Artist Commissions – IF I CAN’T DANCE

Education is a key site through which If I Can’t Dance shares in and contributes to the field of performance. We teach yearly courses at the Dutch Art Institute (ArtEZ), the School of New Dance Development (Academy of Theatre and Dance), and are setting up the two-year temporary Masters in Performance entitled Phantom Scores at the Sandberg Institute (to begin September 2026). We are also advisors at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten.

Centring long-term collaboration, If I Can’t Dance works with artists, researchers, and other practitioners through multi-year thematic cycles called Editions. From Edition I to Edition IX, these primarily consisted of Artist and Research Commissions presented within an evolving network of partners and venues. Edition X (2024–28) marks a significant transition in our way of working and programming—a shift driven by our new home: the Collegezaal at the WG-terrein in Amsterdam Oud-West. Moving away from an itinerant production model, we have become a more site-responsive and community-embedded institution. Alongside our Commissions, we now host Ongoing Collaborations supporting practice-based research through workshops, reading groups, gatherings, and other durational practices. The Collegezaal also offers the flexibility to feature one-off events and presentations that resonate with our thematic inquiries. Across all these forms of production and collaboration, If I Can’t Dance remains committed to engaging with our immediate historical, material, and political context through experimentation with pedagogy, embodied knowledge, and performative methodologies.

(archived 2006-2024)

From Edition I – Edition IX, every two-year cycle coalesced around a field of inquiry that allowed to re-approach the field of performance and performativity from a new perspective. Fellows guided closed Reading Groups, organized Open Reading Groups with invited guests, hosted conversations with local practitioners on Radio Emma, and presented film programmes and exhibitions in our library. A series of Readers document these years of collaborative research. With Edition X (2024-28), the field of inquiry merges with all facets of our programming: the Commissions, the Ongoing Collaborations, and our Education work with the Dutch Art Institute, the Sandberg Institute, and the School of New Dance development. Through these various channels, artists, researchers, scholars, local community members and students all become co-researchers and contribute to the collective exploration of our field of inquiry.

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2024-28

Commissions

Anchan/Anna Daučíková, Christina Della Giustina

Anchan/Anna Daučíková (b. 1950, Bratislava. Lives and works in Prague) is an artist working with photography, video, and performance. Alongside their artistic work, they are a co-founder and activist in several women’s NGOs, most notably the Slovak feminist organization and journal Aspekt, and in the 1990s they have been a spokesperson for LGBT rights in Slovakia. Their academic career includes teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Christina Della Giustina (b. 1965, Switzerland. Lives and works in Amsterdam) is an artist and pedagogue. She completed her doctoral studies at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and is lecturer and course leader of the Master of Fine Art at HKU, Utrecht. Her artistic research practice deals with relationships and generates trans-disciplinary collaborations across scientific, spiritual, and sound-based modes of working.

You Are Variations

Exhibition

Two people sitting on a bench. They are seen from the back and are facing a large screen on which a close-up of moist lips pressed up against a glass surface dwarfs their bodies.

A person wearing a dark blue winter coat is sitting facing a TV set in a large black incasing on the floor. On the screen is an image of two arms, visibly belonging to two different bodies, whose hands reach out toward each other in a body of light blue water.

Artists Christina Della Giustina and Anchan/Anna Daučíková are seen in a close-up. Anchan/Anna Daučíková has her arms raised and is speaking into a mic, while Christina Della Giustina, stands slightly behind looking into the distance.

A crowd of people engaged in conversations throughout the hall of the cavernous Gothic architecture of the Vleeshal in Middelburg. Above their heads towers the projected image a close-up of a pair of lips.

Curators Sara Giannini and Martha Jager are seen close-up. Sara is looking downward at sheets of white paper she holds in her right hand while speaking in a mic, while Martha stands to her right, with an inclined head, listening, while also holding sheets of white paper.

Two bodies are crouched around a small sculpture, their hands pointing to a small sculpture made of concrete blocks and shards of glass on the floor.

Silhouettes of a few scattered people in the darkness of the cavernous Gothic architecture of the Vleeshal in Middelburg. They are back-lit by the projection of a close-up of huge, plump red lips.

1/7

The exhibition presents for the first time in the Netherlands, the artistic collaboration between Anchan/Anna Daucíková and Christina Della Giustina — a dialogue that began with an ‘electric handshake’ in the mid-1990s and continues to this day. Unfolding across three variations, the exhibition looks back at the 1990s, emphasizing how the artists’ engagement with feminist, queer, and ecological urgencies resonate powerfully today. Hands and mouths, words and water, chains, glass, and stones become characters that speak through the space of Vleeshal, forming a living body-language.

