Abhishek Thapar | DAS Theatre
 - My home at the Intersection

When I was growing up, my parents always told me: ‘A big storm is coming, we might have to leave.’. Since then, Amsterdam is the 13th city I have lived in, and it’s only now that I am beginning to ask myself: What makes a home? How does one deal with memories and conflicting histories?

For the last year, I have been working with certain historical narratives about Punjab, a state in the northwestern part of India, and about my family and our life there as well. My home at the Intersection is a work that I have been growing towards since I first started making theatre in my teens but could never gain the courage to actualize. In December last year, my family and I went back to my childhood home in Moga, to a place which we all thought we had forgotten about. Together we created a performance.

With: Venu Thapar, Shveta Grover and Ashok Thapar. Advisor: Floris van Delft. Tutor: Jeroen Fabius. Dramaturgical Support: Maria Roessler. Text Advice: Divya Nadkarni and Swati Simha. Film Editing: Jeanette Groenendaal. Primary Research: Abhishek Thapar and Swati Simha (support). With contributions from: Sudha Thapar, Neelu Koura, Pawan Thapar and Karan. Special Thanks: Chandana Sarma, Arash Qajar, Amandeep Sandhu and Loise Braganza, Barbara Van Lindt, Juul Beeren, Vera van Baal, Martin Brans.

Abhishek Thapar (India, 1985) is a theatre maker, performer and puppeteer. He previously trained in Physical Theatre at LISPA in London/Berlin. For the last couple of years, he has been actively involved in various social projects, using tools of theatre and puppetry to blur the boundaries between people from different social backgrounds. With his work, he seeks to understand the implications of the great change that is underway, from an artistic as well as social, economic and political point of view. At DAS Theatre, he is developing his practice through documentary material, puppetry and storytelling.

Cecilia Lisa Eliceche | DAS Choreography
 - Caribbean thinkers for a new Europe

Carribean thinkers for a new Europe is a series of encounters conjured by Cecilia Lisa Eliceche. 

• Fri 2 June / 14:00 – 18:00. Reading Gloria Wekker 
• Sat 3 June / 13:00 – 15:00. Lunch Conversation with Gloria Wekker and Nadia Ellis 
• Sun 4 June/ 14:00 – 18:00. An afternoon and early dinner with Quinsy Gario 

The events are made possible thanks to our joint effort to invite you for free. Reservations are compulsory for all days. Email: rawvegandinners.lacasadebarro@gmail.com.
Location: La Casa de Barro. Oudezijds Achterburgwal 199.
Home and food by Maria Teresa Diaz Nieto.

Cecilia Lisa Eliceche (Argentina, 1986) is an Argentinian dancer, choreographer, dance advocate and witch. She loves craft, rigor, sophistication, discipline and magic. She studied in Escuela de Danza Bahia Blanca, PARTS (Belgium) and is a Guest Researcher at UC Berkeley with focus on postcolonial thought and the Black Radical Tradition. She is fascinated by the endless potential of the body and movement and conceives dance as a site to experiment and rethink notions of democracy, community and the political, as well as challenging colonialism. Her current focus is experimenting with forms of conjuring encounters. In the past two years she has been devoted to prof. Nadia Ellis and artist Leandro Nerefuh.

Enkidu Khaled | DAS Theatre
 - Youssef

How can good faith easily change into radical choices? We meet an Iraqi filmmaker who works and lives in a time of war. By following his life and artistic work, we become witnesses of his violent transformation. Youssef is a documentary theatre piece that takes place in Iraq from the nineties until 2007. The country is torn up, the economy is at its lowest point and people are struggling to survive.

Thanks to: Ata Güner, Suze van Miltenburg, Chris Keulemans, Dhyaa Khaled.

Enkidu Khaled (Iraq, 1985) is a theatre maker and performer. He is interested in how people are shaped by the context in which they live, and how they relate to their past, present and possible futures. His work researches how elements such as society, education, religion, politics and culture influence the nature and behaviour of a human being. Khaled blurs the line between the fields of theatre and performance to reach new definitions that flow back and forth between the two. Khaled studied theatre at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. Since 2008 he has lived and worked in Belgium. His latest performance is Working Method, produced by Storm op Komst (B) and De Brakke Grond and Frascati (NL), for which he received the Big in Belgium award at Theater aan Zee, Oostende 2016.

Gabino Rodríguez | DAS Theatre
- How many thieves do you need to open a cave?

