SoAP

Nick Steur (1982) has a specific and highly personal signature: poetic, earthy, visual and intuitive. He uncovers timeless worlds through raw matter and extreme concentration, dictated by natural laws. A way of looking and doing that is at odds with our highly complex and technological world, if not almost forgotten.

Although his work is at the intersection of art and theatre, the performative component is essential: As a performer, Steur’s interaction with the view is intrinsic to his practice, shaping an experience that can only happen here, and only once.

Lately, Nick has been working on TREK, a collaboration with Peergroup. Nick: “I am fascinated by the story and journey of these boulders. After all, there are no soil-borne stones at this site. They were left behind after the penultimate Ice Age, when they came down here from Scandinavia. Actually, they still roam today; the boulders move slowly but in many ways and often by human hands. The project focuses on the boulder and man and stone travel together through the Drenthe landscape they share.”

Together with Dirk Bruinsma, artistic director of Peergroup, he explored the landscape from Peergroup’s base of operations in Donderen and developed the silence walk TREK.

TREK is a completely independent walk. You get a personal code when you book this short pilgrimage for two. With that, you can enter the TREK container during the day, get an audio introduction and leave behind as much baggage as you dare to let go. Then you choose a cord and attach yourself to the stone of your choice (your new weight). Together you follow the plotted route at your own pace, in silence. The whole day is yours.

TAAT is a collective that works on the boundary of theatre, architecture, visual arts and performance. In 2012, Gert-Jan Stam (1972) and Breg Horemans (1985) worked together on the KHOR I project at the Floriade in Venlo (NL). Looking back, this turned out to be the starting point for a long-term collaboration under the name TAAT, Theatre as Architecture, Architecture as Theatre.

On the same day, the HALL33 project saw the light of day. HALL33 is a key project within TAAT’s young body of work, as it questions essential themes at the intersection of theater and architecture. In addition to building a Live Archive in which it aims to house all projects from 2011 to the present, TAAT is collaborating with SoAP and the River Meuse on Maas Lab. Maas Lab was born out of our shared curiosity about how an actual partnership with the Maas – a more-than-human entity – can change our human way of looking at entities and organizations in general.

Anneke’s role – in and for the sector – is a dynamic one. In the multitude of activities, partners and ideas, she constantly focuses on changing work practices and (perhaps new) ways of producing, and lightweight collaborations with new practitioners. She has worked with Edit Kaldor (2011 – 2013), Lotte van den Berg (2013 – 2016) and theatercollectief Schwalbe (2015 – present).

In recent years, Tonen has built up a practice in a variety of collaborations, characterized by a continuous questioning attitude. This increasingly led to new forms of partnerships, different perspectives on ways of organizing, flexibility in thinking within projects and processes and an investigation in the ever-changing relationship between art and society.

Anneke Tonen studied Theatre Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and did a master’s degree in Comparative Cultural Analysis, where she graduated with a thesis on the overvaluation of knowledge in society.

She is managing director of SoAP Maastricht.

Benjamin Vandewalle (1983) attended the Royal Ballet School Antwerp and graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in 2006. After operating primarily ‘in the black box’ for nine years, Vandewalle felt the need to break out of the theatre’s comfort zone. He sought refuge in a research project on urban choreography.

In 2019, Vandewalle toured Europe with, Studio Cité, his ‘artistic fair’: a playground for the human gaze in the form of installations, performances and interventions. Installing Studio Cité on a city square, Vandewalle created a space to host social meetings, discussions and exchange of ideas.

From 2017 to 2021, Vandewalle is artist-in-residence at the Kaaitheater in Brussels.