tinkuy of Nothern Potosi, she explores dance as an embodied encounter with the forces that move us beyond ourselves. For her, dance is a ritual of encounter, resistance and surrender — a space of becoming where we can be moved, ensoul, transform and inspire. ¡No se baila así nomás!

@daynamartinezmorales

Fernanda Libman is a choreographer working at the intersection of movement, sound and spatial composition. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, she has been based in Amsterdam since 2016, where she studied choreography at SNDO (BA) and DAS Choreography (MA), as well as electronic music production at SAE Institute. Her research repeatedly brings her to investigate threshold states of perception in which meaning is becoming, shifting, losing its previous definition in response to affect and relationality. She is interested in choreographing circumstances in which perception can reclaim a more active role in the formation of identity narratives, as a means of subverting the dominant canon.

Her work was shown in Amsterdam in places such as BosTheater, Dansmakers, OT301 and DooResidency space , as well as in international contexts such as CentroCentro Madrid x El Amor and Greta Galpão, São Paulo. Fernanda also collaborated with several artists as performer and sound composer. Since 2021 she is part of Cara de Cavalo, a theatre company directed by Carolina Bianchi where they’ve been currently creating and touring the Cadela Força Trilogy.

@fernandalibman 

Junadry Leocaria (1985, Willemstad, Curaçao) is an award-winning dance artist, choreographer, coach, teacher, and performer working at the intersection of theatre, Afro-Caribbean storytelling and urban dance. Recognized for her distinctive movement vocabulary and commanding stage presence, she has become an influential figure within the Dutch dance, and performance landscape. In 2023, this resulted in her winning the Innovations Prize at the Nederlandse Dansdagen.

Junadry specializes in waacking - an expressive form of club dance, set to disco music from the 1970s, which plays with characters and emotions. Leocaria was mentored by legendary voguer and waacker Archie Burnett, whose influence played a significant role in her mastery of the techniques and performance expression. With her expressive and powerful movement language, she knows how to touch the audience every time.

@junadry_leocaria

LA Uyi is a choreographer, stage performer and practitioner of physical theatre. Their main practice involves tracing folk myths, lores and mythologies from Northern Europe to West Africa and everywhere in between.

Through the methods of Butoh, Drag, Waacking and Edo masquerade theory, they de-corrupt and reform the practices of Buffon, clown and Commedia dell’arte, creating a form they call Magical Buffon. Central to all these forms is the practice of animism: the ability to:

1 Embody the essence of an object, a person, a song or something much bigger. Or 2 Allow an object to embody the essence of a person, a song or something much bigger. Animism can be applied to any movement form. It is a practice of staying hyper-present while allowing the worlds of imagination and fabulation to take up space and act themselves out.

@baby.b.genius

nisha ha is a choreographer and a performer who has learned dance not only from institutions, but also (and more importantly) from her mother, her partner, her friends, the animal companions in different houses she lived in, the fungi she read about in books and touched on the ground. nisha has been a care recipient and a care giver. One of her biggest projects is taking care of herself, which is usually not considered a job, but certainly is labor and cannot be shown on her CV. Based in Amsterdam, she investigates how illness can be understood not only as an individual medical condition but as a collective and relational experience that connects people through care, empathy, and shared vulnerability.

@nisha.needs.a.break 

Teresa Jaldón began her journey in flamenco dance at a very young age in her hometown, Huelva, training at the iconic Peña Flamenca de Huelva, a place that played a pivotal role in her artistic and personal development.

In 2006, she founded her own school, FLAMENCOAMSTERDAM, through which she promotes her artistic and teaching work internationally. Her career has taken her to perform, teach courses and collaborate on numerous projects both in Spain and across various European countries.

She has performed at leading flamenco festivals in Andalusia, including the Instituto Cervantes, en la Bienal de Flamenco de los Países Bajos and in various festivales de peñas flamencas en Andalucía.