Image description

The artist Anchan/Anna Daucíková is observing the installation Acquabelle II. They wear a brown long-sleeve top and loose beige pants. With one hand leaning against a white wall and the other hand in their pocket, their posture appears slightly hunched, and their face is not visible. Along the dark floor, several A4 sheets of paper are arranged in a row against the wall, each held in place by two industrial bricks positioned on the edges of the paper. The overall atmosphere is quiet and contemplative.

Accessibility information

– Vleeshal is on the ground floor and access to the exhibition is step free

– Bathrooms are not wheelchair accessible and don’t include a baby changing table. Both are available at Café Restaurant MarktCafé (80m from Vleeshal).

– Carers, supervisors and attendants enjoy free entry. Assistance dogs are allowed.

– The exhibition features video, photography, drawing, text, and installation. Sexual imagery and references are present throughout.

– Videos do not contain spoken language

– An audio-version of the exhibition text and of the work descriptions in Dutch and English is available at the entrance desk as well as a large-font wall text.

Acknowledgements

The exhibition is part of a wider collaboration between Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art and If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and will be followed by a performance-based presentation at If I Can’t Dance and PuntWG (October 2026).

Sunday 18 January – Sunday 22 March 2026

Wed–Fri: 13–17hr

Sat–Sun: 11–17hr

Opening Saturday 17 January

15-17hr

Variation I 18.1–8.2.2026

Variation II 9.2–1.3.2026

Variation III 2.3–22.3.2026

Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art

Markt 1
4331 LJ Middelburg
The Netherlands

General admission: €7,50
Students/children under 18: Free entrance
Museumkaart/ICOM: Free entrance
First Sunday of the month: Free entrance

Free guided tour every first Sunday of the month at 12pm

yasmine eid-sabbagh

In her practice yasmine eid-sabbagh explores potentials of human agency by engaging in experimental, collective work processes. These include (counter-)archiving practices such as the negotiation around a digital repository (re)assembled in collaboration with inhabitants of Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tyr, Lebanon, and radical pedagogical projects such as Ses Milanes-créixer a la natura, a self-organized educational project in the forest in Bunyola, Spain, using nature as its main infrastructure. Photography often acts as a medium for her to communally investigate notions of collectivity, power, and endurance; for example, in her engagement as a member of the Arab Image Foundation, a practitioner-led archival institution, and as a focus in her PhD in Art Theory and Cultural Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (2018).

Frictional Conversations – The Script

Performances

Using the script of an experimental radio broadcast as a starting point, the project continues a twenty five year process of (counter)archiving and engaging with a repository of photographs from Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp in the South of Lebanon. Blurring past, present, and future, the radio broadcast weaves together field recordings, archival fragments, and conversations from Burj al-Shamali, along with an electronic music score created by musician and composer Sary Moussa. The broadcast is realized live at If I Can’t Dance in the form of an expanded collective reading** across four consecutive Saturdays, followed by after-talks with yasmine eid-sabbagh, DJ Lynnée Denise, Francisca Khamis Giacoman, and Ola Hassanian.

**In another political reality—one without the ongoing genocide in Palestine and Lebanon, and without Europe’s racialized border regime—the radio show would have been recorded in Burj al-Shamali and transmitted at If I Can’t Dance. Under the present conditions, however, such forms of gathering, travel, and cultural production remain impossible. The broadcast is realised live through the collective efforts of those gathered in Amsterdam. Each Saturday, the script is activated anew as a polyphonic and ephemeral tapestry of voices, sound recordings, and archival fragments.

Accessibility information

-If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately, without elevator access. There is also a narrow staircase inside the space.

-Two gender neutral WC are located on the first floor

-There will be a variety of seating options in the space (carpets, cushions and chairs)

-The reading is multi-lingual (Dutch, English and Arabic)

For any other access question regarding your visit, feel free to contact ssg@ificantdance.org

Acknowledgements

20, 27 June & 4, 11 July 2026, 20:30–22:30hr

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Ticketed events, sliding scale, 5€, 8€, 12€

Full programme in the project’s handout here

Tickets 20 June (opening event with yasmine eid-sabbagh)

Tickets 27 June (after-talk with DJ Lynnée Denise)

Tickets 4 July (after-talk with Francisca Khamis Giacoman)

Tickets 11 July (after-talk with Ola Hassanian)

Rhythms of Anti-colonial Struggles: Radio Archives and the Transmission of Solidarities

Symposium

Held in conjunction with the opening of Frictional Conversations – The Script, the symposium is co-organized with de Appel and convened by eid-sabbagh in dialogue with scholar Layal Ftouni. Divided in two parts, the day-long gathering further explores the questions raised by the project, bringing together guests whose practices engage with sound, radio, piracy, anti-colonial solidarity, archiving, and critical fabulation.

