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Foto Lonneke van der Palen
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Foto Astrid & Roel
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Foto Thomas Dhanens

Festival Cement

Every year, Festival Cement treats you to a nine-day festival full of exciting performances. About 20 young makers from the Netherlands and Flanders show their work to a curious audience. Spread over 9 days, an average of 100 performances can be seen. In various places in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the public and professionals are looking at a new generation of performing artists. You can discover young makers and their themes, new forms and alternative proposals for the future.

In addition to a program full of performances, there is plenty of room for the public, makers and professionals to meet and enter into dialogue and to delve into the extensive context program.

festival cement 2024 takes place from 15 - 23 march

Please find Cements Language no Problem or English Spoken programm below. If you have any questions or you want to visit the festival by group, please email us at info@festivalcement.nl

Good to know

Good to know

Festival Info

All you need to know before visiting Festival Cement
Good to know

15, 16, 17 March: Pay What You Want

From Friday the 15th to Sunday the 17th of March, you decide how much you spend on tickets. Just order a €0 ticket on our website and pay an amount you feel comfortable with after the performance.
Datum
Circumstances
Foto Jona Harnischmacher
Circus / Language no Problem
21-03

Circumstances

GLORIOUS BODIES

Six elderly circus performers aged between 56 and 68 will show you what the human body is capable of, and that there is no age on that. Choreographer Piet Van Dycke explores where the power of the ageing body lies.

Successful ageing often seems to equate to being young and independent for as long as possible. But the dependence that many fear, that is precisely what these acrobats are trained to do. Indeed, you cannot float on your own without falling. GLORIOUS BODIES poignantly yet humorously breaks clichés around old age and shows the importance of (being able to) build on each other. 
Fariborz Karimi
Foto Thomas Lenden
Theatre / Première / English Spoken / Niet rolstoeltoegankelijk / Strobe used / Openingsprogramma
15-03 t/m 16-03

Fariborz Karimi

Oh, Wild Gazelle, Where are you?

Live from Iran, a choreographer directs a collective dream as a gesture of resistance. Because even though it might not persist in reality, there’s freedom in a dream. This performance implicitly makes different forms of censorship tangible.

Driven by personal experiences with censorship and the palpable expectations from the West, Fariborz Karimi uses theater as a collective means of resistance and reflection. He creates overlapping realities between Tehran and Amsterdam, private and public, and dream and reality to embody how censorship and surveillance unfold in our lives.
Gerben Vaillant
Foto Lonneke van der Palen
Performance / Language no Problem
22-03 t/m 23-03

Gerben Vaillant

on almost every page

A performance, both sexy and lonely, in which the endless interchangeability of people and things becomes palpable and the performers simultaneously have everything and nothing to lose.  

In this physical performance, Gerben Vaillant brings together several images: the lonely paintings of empty rooms by artist Ben Willekens, a broken relationship, the beauty of pantomime and the endless parade of people walking out the door after a bad one-night stand. 
 
Heintz & Kop
Foto Astrid & Roel
Beeldend theater / Première / Language no Problem
21-03

Heintz & Kop

Pascalerf 48

You can hear silence, but perhaps you can also see silence in Pascalerf 48. A nearly two-metre-high maquette of the makers' apartment sets the stage for a play of light and dark.

A combination between light art, movement and visual theatre invites you to a moment of slowing down and stillness. The shadows and reflections of light are endlessly transformed by the passing of time. From the rising sun filling the room with sunbeams to surreal images of an infinite space and a setting sun in the bedroom. This choreography of light, sound and material makes you forget time for a moment.
Ika Schwander
Beeld Fran Hayes
Performance / English Spoken / Openingsprogramma
15-03 t/m 16-03

Ika Schwander

of all your words and soft strange ways

How does the (sick) body relate to a world in ruin? In this performance, Ika Schwander explores voluntary and involuntary transformation, stasis, pain and illness. 

The inspiration for this performance by Ika is Julia Butterfly Hill: the climate activist who lived for 738 days in a century-old sequoia tree as a protest against deforestation. Prior to her successful protest, she had to recover from a car accident at a young age. In this performance, Ika collaborates with Brazilian choreographer and performer Marcelo Evelin.
Ira Brand
Foto Bete photography
Theatre / Cement Coproductie / English Spoken
22-03 t/m 23-03

Ira Brand

Commitment Phobe

In a society that values certainty, Ira Brand gives us an ode to doubt. When you constantly have to pick a side and be sure, how much room is there still for ambivalence? How can we view doubt as a strength instead of something powerless? In a live experiment including a chain reaction machine Ira and performer Tiana Hemlock-Yensen explore what it means to not know, to not choose and to keep moving. Commitment Phobe is an exploration of the space between yes and no.
 
King Sisters
Foto Lonneke van der Palen
Musictheatre / Première / Cement Production / Language no Problem
16-03 t/m 19-03

King Sisters

Close to Harmony

As closely linked as the lives of these three sisters are, they make their voices sound in harmony. But if you listen carefully, you will hear that one voice sounds just a little false.

The closer they get, the harder they have to fight for their consonance. How close is too close? Where does it start to fray? And isn't it precisely this abrasion that makes the relationship quirky? In this physical, acapella performance, the threesome gets close to - and maybe even ín - each other's skin. Influenced by Meredith Monk, ritualistic part-song and close-harmony music, they lay bare their desires for and fears of intimacy.
Kinga Jaczewska
Beeld Olesia Bachynska
Dance / Avant première / Language no Problem
18-03 t/m 19-03

Kinga Jaczewska

BRUT

Once the wall fell, the capitalist Western world immediately labeled Central and Eastern Europe as inferior. Its colorless brutalist architecture became a benchmark to reflect and measure the advantage of the West.

