VAL

Falling, it's something we'd rather not do. People who fall are vulnerable. In our society, we prefer to look at the upward trend: always higher, further, faster, more. Those who reach the summit are unanimously praised. He who falls has failed. But isn't falling just part of life? Humans learn and live by trial and error. Where is our creativity if we don't dare to take a leap into the depths? Or to quote the famous playwright Samuel Beckett: 'When I fall, I'll cry with happiness.' VAL is a musical ode to falling, in which we look our fear straight in the eye.

Schweigman& is an Utrecht-based theatre company under the artistic direction of Boukje Schweigman. For sixteen years, the company has been making wordless visual and musical theatre that puts the sense on edge. Again and again they play with audience expectations and the codes of the theatre. Boukje Schweigman teaches us to look again and to marvel at everyday things that we often don't notice anymore. Because the spectators are challenged to open themselves up physically and with their sense, Schweigman is able to touch a universal, human note with her work, both in on-site and theatrical performances.

With VAL, the company brings its poetic form of theatre to a larger space, in collaboration with reed quintet Calefax and composer Yannis Kyriakides. This is the first time that Schweigman& has performed at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam.

direction Boukje Schweigman
composition Yannis Kyriakides
dancers Hidde Aans-Verkade, Erwin Dörr, Koen van der Heijden, Francesca Lazzeri, Goda Zukauskaite
set and lighting design Theun Mosk
costume design Esmee Thomassen
sound design Dennis Slot
music Calefax: Jelte Althuis, Ivar Berix, Oliver Boekhoorn, Raaf Hekkema, Alban Wesly