Morning

11:00-13:00

Study session with Rayya Badran and Alia Mossallam

13:00-14:30

Lunch

Afternoon

14:30-18:00

Conversation part I: yasmine eid-sabbagh and Layal Ftouni

Conversation part II: Rayya Badran, DJ Lynnée Denise, and Alia Mossallam. Facilitated by yasmine eid-sabbagh and Layal Ftouni

Accessibility information

– Grond is located on the ground floor and has two barrier-free entrances.

– It has gender neutral, and wheel-chair accessible toilets.

– Seated events.

– Language: English with live captioning (speech-to-text interpretation).

Acknowledgements

Commissioned as part of the Consortium Commissions—a project initiated by Mophradat. The presentation is further supported by the Mondriaan Fund, AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), het Cultuurfonds, and the DOEN Foundation. The symposium is co-organized with, and supported by de Appel and, partially, by the Dutch Research Council through Layal Ftouni’s VENI grant Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival.

Sunday 21 June, 11–18hr

Grond (Bajesdorp)

Bijdorpstraat 1, 1096AP, Amsterdam

Tickets morning session: 4€

(includes lunch)

Tickets afternoon session: 4€

Full programme in the project’s handout

here

Frictional Conversations – The Script

Public Programme

A shot looking upward at a person wearing a fuzzy brown fleece, holding a blue book open so that we cannot see their face. The words Minor Detail by Adania Shibli are written in white on its cover. To the right of the person is a Palestinian flag blowing in the wind and behind one can see the tower of the palace on the Dam Square of Amsterdam. Above is a bright blue sky.

Inspired by the conversational and collective spirit of Frictional Conversations, the public programme unfolds through workshops, reading groups, games, and discussions that aim to bring people together to share, discuss, meet, think, and play. Solidarity with Palestine forms the main thread weaving together this constellation of activities. The programme brings together groups that have been meeting through If I Can’t Dance, alongside other local initiatives from our wider ecosystem that have emerged around solidarity with Palestine since October 2023. The activities invite people of different ages, cultural backgrounds, and walks of life. With the exception of the BeSaraha Card Game Night, all other gatherings take place at If I Can’t Dance, within the carpeted space created for the project.

Participating initiatives:

Tidal Studies, Book Bloc Brigade, Reading Vigil for Free Palestine, Learning Palestine, Sobhi Khatib/BeSaraha, shy*play, Oo(y)ster Mums.

Accessibility information

-If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately, without elevator access. There is also a narrow staircase inside the space.

-Two gender neutral WC are located on the first floor

-There will be a variety of seating options in the space (carpets, cushions and chairs)

noon

-noon coffee & culture is located on the ground floor and has one barrier-free entrance.

-It has a gender neutral and wheel-chair accessible toilet.

-Language: Arabic.

For any other access question regarding your visit, feel free to contact ssg@ificantdance.org

Acknowledgements

26 June – 11 July, various dates

Full programme in the project’s handout here

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

RSVP, free

Tidal Studies Reading Group ~ Session 3

Friday 26 June, 15:00–17:00

RSVP

Reading session with Book Bloc Brigade

Tuesday 30 June, 17:00–19:00

RSVP

Reading session with Reading Vigil for Free Palestine

Thursday 2 July, 17:00–19:00

RSVP

Translation session with Learning Palestine (English to Dutch)

Wednesday 8 July, 18:00–21:00

RSVP

Card game night with Sobhi Khatib/BeSaraha

Friday 3 July, 19:30-21:30hr

*For Arabic speakers only!

Venue: noon coffee & culture

Kruislaan 259A, Amsterdam

RSVP

Workshop with shy*play

‘for the listen to live here’: dis/orienting the archive

Friday 10 July, 16:00–19:00hr

RSVP

Intergenerational workshop with Oo(y)ster Mums

Saturday 11 July, 14:00-17:00

RSVP

Frictional Conversations – The Script

Open Call

For a new iteration of her ongoing project Frictional Conversations, yasmine eid-sabbagh is looking to borrow carpets. These carpets will become co-hosts of a gathering and listening space which will be active from 20 June to 11 July 2026. During this period the space will host collective listening sessions, reading circles, and conversations engaging the complexity of Palestinian life and memory through the stories of Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp located southeast of Tyre, Lebanon. The carpets will become part of this space of connection, reflection, and resonance, shaping how we gather, sit, listen, and spend time together. All the details in the PDF attached.