This project is an attempt to outline an ethical framework for creating fiction in today’s world. It is the result of two years of work on the concept of fiction and its implications, its function and possibilities; about the political implications of aesthetics; and, above all, about the way things that happen in the world reformulate the place of fiction. How many thieves do you need to open a cave? is an attempt to affirm something in a context full of ‘questions’.

The project consists of many different elements: a book, texts, objects, videos and live performance. These can be presented together or separately.

A project by Gabino Rodríguez and Chantal Peñalosa. Performance, video and exhibition based on texts and ideas from Homer, Milan Kundera, Robert Graves, Martín Caparrós, Augusto Monterroso, Diogenes, Gerardo Arana. Tutor: Edit Kaldor. Advisors: Suzanne Knip-Mooij, Sarah Vanhee and Daniel Blanga-Gubbay. Translation: Clara García Fraile. Book. Text: Gabino Rodríguez. English version: Alexander Nieuwenhuis. Edition: Marina Azahua. Editorial Design: Juan Leduc. Review: Luisa Pardo and José Rodríguez (‘Rolo’). Tutor: Edit Kaldor. Advisors: Suzanne Knip-Mooij, Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, Sarah Vanhee.

In 2003 Gabino Rodríguez (Mexico, 1983) founded the collective Lagartijas tiradas al sol, with which he has developed stage projects, published books, made films and records, and taught workshops. Rodríguez presented his work at the Festwochen in Vienna, Schaubühne in Berlin, Paris Autumn Festival, Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Scene Contemporanea in Madrid, TransAmériques in Montreal and Theater Spektakel in Zurich. As a stage actor he has collaborated with directors such as Jesusa Rodríguez, Daniel Veronese, Martín Acosta and Alberto Villarreal. Rodríguez has acted in more than thirty feature films with directors like Nicolás Pereda, Raya Martin, Gust Van der Berghe, Diego Luna and Cary Fukunaga.

Noah Voelker | DAS Theatre
 - Cursed on a Thursday

We all deal with uncertainty. The future continues to feel less and less certain and we have to respond to that in some way. I will take you from beginning to end with easy-to-follow and concrete steps as to what to do about your uncertainty. I have lived it and gone through it and I want you to feel the same.

This work on uncertainty came out of a research period into how to approach the notion of ‘the future.’ The future as a topic is overwhelming and unwieldy; I began to embody these sensations. That caused the researched to shift to how I experience the future and all the anxieties, worries, doubts, and uncertainties I feel towards it. With the shift came the big questions of the research: how do we as individuals address all the uncertainties (personal and outside of ourselves) that exist simultaneously in the present and in the future? How do we work on our uncertainties under contemporary conditions? And, do we do this work together or alone?

The result of this research is a presentation of the struggles with own deep feelings uncertainty and the steps I took towards embracing that uncertainty.

Dramaturgy: Biljana Radinoska. Advisors: Sarah Moeremans, Joachim Robbrecht, Ogutu Muraya. Technical Expertise: Harco Haagsma, Udo Akemann. Visual Consultation: Bert Jacobs. Thankyou: Chi Fung, Orion Maxted, Sophie Gusset, Juul Beeren, Barbara Van Lindt, and the DAS staff.

Noah Voelker (USA, 1990) is a theatre maker and performer from Texas now based in the Netherlands. Noah has worked in the areas of theatre scholarship, directing, writing, devised performance, sound design, and dramaturgy. Before moving to Amsterdam, Noah was an executive director of the Aesthetic of Waste collective. Noah’s current work is concentrated on authenticity in performance, storytelling, the practice of devising work, performance installations, and audience participation in performance. www.noahvoelker.com

Noha Ramadan | DAS Choreography
 - Paratactical

Where are we looking? What else is happening? Paratactical is a dance work dealing with transformation, fantasy, and augmented space. Using techniques of cinematic production, the continuous motion of human and non-human bodies is captured and projected live, complicating the attention of the viewer and producing changing relations between the actual and the virtual. The world is constantly turning.

I am attracted to situations of complex spatiality and directionality and their production through theatrical means. Previously, I’ve explored this through dance and live sound processing. Over the last two years I have begun working much more visually. I have engaged practices of touch, movement, and live image production as modes of thinking about orientations, proximity, and collective subjectivity.

Next to this I have been exploring different structures of writing, developing fictional texts and choreographic scripts which affirm holes, gaps, transformation (and the entrance of uncanny others). This project includes the publication Cassini & Other Minor Gods, a collection of semi-fictions, drawings and quotes which run alongside the performance. It is available in the kitchen during the presentations.

