Art Happens

World premiere
13 & 14 November 2025
DE SINGEL Antwerp

Chapters of Celebration is an energetic performance with music and dance that pays tribute to the celebrating body over time. It is a full-evening dance marathon in which a ‘museum of party’ is constructed. The musical common thread is La Folia (‘folly’) or Folies d’Espagne, a fifteenth-century musical theme from Iberia that pulses through classical musical history like a heartbeat, thanks to adaptations by composers such as Bach, Vivaldi and Rachmaninov. Composer and pianist Wouter Deltour crafts the various compositions into a dazzling, contemporary whole.

Director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe invites six renowned choreographers (Michele Rizzo, Cherish Menzo, Lasseindra Ninja, Iker Karrera, Jeremy Nedd and Toni Jodar) to liberate the celebrating body, in ‘chapters’ that cross baroque dance with ballroom, jazz and rave. Like archaeologists of festivities, they join six singing dancers in search of the original freedom and folly of human communities. Thus, ringing out in Chapters of Celebration are the political and ritual echoes of exuberance that humanity seems to have lost along the way. Following the critically acclaimed Madrigals, director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe and composer Wouter Deltour reunite in their shared passion for classical music and ritual.