Image description

A very large room is filled with a multitude of carpets of different colours and styles. Spread around are also straw cushions and white paper cards. The space has white concrete ceiling with visible beams crossing it. Two arches descend on the ground, gently dividing the room. Two of the four walls are covered with long greyish/purple curtains. In the corner opposite the camera a drum set and a grand piano are visible.

Acknowledgements

Frictional Conversations – The Script, presented within the context of If I Can’t Dance Edition X – Body as Memory, was commissioned as part of the Consortium Commissions—a project initiated by Mophradat. The presentation is further supported by the Mondriaan Fund, AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), het Cultuurfonds, and the DOEN Foundation.

Full open call here

Josephine Sales

Josephine Sales works across sculpture, moving image, and performance. Through sound, light, duration, and preexisting forms and conditions, Sales follows entry, exit, delay, and refusal within systems built to accumulate value through the organization of time––proceeding somewhere between rehearsal and emergency.

PLOT

Film screening

PLOT (2026) is a site-specific video work made with a camera on wheels and produced in relation to the architecture of If I Can’t Dance’s home. Filmed in a single take, the camera moves from exterior to interior to exterior, attempting not to leave the same way it came in. Departure is understood as a condition of entry. Drawing on Amsterdam’s historic rope-and-block mechanisms used to move objects in and out of buildings, the work experiments with cinematic movement through vertical transfer, traversal, and suspension. PLOT is produced in the Women’s Clinic of the former WG Hospital and projected in the chapel of its Pathological Anatomy Lab.

Accessibility information

– The chapel is located on the lower level of LAB111

– A wheelchair accessible entrance is available. Please write to office@ificantdance.org to get the directions to this entrance.

– All-gender bathrooms, including a wheelchair accessible bathroom, are located on the same floor as the chapel.

– For any other access related inquires please write to office@ificantdance.org

Acknowledgements

PLOT is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance as part of access: practices and habits, an artistic research programme in collaboration with Askeaton Contemporary Arts in Limerick and Bulegoa z/b in Bilbao. There’s a Tunnel Under Ballybrit Business Park is commissioned by Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

Access: practices and habits is co-funded by the European Union.Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Creative Europe. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

PLOT is presented on loop over three days at cinema LAB111, in the former chapel of the WG Hospital:

Friday 5 June, 20:00–22:00

Saturday 6 June, 10:00–22:00

Sunday 7 June, 10:00–13:00

Tickets sliding scale: free, €2, €5, €10

RSVP is not required, but is appreciated!

There’s a Tunnel Under Ballybrit Business Park by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais

Book Launch

A pale pink background with bold blue text covering the full image, mentioning the author and the title of the book.

There’s a Tunnel Under Ballybrit Business Park critiques the continuing rise of Ireland as a key location for the global medical technology industry. As multinational corporation revenues soar, state bodies tightly regulate access to publicly-funded healthcare. Ní Fheorais investigates the land-use techniques, landscape aesthetics and architecture of MedTech as an inheritance of the colonial regime of the British Empire and dogma of the Catholic Church that create these conditions. Through her account of the barriers encountered in accessing prosthetic care, it becomes evident that infrastructure plays a crucial role in shaping the politics of healthcare, and how access to medical technologies is managed.

Iarlaith Ní Fheorais will be in conversation with artist Josephine Sales and artist, writer and musician Rouzbeh Shadpey.

Iarlaith Ní Fheorais (b. 1995) is a curator and writer based between Galway and London. As the curator of the 21st edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts she staged exhibitions, public programmes and a publication responding to the legacy of mass psychiatric incarceration in Ireland entitled honey, milk, and salt in a seashell before sunrise. She has an essay on John Broderick’s 1965 novel The Waking of Willie Ryan in the forthcoming Abolish Europe and is currently co-directing the film Going to Ballinasloe with artist Sarah Browne.

Accessibility information

– The conversation will take place in English.

– The chapel is located on the lower level of LAB111

– A wheelchair accessible entrance is available. Please write to office@ificantdance.org to get the directions to this entrance.

– All-gender bathrooms, including a wheelchair accessible bathroom, are located on the same floor as the chapel.

– For any other access related inquires please write to office@ificantdance.org

Acknowledgements

The research and publication There’s a Tunnel Under Ballybrit Business Park is commissioned by Askeaton Contemporary Arts (Limerick) as part of access: practices and habits, an artistic research programme in collaboration with Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao) and If I Can’t Dance.