As a teacher, Teresa has given countless workshops and masterclasses at prestigious institutions such as the Conservatorio de Róterdam, escuelas privadas de danza, el Conservatorio de Danza de Ankara y la Escuela de Danza de Ankara (Turquía), entre otras.

@teresa.jaldon @flamencoamsterdam

Toni Steffens approaches dancing by enmeshing thinking, feeling, sensing and moving. Inquiring the cartesian dualism, pervasive to our western societies as a collective wound, they aim at developing ontologies that devices embodied knowledge as a tool to navigate political questions. Sensitivity, imagination and emotionality guide as intelligent technologies of our bodies, to assist rewiring the relations we have with our realities. Being also and acupuncturist and care worker, an urgent question of theirs is how healing could look like in our futures to come and what role dance has to play in it. Toni's works and collaborations have been presented at W139, Framer Framed, Re_Nature Festival, Kunstfort Bij Vijfhuizen, Flam Festival, Les Urbaines Festival, Veem House for Performance, Festival why Not, Pact Zollverein, Tanzhaus NRW, Batard Festival, Come Together Festival, Uferstudios Berlin, Frascati Theatre, Plein Theatre, Perdu Amsterdam, Palais de Tokyo, Van Abbe Museum, Mandala Festival Wroclaw, New Fears Gallery Berlin and more.

@newboring_ 

Raoni/Muzho Saleh is a Hazara Afghan/Dutch artist using performance, installation and the sound of moaning mourning to twist and reshape narratives of (cultural) becoming. His work's focus is to play with fugitivity, by not settling on a rigid form. Applying movement and sound as a transformational kind of poetry, he searches for how to continuously be something else, something strange. His practice is engaged with the entanglement of body, spirit, politics and love within art. Through the use of materials such as movement, voice, text and textile he makes works that temporarily immerse both audience and performers in otherworldly thinking, feeling and relating.

@rawany_3ishq

Zaher Hamzat is a Palestinian choreographer and former professional stage dancer, born in Damascus, Syria, where he studied theatrical dance. Throughout his career, he has toured extensively across the Arab world, Europe, and Brazil, presenting stage performances and leading workshops focused on traditional Levantine dances, particularly Dabke, as well as contemporary folk dance forms.

@hamzatzaher

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NL:

Small Miracles 

Small Miracles is een multidisciplinaire programmaserie, als onderdeel van het Plein Theater programma voor co-creatie. Elke 'Small Miracle' staat in het teken van een thema van één woord en dient als een uitnodiging om samen te komen en te onderzoeken wat dat woord in het hier en nu teweeg kan brengen.

#GetInvolved

We geloven dat een theater niet alleen een podium is, maar ook een ontmoetingsplek waar makers, buurtbewoners, communities en publiek samen vorm geven aan wat er te zien is. Ons programma voor co-creatie, waar gedeeld eigenaarschap en participatie centraal staat, is te herkennen aan het #GetInvolved label.

Ben je zelf danser(es) en wil je jouw praktijk met ons delen? Laat het ons weten!

Als je wilt deelnemen, neem dan contact op met: Lorenzo García Andrade (getinvolved@plein-theater.nl). Lees meer en bekijk terugblikken naar voorgaande events op onze Community pagina >

Small Miracle #6: Dances

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman

Voor aankomende Small Miracle nodigen we tien dansers uit om een ​​half uur van hun praktijk met ons te delen in een doorlopende dansworkshop! Van traditionele Boliviaanse dans tot Palestijnse Dabkeh en Flamenco; doe mee aan het meest gevarieerde dansfeest ooit!  

Dansen kan zowel een viering zijn van het leven als een protest. Movement een middel om iets in beweging te zetten. Een universele taal dat ons samenbrengt én een uitwisseling van tradities en cultuur. Wat is er mooier én leuker dan samen te bewegen, los te laten en los te gaan? Van elkaars praktijk te leren? Onze ritmes op elkaar te synchroniseren?