But Kinga Jaczewska shows us that gray is also colorful, that concrete is also tender and soft and that a gesture is just as valuable when it's given silently. In her dance, she brings focus to what is often overlooked and allows the ordinary to take a center stage. By doing this, Jaczewska aims to question her own understanding of the spectacular. 
Lotte Boonstra
Beeld Lotte Boonstra
Beeldend theater / Language no Problem
15-03 t/m 23-03

Lotte Boonstra

777.600

For nine days, a glass container full of textiles stands in downtown Den Bosch. In the same nine days, 777,600 of these containers of clothing are dumped or burnt worldwide.

In the container in Den Bosch, creator Lotte Boonstra and textile weaver Lamine Diouf unravel the gigantic textile mountain, from which they weave new fabrics and structures. The process of deconstruction and construction makes visible the usually hidden repetitive physical labour. The project is the starting point of an investigation into the size and scale of human mass. The final weaving forms our collectively worn shell and will later be used in Lotte's performance Human People.
Mateusz Staniak & Arne Luiting
Beeld Axel Dangoxhe
Theatre / Dutch premiere / English Spoken / high volume / Strobe used / Openingsprogramma
15-03 t/m 16-03

Mateusz Staniak & Arne Luiting

Future Gore


Self-obsession, radical digitalisation and constant surveillance: these are the ingredients for the new Frankenstein. A posthuman wandering through the debris of human civilisation. Future Gore is a satirical look at our narcissistic culture.


In this intangible world, simulated realities seem more real than reality, and authenticity and uniqueness have become the currency of empty exchanges. Here, we as humans are reduced to images and data, and the endless supply of algorithms increasingly controls our lives. Will AI help us save or destroy the world?
 
Plankton
Foto Lonneke van der Palen
Beeldend theater / Première / Cement Coproductie / Language no Problem / Openingsprogramma
15-03 t/m 17-03

Plankton

Er rent een berg voorbij

Plankton adapts Earth's 4.54-billion-year history into a brand new language-free opera for all ages. 

This is the monumental story of how our earth is constantly changing, told through a huge backdrop of cardboard rivers, clouds and trees. In Er rent een berg voorbij, forests crawl across the stage, mountains crumble into beaches and the moon dances a waltz with the sea, while a four-voice choir makes the sound of creaking rocks and chirping birds. 
Simon Bus
Foto Nas Hosen
Dance / Language no Problem
22-03 t/m 23-03

Simon Bus

Three Studies (for a self-portrait)

Maker and breakdancer Simon Bus brings you his fascination with the self-portrait in three interwoven solos. Sharp, brutal and humorous, the art of the self-portrait approached from dance. 

Simon has documented his life as a breakdancer in video portraits since his early years, and in 2019 he made the solo Self portrait, man on orange floor. Now he brings the sequel with a full-length dance performance. Simon turns dance forms inside out and upside down, taking as his starting point the discomfort of everyday existence.
 
Sunni Lamin Barrow
Foto Annelies Verhelst
Spoken word / English Spoken
20-03 t/m 21-03

Sunni Lamin Barrow

A Fist of Tongues

Spoken word artist Sunni Lamin Barrow uncovers different stages of a journey he made himself: his escape from Gambia to the Netherlands due to his sexual orientation.

Sunni poetically reveals how he used different personas to protect himself from the punishments of being queer. Through a blend of storytelling, dance, visual elements and sound design, Sunni portrays how these personas were influenced by fear, but especially by his parents.
Tibau Beirnaert & Laurens Aneca
Foto Thomas Dhanens
Performance / Dutch premiere / English Spoken
18-03 t/m 20-03

Tibau Beirnaert & Laurens Aneca

F A G G O T S

Tibau Beirnaert takes you to another planet. A planet where not men, but queers are in charge. What does that world look like? The answer is a strange quest for less masculinity and more sensuality and softness.

"I learned that I don't have to try to be one of the men if I don't want to // I never wanted to // So I stayed by myself and played in fantasy." The safe space in F A G G O T S offers comfort, freedom, healing and community, but at the same time it lurks a confrontation with its limits. Here, pain and humour go hand in hand.
Timo Tembuyser
foto Leo Maki
Musictheatre / Première / English Spoken
22-03 t/m 23-03

Timo Tembuyser

MISSA MAMA NOVA

MISSA MAMA NOVA changes the tradition of the Holy Mass with discriminating norms from within. A choral concert on femininity with chants and sermons, broken down with dance and movement. A Mass for healing and celebration.

A dancer wriggles in and out of the norm of woman as mother while a choir of six sons roams around her. In the absence of the Father, they break free from patriarchal Christian traditions and search for their own adult voices. A flutist breathes and directs the multi-voiced body of performers. MISSA MAMA NOVA is a reworking for theatre of Timo's earlier work MISSA MATER SOLA with new material and new cast.
WOLF WOLF
Foto Rafael Bracke
Theatre / English surtitles
19-03

WOLF WOLF

Voorjaarsontwaken

In the twilight zone between child and adult, a group of young people discover the world, each other and themselves. Within the walls of a school stage, fiction and reality ignite each other and rehearse for life.

Their bodies overrun them and grow faster than their heads can keep up. Boundaries are drawn as quickly as they are made unclear. What hurts some, anoints others. Especially when choices about your own body are determined by others. Especially when far from everything is negotiable. Especially when you are not good at feeling better. Especially when everything can still change. And especially when it's all just theatre.
Dag Dramaturgie
Contextprogramma / English Spoken
20-03

Dag Dramaturgie

Our annual meeting programme for dramaturgists and student dramaturgists that focuses on the renewal of dramaturgical practice: Day of Dramaturgy. On 20 March, this day responds to the need to talk through with colleagues about current questions, methodologies, proposals and themes that concern dramaturgists.