Sunday 7 June, 13:00–15:00

LAB 111

Arie Biemondstraat 111

1054 PD Amsterdam

Tickets sliding scale: free, €2, €5, €10

Ongoing Collaborations

Chandra Frank

Chandra Frank is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on feminist and queer of colour movement work, possibilities of dissent, and the ways in which race and the environment work as terrains of power. She is completing her first monograph in progress, Tidal Politics: Feminist Queer Diaspora & Refusal in the Netherlands, which charts the creative and strategic interruption of feminist queer movement work in the 1980s alongside the literal and figurative sinking landscape and racial climate of the Netherlands.

Sso-Rha Kang on Tidal Gatherings: Leakage – Passage – Spillage

Visitor report

September 2025

Read the visitor report

At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For Tidal Gatherings: Leakage – Passage – Spillage we invited curator Sso-Rha Kang.

Tidal Gatherings

Symposium

4, 5, 6 October 2024

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A three-day symposium on the intersections between water, ecology, and Dutch colonialism curated by Chandra Frank. Connecting different sites and modes of convening, it includes talks, film screenings, and a study group featuring the work of Paula Albuquerque, Sharelly Emanuelson, Desiree Mwalimu Banks, Toni Giselle Stuart, Lisandro Suriel, and Geo Wyex.

Through these different facets, the programme invites to think with water alongside ideas of belonging, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as artistic production.

Acknowledgements

The project continues If I Can’t Dance multi-year collaboration with CBK Zuidoost and takes place in the framework of Sound System Ecologies: Music and Visual Cultures in the Dutch Kingdom & South Africa, a collaborative project between DJ Lynnée Denise and Chandra Frank funded by the Mondriaan Fund Open Call Slavery Memorial Year Grant (2023–2024). Many thanks to SHEBANG.

If I Can’t Dance & CBK Zuidoost,

location SHEBANG, Amsterdam

Milena Bonilla

Milena Bonilla (b. Bogotá, Colombia; lives and works in Amsterdam) is an artist, researcher, and educator whose practice questions the assumption that language and agency are exclusive to humans, and how this belief underpins capitalist and colonial systems. Her work engages with epistemic diversity, its historical conditioning, and with the idea of art as medicine. Following this trajectory, she is developing a year-long research project of workshops, mappings and other speculations exploring the historical significance of the spontaneous plant life surrounding the If I Can’t Dance building in the WG-terrein—a former medical site with a layered history, from plague house to hospital to artists’ community

Ferals and Ruderals: History Through the Cracks

Workshop 2

Saturday 21 March 2026, 14:30-17:30hr

photograph of a notebook laid on a yellow surface depicting the drawing of a Nettle leaf and its roots coloured in green. The drawing is surrounded by notes in pencil.

Old architectural drawing showing the aerial view of a square building with inner courtyard and four towers on its corners. The building is secluded by a water canal and rows of trees.

1/2

Guided by the sprouts emerging in the area, this session turns to the medical and carceral institutions that have occupied the grounds of the WG Terrein since the 17th century: the Pesthuis (‘Plague House’) and the Buitengasthuis (‘Isolation Hospital’). Along the way, participants reflect on the water borders that have historically been linked to the exclusionary treatment of illness, otherness, and divergence within frameworks of coloniality and modernity. Through the ‘doctrine of signatures’ and other oracular healing practices dismissed by the Dutch healthcare system, the workshop offers tools to read space not only as a document, but as a living agency, a teacher, and a wounded healer.

Image description

First image: photograph of a notebook laid on a yellow surface depicting the drawing of a Nettle leaf and its roots coloured in green. The drawing is surrounded by notes in pencil.

Second image: old architectural drawing showing the aerial view of a square building with inner courtyard and four towers on its corners. The building is secluded by a water canal and rows of trees.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor and unfortunately has no elevator.

– Please dress appropriately, as most of the workshop will take place outdoors.

– Two gender-neutral restroom are available inside If I Can’t Dance

– Language: The workshop will be held in English. Our team also speaks Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and French, and can assist with translations of specific terms during the session.

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited
RSVP [https://if-i-cant-dance.weticket.io/ferals-and-ruderals-2/shop]

Ferals and Ruderals: History through the Cracks

Workshop 1

Saturday 1 November 2025, 14-16hr

Artist Milena Bonilla is standing knee-high in vegetation and is speaking to a small group of gathered people, some of which are leaning on a brick building of the WG-terrein in Amsterdam West.

A small group of people are seen scattered, kneeling and touching the ground which is covered in yellow, brown and green leaves. They are surrounded by the brick buildings and trees of the WG-terrein in Amsterdam West.

A working table on which are scattered drawing materials such as paper, charcoal pencils and clip-boards. Two books are also seen, one with a red cover with the title ‘Inflamed: Deep Medecine and the Anatomy of Injustice’; the other with a white cover with the title ‘Caliban and the Witch: Women the Body and Primitive Accumulation’.