Paratactical is made and performed in collaboration with: Matthew Day, Setareh Fatehi Irani, Tomislav Feller, Stefan Schneider. Dramaturgical support: Bruno Listopad. Sound design: S.M.Snider and Noha Ramadan. A special thanks to: the performers ♥ ♥ & velvet black, Sher Doruff, Jeroen Fabius, Mami Kang, Thea Patterson, Toby Paul, Jija Sohn, Eva Susova, Maya Tamir, Clara Amaral, Harco Haagsma, Udo Akemann, Jop Van Galen and DAS Choreography classes of 2015- 2017.

Noha Ramadan (Australia, 1979) is a choreographer living in Amsterdam. Her work is underscored by a love for language and structural experimentation, testing the relationships between things and their environments, and between meaning and its collapse. She also works as a dancer, performer, teacher and dramaturg in various European and Australian contexts. In 2017 she co-initiated Jacuzzi, an artist-run collective atelier in Amsterdam’s old west. www.noharamadan.net | www.facebook.com/ jacuzzidancespace

Olga Tsvetkova | DAS Theatre
 - ELEGY

ELEGY is about ghosts. I asked three practitioners from various disciplines to join me in discovering what ghosts actually are. After attempting to extract our personal ghosts, we realized that ghosts are not really about the fear of death at all: they’re about getting caught up in repetition without memory.

A ghost exists in a constant state of returning. Ghosts lack memory, but long to come back into being. For the last few years I have felt that I knew something before and later forgot it. Today I realized that the main thing is not about remembering what it was, but rather the melancholic state, the process of longing in itself, the movement towards a place or time, where and when you fit with the reality, that spot where you feel the presence of the sublime.

ELEGY is about colliding the essential with the absurd. Elevating the ridiculous perusal of the ghost into something we don’t know.

ELEGY is about the space of doubt. In my work I constantly look for the discrepancy between what I see and what it really is. We don’t know which reality is real. And probably theatre shows us the real one. It makes you wonder if what you are used to hearing or seeing is in fact only our habitual concepts of perception.

Ghost Writers: Olga Tsvetkova, Leo Svirsky, Mirko Lazović, Marc Maris and James Hewitt. Ghost Advice: Yannis Kyriakides, Andrea Božić. Ghost Chorus: Ogutu Muraya, Valentiina Lutseenko, Abhishek Thapar, Catarina Vieira, Niels Weijer, Biljana Radinoska, Sofia Dinger, Clara García Fraile. Ghost Support: Yana Isaenko. Ghost Design: Chi Gar Fung. Ghost thanks to: Vladimir Gorlinsky, Philippe Quesne, Alissa Šnaider.

Olga Tsvetkova (Russia, 1984) is an artist whose interest lies in performance, specifically in relation to the choreographic scores she applies in her work to sculpt time and construct space. However, she also believes that art is a surprise, it cannot be calculated. As a performer, Olga has been working in Sasha Pepelyaev’s Kinetic theatre, as well as participating in performances by Anouk van Dijk, Deborah Hay (SNDO) and Benoit Lachambre (SNDO). In 2012 she became part of Recollective, a group of Estonian, Russian and Dutch artists.

Location: DAS Graduate School
Start: 19:00

• How many thieves do you need to open a cave? - Gabino Rodríguez
• it won’t move without us - Annefleur Schep 
• Elegy - Olga Tsvetkova 

Location: Casa de Barro
14:00 -18:00

• Caribbean thinkers for a new Europe - Cecilia Lisa Eliceche
  Reading Gloria Wekker

Location: DAS Graduate School
Start: 19:00

• My home at the intersection - Abhishek Thapar
• Paratactical - Noha Ramadan
• Cursed on a Thursday - Noah Voelker
• Youssef - Enkidu Khaled

Location: Casa de Barro
13:00 - 15:00

• Caribbean thinkers for a new Europe - Cecilia Lisa Eliceche
  Lunch Conversation Gloria Wekker & Nadia Ellis

Location: DAS Graduate School. 
Start: 19:00 

• My home at the intersection - Abhishek Thapar
• Paratactical - Noha Ramadan
• Cursed on a Thursday - Noah Voelker
• Youssef - Enkidu Khaled

Location: Casa de Barro
14:00 -18:00

• Caribbean thinkers for a new Europe - Cecilia Lisa Eliceche