My Body, My Archive / Mamu Tshi, Portrait pour Amandine – Faustin Linyekula

If Absence had a Shape

DE SINGEL presents a double bill by Congolese dance artist Faustin Linyekula. By asking ‘Where are the women?’ and ‘Who is my grandmother?’, both My Body, My Archive and Mamu Tshi, Portrait pour Amandine trace along the disrupted lineage to the performers’ female ancestors, looking for and summoning them through dance, told stories and documentary artefacts. 

Anne-Lene Nöldner

review 28.05.2025

The Ephemeral Spectacle

Social media, invisible performance, and the erosion of long-term memory

In an age dominated by social media like Instagram or TikTok, and shaped by algorithmic attention economies—systems designed to maximize engagement by feeding us an endless stream of emotionally charged, personalized content—we are trained to forget as quickly as we engage. Images flash by, content is consumed and discarded, and presence becomes synonymous with constant visibility. This erosion of long-term memory doesn’t just reshape how we consume media—it fundamentally alters how we experience art, time, and even selfhood. In this accelerated digital culture, art that demands sustained attention and deeper reflection often feels out of place. Might performance art, particularly in its durational and ephemeral forms, offer a compelling counterpoint to the logic of the feed?

Shervin Kianersi Haghighi

essay 14.05.2025

Traditions with a Future

Conditions for a Permanent Dance Heritage

Building a permanent dance heritage is intimately linked to how we think about the role of tradition in dance. Although the term ‘tradition’ appears regularly in programme texts, reviews and interviews with choreographers, the precise meaning of the word often remains unclear. Timmy De Laet examines a view of tradition in which memory and heritage serve not only as repositories of the past, but also as engines for further reflection and renewal.

Timmy De Laet

article 25.04.2025

DARK – Kris Verdonck/A Two Dogs Company

Coded Clairvoyance

DARK premiered in the 13th edition of Trouble, a performance festival whose central theme this year revolves around invocations, evocations, magical or shamanic rituals, political actions in public spaces, and dialogues with the unseen. Kris Verdonck continues his exploration between the oppositions of being and non-existence in this three-part performance. The first one deals with unseen entities behind screens; the second is a Beckett recital in memory of Johan Leysen, a Flemish actor who passed away two years ago; the third and last part is a short musical act, with sounds coming from three sousaphones hanging on the ceiling while no one seems to be playing them.

Ugnė Noreikė

review 24.04.2025

Score for a Recipe: Mlukhiyeh

Samah Hijawi

column 31.03.2025

Everything brings us back to the body – Ehsan Hemat

A heavy blanket

While watching my Everything brings us back to the body by Ehsan Hemat, my body relaxed. The heated room loosened the muscles, the light was never too bright. Seeing him carrying the weight of an 18-kilogram brass sheet gave a physical release, as if I was the one covered with a heavy blanket, and my hand just scribbled on to the page. What did it write? It turned to myths of Icarus and Sisyphus, people whose non-human counterparts – wings and a boulder – have extended and thus completed their physical form. And now Ehsan and his sheet are here before me, merging and fighting, inseparable in their opposition.

Ugnė Noreikė

review 24.03.2025

Sabah – Tomas Pevenage/Antigone

Take a drag

After having travelled through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, Tomas Pevenage comes on stage inspired by divas he heard, people he saw, and places he visited. He creates a fragmented, searching drag character who is stunning and never loses their composure, remains shining and charming. Sabah is a show that’s easy to love, funny, beautiful and entertaining. It delivers all you would expect of a queer cabaret. However, it kept me wanting. Can a show that comes from a place of conflict remain untouched by it?

Ugnė Noreikė

review 17.03.2025