A woman, with a red headscarf in her long straight brown hair, is seen from the back, seated in the wooden tribune of the Collegezaal of the WG-Terrein. She is bent over a clipboard, and is busy working on a charcoal drawing of a flower.

Handwritten notes about the Vrouwenkliniek with a drawing of a hand in the soil and midwifes’ fingers.

1/5

First in a year-long series of workshops exploring the plant life in the WG-terrein, learning from their dual capacities as medicines and poison. This opening session focuses on the former Vrouwenkliniek (Women’s Clinic), a key site for the history of sexual and reproductive health in the Netherlands. Through walking, observing, talking, and drawing, participants engage with the spontaneous plants growing around it, and through them, explore the histories living beneath our feet.

Image description

Handwritten notes about the Vrouwenkliniek with a drawing of a hand in the soil and midwifes’ fingers.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor and unfortunately has no elevator.

– Please dress appropriately, as most of the workshop will take place outdoors.

– Two gender-neutral restroom is available inside If I Can’t Dance, and a wheelchair-accessible toilet is available at the WG-terrein.

– Language: The workshop will be held in English. Our team also speaks Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and French, and can assist with translations of specific terms during the session.

– Regrettably, no live captions and sign language interpretation can be offered this time

Acknowledgements

The project is kindly supported by AFK and Cultuurfonds

Research assistance by Lucila Pacheco Dehne and Toni Steffens

The seeds of this project originate from the workshop Sketches for Gardening: a castle held at the The Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw in 2024 and curated by Marianna Dobkowska.

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited
RSVP

Ferals and Ruderals: History through the Cracks

Screening & Artist Talk

Saturday 1 November 2025, 17-19hr

the projected image of a close-up of a herbarium drawing of a flower on the backdrop of a cluster of bright green plants. Superimposed on the image in white letters is written: ‘Luxembourg renovated her work on the herbarium while in prison. Simultaneously, her reflexions on militarism and its alienating dangers for the working class were fully developed under the pressure of war’.

A few silhouettes of audience members facing the large screen in the darkened Collegezaal of the WG-Terrein. On the screen is the projection of the title of Milena Bonilla’s film, ‘I am Life and Life is Beautiful: a conversation guided by Rosa Luxembourg’s herbarium with herbalist and dancer Shelley Etkin’. To the left of the screen is a small table with two lit candles.

1/3

Following the workshop, the artist will be in conversation with If I Can’t Dance Curator Sara Giannini to introduce her practice of dissident botany and counter-historical research. The talk will also include the screening of videos from the I am Life I am Beautiful trilogy dedicated to Rosa Luxembourg’s herbarium (2020/22) and Below the Sun. A Taxonomy of Light (2023), on Antonin Artaud, the Peyote plant, and the taxonomic fabrication of what is considered ‘real’.

Image description

The words ‘resistance, immune system’ are written in white italics across a close-up of green plant life.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator.
– We’ll have a mix of seating options, including chairs, the original collegezaal tribunes, and newly built tribunes.
– Two gender-neutral restrooms available.
– The event will be in English.

– Regrettably, no live captions and sign language interpretation can be offered this time

Acknowledgements

The project is kindly supported by AFK and Cultuurfonds

Research assistance by Lucila Pacheco Dehne and Toni Steffens

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

€5.50 / 3.50

Tickets

Shy*play

Amsterdam-based collective co-initiated by Aion Arribas and antje nestel, focusing on doing neurodiversity not as a process of explanation, but as a relational practice in difference. They use art-as-process and (un)learning techniques with the aim of creating socialities with their own values, outside the workings of normality and identification.

for the listen to live here: languaging

Shaped by “man of autism” Adam Wolfond’s conception of the embodied concept, languaging is approached as language in movement across the limitations and exclusivity of signification alone. It attends to the many languages that gather around words, into sentencing and beyond, those that move vibrantly between and below words while remaining in relation. The workshop is structured around a text by artists and architects Arakawa and Gins, which will be transformed into a playful score to activat multiple performativies through it, such as rhythm, vocalisation, spacemaking, movement, affect, sense and nonsense in intertwinement.

Image description

Flyer with a white background and brown scribble-like lines in the central area. White text placed in the middle announces: “language in play with shy*play, 23 May.” At the top, bottom, left and right edges of the images the words “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play.”

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access

– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

– Please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend, and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available.

Acknowledgements

Series initiated by shy*play (Aion Arribas and antje nestel) with Rajni Shah, Kai Hazelwood, Raoni/Muzho Saleh, and Angelo Custodio.

The project is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. This session is additionally supported by Pictoright Fonds.

