Liefde en Dan (2021)

Liefde en Dan is a dance- theatre piece by Anne Suurendonk. For this work I performed live as a musician and performer together with four dancers. The narrative of the production is based on stories in love and what it takes to make it last. There is no one-size fits all approach to this theme and it proved to be quite complex to draw a cohesive line throughout the hour-long performance. Everyone has their own individual story and their own discoveries to make. In a lot of youth theatre there is some food for thought to be had after the fact. However, this piece turned into more of an abstract exposition of anecdotes which is more open ended.

This proved to be quite challenging for me as a composer. I have come to realise that I had become accustomed to working backwards from the consensus of a piece and making a cohesive arch to get to that point. This combined with the clear story that the duo's told in the piece made it quite hard to slot into a proper place as a performer and composer. There was no way to conceptualise my role into existence, I was challenged by the choreographer to take a fresh approach to every scene and settle for what felt right. 

What we ended up with is the piece Liefde and Dan, a youth-theatre performance that we toured throughout the Netherlands.