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Klei

Outdoors stands a large, wondrous sphere. Inside it: ten tons of clay and five hundred liters of water. Welcome to Klei, the new performance by Schweigman& in collaboration with visual artist Zoro Feigl and HIIIT.

Body, landscape and live music
For Klei, Zoro Feigl created an earthy and unpredictable clay landscape. Within it, the performers of Schweigman& surrender to the rhythm, the vibration, the weight, and the transience of the clay. At times, clay and body merge, and the clay feels safe and familiar. At other moments, it becomes a struggle. Greater forces within the landscape seem to take over. Percussionists from HIIIT play the ceramic instruments of Gemma Luz Bosch, creating a sound world of clay and water.

Klei is a search for the ancient connection between humans and clay, in all its beauty, struggle, and wonder. The performance is an invitation to return to the essence. How do we relate to our bodies? And to the land we live on? Let yourself be immersed in this musical and sensory world of clay.

Bad Nature

Islands of Empathy

An intercultural exploration of empathy, in collaboration with Club Guy & Roni and Senegalese musician Pape Seck.

Islands of Empathy (in a sea of chaos)
In ISLANDS of EMPATHY, we place the concept of empathy at the heart of the performance and explore how it can be a driving force in the way we live together.

Dutch culture continuously teaches us to be the best version of ourselves—individual and independent. In contrast, many other cultures emphasize the collective and focus far less on personal development. But what happens when a group becomes so close-knit that the gap with those outside it only grows wider?

Sunrise for the Sleepers

Have you ever stopped to think about what the sun sounds like?
The sun vibrates in a complex pattern of sound waves, and recordings of these vibrations remarkably resemble the resonant sound of a tamtam (a special type of gong). This intriguing concept inspired visual artist Boris Acket and HIIIT to create a spectacular fusion of image, sound, and light, in which an artificial sun slowly orbits the Earth, following the sound and body of a tamtam—originating from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie series.

Two celestial bodies representing the sun are accompanied by four automated tamtams and gongs. The metallic surfaces create a soundscape that changes depending on where you stand: by moving through the space, you encounter different frequencies. The two celestial bodies, installed at opposite ends of the space, form a beautiful interplay with the acoustics of the grand Herrenhausen Gallery. A fascinating duet of light, sound, space, and shadow.

Battles & Silences

During the First and Second World Wars, church bells were widely melted down into deadly weapons. Now that Europe is gradually being drawn into a new war on its own soil, HIIIT is reversing this process with Battles & Silences. In this project, battlefield weapon waste will serve as the foundation for a new series of instruments and compositions in the coming years.

In the spring of 2024, eight kilograms of Ukrainian bullet casings were melted down into bars in Kyiv, shipped, and then reforged in the Netherlands into a new resonant bell—marking the beginning of this reversal: turning destruction back into beauty. With Battles & Silences, HIIIT creates an alternative, immersive, and imaginary landscape that allows space to listen to this transformation and reflect on our urgent longing for peace.

Composer duo Poulson Sq. (Anthony Fiumara & Mathijs Leeuwis) confront the audience—together with two performers from HIIIT—with the pressing and ever-relevant reminder that peace is never a given. Through analog tape echoes and percussive interventions, the sounds of the 45-kilogram bell will compose a landscape of battles and silences.

Nachtwacht

Night Watch is a pitch black, primal and deeply sad play that deals with themes of family, emancipation and authority through old age and death. A family drama in which everyone tries to break free from the role assigned to them so that they can decide for themselves what they really believe in. A dark and meditative performance. Oppressive but ultimately liberating. In which a weakening heartbeat slowly turns into an uptempo beat. A ritual journey to the end of the night, towards the first light of the new day.

Together with Asko|Schönberg, Nederlands Kamerkoor and NKK NXT, HIIIT provides the music – which is written by David Dramm and Luke Deane. Percussionist Niels Meliefste developed a characteristic Old Dutch instrumentation especially for Night Watch.

Faith

FAITH makes you feel that belief is more than just a personal conviction. It is a source of trust, inspiration, and connection.

FAITH is the latest performance in The Human Odyssey series, following Fortune and Islands of Empathy. In this series, Club Guy & Roni brings together different cultures and worldviews, lets them clash, and reveals deep human connection through an explosion of live music and spectacular choreography.

Gnawa music, often associated with trance and lila rituals, guides the performers through a sensitive exploration of faith—towards a spiritual world we in the West may have drifted away from. What is still around us that we cannot see, but only feel?

The gathering of nine dancers and five musicians from the Netherlands and Morocco makes FAITH a powerful intercultural performance, in which a shared foundation is sought—one that is essential for a collective belief in the future.

One of the sources of inspiration for FAITH is the Moroccan heritage of Guy Weizman’s family, rooted in Casablanca, in the same neighborhood where Khalid Benghrib grew up. As contemporaries, they might have met, but life took a different course. Now they come together in FAITH.