Saturday 23 May 2026, 14-17hr

(doors open at 13.50hr)

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited

RSVP online

for the listen to live here: moaning with/through textile bodies

Flyer with a black background and bronze scribble-like lines in the central area. White text placed in the middle announces: “moaning with/through textile bodies with Raoni/Muzho Saleh, 25 April.” At the top, bottom, left and right edges of the images the words “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play.”

Through his ongoing practice Mourning Sociality, artist and performer Raoni/Muzho Saleh creates ceremonial gatherings where grief is expressed collectively through moaning and listening. In the session, the artist provides a structured container to listen and receive the moan calls of others while enveloped in fabrics. The emphasis lies in playing and play-acting with the experience of grief, and participants are encouraged to take responsibility for what arises for them. Participating in this session requires no prior experience with movement and sound. Sweet snacks and a light dinner offered after the session.

Image description

Flyer with a black background and bronze scribble-like lines in the central area. White text placed in the middle announces: “moaning with/through textile bodies with Raoni/Muzho Saleh, 25 April.” At the top, bottom, left and right edges of the images the words “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play.”

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access

– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

– Please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend, and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available.

Acknowledgements

Series initiated by shy*play (Aion Arribas and antje nestel) with Rajni Shah, Kai Hazelwood, Raoni/Muzho Saleh, and Angelo Custodio.

The project is kindly supported by AFK.

Saturday 25 April 2026, 14-17hr

(doors open at 13.50hr)

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited

RSVP online

for the listen to live here: diverging polyphonies

Saturday 4 April 2026, 14-17hr

A session exploring diffractive practices of polyphony in which composition, through difference and relation, is guided by voice and sound artist, researcher, and performer Angelo Custodio. Each voice carries its own worlds, creating a multivocality that follows no hierarchy and seeks no unity. Through various scores, a range of different possibilities of participation will be prompted, from the use of the voice for humming, murmuring, stuttering, etc., to engaging in spatial movement or stimming practices such as rocking and circling. The space is arranged with hanging fabrics to avoid the need for facial centering and other neurotypical conventions.
Those who feel marginalized or silenced in mainstream spaces are especially warmly invited. Participants require no prior experience. Drinks and snacks will be offered throughout.

Image description

Flyer with a white background and turquoise scribble-like lines in the central area forming waves. Black text placed in the middle announces “diverging polyphonies with Angelo Custodio, 4 April.” At the top, bottom, left and right edges of the images the words “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play.”

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access

– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

– Please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend, and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available.

Acknowledgements

Series initiated by shy*play (Aion Arribas and antje nestel) with Rajni Shah, Kai Hazelwood, Raoni/Muzho Saleh, and Angelo Custodio.

(doors open at 13.45hr)

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited

RSVP online

for the listen to live here: meeting inside

Flyer design: nor akelei

Drawings created by participants in a workshop led by Sam Metz at ATD, Amsterdam, as part of the “What If… Neurodiversity” symposium, January 2025.

Workshop

A quiet session about meeting each other from the inside guided by shy*play together with performance maker and researcher Rajni Shah (they/them). Including a guided listening session, participants will explore how it feels to co-create a gathering without relying on presentational modes. Much of the afternoon unfolds without speech with no requirement to speak or make eye contact. Those who feel marginalized or silenced in mainstream spaces are especially warmly invited.

Drinks and snacks will be provided, and the session will end with a shared quiet feast.

Participants are invited to bring their phone and headphones, as well as something for the final feast. More information upon registration.

Image description

Flyer with a lilac background and white scribble-like lines in the central area almost forming a body. Black text placed in the middle announces “meeting inside with Rajni Shah, 28 February.” At the top, bottom, left and right edges of the images the words “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play.”

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access

– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

– Please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend, and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available.

Acknowledgements

Series initiated by shy*play (Aion Arribas and antje nestel) with Rajni Shah, Kai Hazelwood, Raoni/Muzho Saleh, and Angelo Custodio.

The project is kindly supported by AFK.

Saturday 28 February 2026, 14-17hr

(doors open at 13.30)

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited

RSVP online

for the listen to live here: shedding playground

Flyer design: nor akelei

Drawings featured on the flyer were created by participants in a workshop led by Sam Metz at ATD in Amsterdam, as part of the “What If… Neurodiversity” symposium in January 2025.

Workshop

A playground for slowness, hybridity, and togethering, guided by Kai Hazelwood, transdisciplinary Disabled, Black, and queer artist and researcher, and embodied healing practitioner. Happening simultaneously online and offsite, this session is inspired by the wisdom of snakes and creatures who shed their skin and Disabled wisdom of virtual togetherness. Online participation will go through Hazelwood’s friends at Garden, a 24/7 virtual community center designed for BIPOC folks who are practicing pandemic safety.

