ASTRID BOONS

Choreography: Astrid Boons

Performers:  Marc Galvez, Joan Ferré Gómez, Yi-Wei-Lo, Lucía Nieto Vera, Amy Josh, Rose Brouwer 

Music: Miguelangel Clerc Parada

Light design: Astrid Boons and Jonah Fellhauer

Costume design: Bregje van Balen

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How does the future, evolved human move? Will our necks still be directed anywhere other than downwards, toward screens? How will we use our fingers—will we even write with them anymore?

These questions preoccupy Belgian choreographer Astrid Boons, particularly how humans of tomorrow will change in response to technological overstimulation and the increasing pace of life. Together with Dance Theatre Heidelberg, she explored how this so-called evolved human moves and, above all, creates community. At the heart of this search lies the question of ritual: How do these beings come into contact? Do they still reach out their hands? What ceremonies do they invent to hold onto one another?

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Starting from the idea that memories of human behaviour are inscribed in the body, Boons worked with the dancers in intense sessions to uncover ancient, almost forgotten gestures and to transform them into new, future-facing forms of ritual. Verbal impulses ranging from biotechnology to botany to speculative, futuristic imagination layered the process, gradually shaping a rich choreographic structure.

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Underpinned and driven by a new composition by Miguelángel Clerc Parada, a finely detailed parallel world unfolds on stage, into which the audience can briefly immerse themselves. The beings are recognizable as human, their bodies clearly visible, yet costume designer Bregje van Balen has altered them with masks—distancing them from one another and even from themselves. The result is an intense, poetic vision of a future in which ritual is rediscovered as a way of reimagining humanity, connection, and community.

 

Crash: Reassembled is produced by Dance Theater Heidelberg

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