The Moment, I begin uses video technology as an integrated element that mixes live and prerecorded images. They are fully projected on the back wall. A black-mirroring floor will reflect everything, making it a space that potentially can transform into anything while the back wall slowly moves from the front to the back.

Arno Schuitemaker collaborates again with composer Aart Strootman to create music that draws the audience towards the stage, strengthening the converging pull to the performers. Lighting designer Jean Kalman and dramaturg Guy Cools will join this new creation again as well. To the stage, Arno has invited performers with whom he worked with before, like Ivan Ugrin, Paolo Yao, and Emilia Saavedra, and will as well invite new dancers. Conversations with video artists to contribute to this work have started.

Facing us, seven performers stand at the front edge of the stage. It is a diverse group, at the same time forming a unity. Slowly, they start moving backwards. It feels as if time is set in reverse and retracts. It is the beginning. The beginning that becomes an opening, not as a way in or out, but as a way towards...

Arno Schuitemaker: “In these times of growing and extreme polarization, to measure distance is to acknowledge that, in life, few distances are fixed. To be close, we ask How are you? But what answer do we expect and what answer do we reject? Sometimes I think that it would be a step ahead, it would be a progression, if we realize that every now and then we just want somebody to hold us tight. And why not? Why not move towards? Let’s begin. Because if we have nothing to lose, there must be something we can gain.”

With the back wall arising directly behind them, while being focussed on the performers, it takes a while before you notice that they don’t get any closer to the wall. Between them and the wall there is a gap that slowly widens. The back wall moves and the space extends — its edges drift apart. The Moment, I begin makes performers and audiences become part of something that slowly becomes bigger and bigger. The dancers move through the space, like ebb and flow. Pulling like an invisible current, all submerge into another dimension. Movement gains momentum, and the dancers shift in all directions, each with their unique way of moving.

Projecting video on the back wall, the perspective is tilted upside-down by a camera recording the performers live from above. A next image multiplies them manifold then blurs into what evokes an unlimited depth. The shining, black-mirroring floor reinforces it all. This world emits its own gravity and takes multiple identities. When the performers are all the way in the back at the end of the performance, they are portrayed largely on the wall, magnified. Their bodies are melted into their images. Movement has vaporized. You can hear their breathing. We have arrived. The horizon becomes a place where separation and proximity converge. Deepening the scope of our relationships to the other, distance feels miraculously close. Attraction can merge the near and the far. If only we begin and reach, forward.

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Premiere: Fall 2023
Creation: Starting in January 2023, in total 8 weeks

Touring: Starting Fall 2023 and in 2024