Lichtjaren
Dance is diverse. Dance reaches across the ages. During the next edition of the Nederlandse Dansdagen, the festival will be reflecting on the different generations. Every person’s life passes through different phases; as the body grows older, it starts echoing history. Personal history becomes lodged in the skin. The way an older dancer communicates with an audience will differ from the way an adolescent or a child would.
Only very rarely do choreographers work with dancers over the age of 45. The dancing body is almost invariably a young body. The young body’s technical and physical deftness and its youthful, often adolescent energy form a dominant presence on the stage. The older performer’s strength and proficiency, such a natural certainty in the theatre, have hardly been explored.
In the project entitled Lichtjaren (Lightyears), the Nederlandse Dansdagen will be developing three duets, each of which will feature a renowned older performer (over 65) sharing the stage with a young dancer (aged 10-14). Two duets in which older men share the stage with young boys, and a duet featuring an older woman and a girl. The older performers are retired professionals who have made their mark in Dutch dance and drama. The younger performers are highly talented dancers who train in Venlo and Maastricht. The duets will be choreographed by three young dance makers: Joost Vrouenraets, Alida Dors and Catoke Kramer.
Lichtjaren is an adaptation in dance of a project called ‘Boxing’, which will also be taking place in Italy and Great Britain over the coming period. The Dutch participants will be meeting each other for the first time in August. The older dancers and the younger ones will have a chance to establish a joint history before they meet their choreographers. During this first meeting, photographer Lara Platman, who will also be working with the participants in London and Bassano, will perform an important role. The older dancers will be taking the younger dancers to places that have been important to them. The older dancer will recount, the younger one will respond and take pictures using a camera they will have received from Lara Platman. Afterwards, both dancers will be asked to allow the encounter to reverberate for a few days and to record their experiences in the journals they will also have received. Each encounter will eventually yield a box full of photographs and texts. The box will serve as a source of inspiration for the choreographer, but it will also become part of a public exhibition to supplement the duets on stage.
The 14th edition of the Nederlandse Dansdagen will take place from 7 – 9 October this year, at venues across Maastricht.
Boxing Project 
exciting