Art Happens

World premiere
13 & 14 November 2025
DE SINGEL Antwerp

Chapters of Celebration is a full-evening dance marathon, in which a party museum is collectively constructed. The musical common thread is La Folia (‘craziness’) or Folies d’Espagne, a 15th-century musical theme from Iberia that hammers like a heartbeat through classical musical history, thanks to adaptations by composers such as Bach, Vivaldi, and Rachmaninov. Composer and pianist Wouter Deltour transforms the various compositions into a dazzling, contemporary whole. Director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe asks seven renowned choreographers (including Michele Rizzo, Cherish Menzo, Lasseindra Ninja, Iker Karrera, Jeremy Nedd, Toni Jodar) to liberate the revelling body, in chapters that cross baroque dance with ballroom, jazz and rave. As archaeologists of celebration, along with seven singing dancers they seek out the original freedom and craziness of human communities. Thus in Chapters of Celebration we hear the political, ritual echoes of exuberance that humanity seems to have lost along the way.