Everybody is welcome!
Participants require no prior experience with movement.
Drinks and snacks will be offered throughout.

Image description

Flyer with a black background and white scribble-like lines in the central area. Blue text placed in the middle announces “shedding playground with Kai Hazelwood, 7 February.” At the top, bottom, left and right edges of the images the words “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play,” and “here” appear.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access

– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

– Please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend, and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available.

Acknowledgements

Series initiated by shy*play (Aion Arribas and antje nestel) with Rajni Shah, Kai Hazelwood, Raoni/Muzho Saleh, and Angelo Custodio.

The project is kindly supported by AFK.

Saturday 7 February 2026, 14-17hr

(doors open at 13.30)

If I Can’t Dance

WG Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

& Online (GatherTown)

Free, spaces limited

RSVP online

for the listen to live here: architecting

Workshop

Saturday 15 November 2025, 14-17hr

(doors open at 13.30)

First in a seven-part workshop series exploring the making of socialities, with neuroqueering approaches leading the way. Hosted by shy*play, this gathering experiments with reshaping spatial conditions so that space does not dictate how relations unfold; instead, relations emerge through its collective making. shy*play invites bodyminds who have had enough of, or cannot perform, centrality—the assumption of a “right” way of being and relating that places certain performances at the centre and the human as the measure of all experience. They also extend an invitation to those that are curious about how sociality can unfold when spatiality is shaped by neuroqueer approaches and sensibilities.

Participants require no prior experience with movement and installation. Drinks and snacks will be offered throughout.

Image description

Flyer with a white background and pink scribble-like lines in the center. Black text reads “architecting workshop with shy*play, 15 November,” surrounded by smaller words: “for,” “to,” “the,” “live,” “listen,” “play,” and “here.”

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access

– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

– Please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend, and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available.

Acknowledgements

Series initiated by shy*play (Aion Arribas and antje nestel) with Rajni Shah, Kai Hazelwood, Raoni/Muzho Saleh, and Angelo Custodio.

The project is kindly supported by AFK.

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054SM Amsterdam

Free, spaces limited

RSVP

Featuring

Jennifer Scappettone

Jennifer Scappettone is a professor of literature, creative writing, gender studies, and environmental humanities at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice (Columbia, 2014) and the cross-genre verse books From Dame Quickly and The Republic of Exit 43. She is also the translator of Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli.

Mia You is author of the poetry collections Festival (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2024) and I, Too, Dislike It (1913 Press, 2016), as well as the chapbooks Rouse the Ruse and the Rush (Nion Editions, 2023) and Objective Practice (Achiote Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Chicago Review, Cordite Poetry Review, the PEN Poetry Series, and Poetry. She currently teaches Anglophone literature at the Universiteit Utrecht and in the Critical Studies program at the Sandberg Institute.

Poetry After Barbarism

Reading & conversation

Thursday 22 May 2025

20:30hr (doors open 20-22hr)

1/6

An evening featuring poet, translator and scholar Jennifer Scappettone, who gives a preview presentation of her forthcoming publication Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism (Columbia University Press, September 2025). Following a reading from the book, Scappettone is in conversation with fellow poet Mia You and If I Can’t Dance curator Sara Giannini.

Image description

A silhouette of a person sitting holding a paper while looking over their shoulder at a large projected image behind them. Half of the projected image is the definition of the word xenoglossia. The definition reads: “foreign speaking/babbling]: coined to describe those who speak natural languages to whose origin cultures they do not “belong,” lacking the proper education and mastery of the cosmopolitan.” The other half of the projected image displays a photograph looking upward into the gold-gilded cupola of Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice. The cupola features roman text, angels and the twelve apostles.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator

– Seated event

– Gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

The event is co-organized with the Utrecht University’s Network for Environmental Humanities. If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

If I Can’t Dance
WG-Plein 881

1054 SM Amsterdam

Tickets: €7.50 & €5 (students)

DAI-COOP Study Group

Raffia Li on The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing An Invitation to think-in-assembly.

Visitor report

September 2025

Read the visitor report

At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing
An Invitation to think-in-assembly we invited artist and DAI alumni Raffia Li.

The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing An Invitation to think-in-assembly

Conversation & Performance

Friday 23 May 2025

17–19hr (doors open 16–2hr)

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After a three-day workshop, our Dutch Art Institute COOP Study Group ‘The Word and the Wound’ shares their practice of ‘thinking-in-assembly’, a method that connects thinking and listening, deepening the relation between personal experience and collective voice.

The gathering marks the launch of a new section of our website dedicated to our long history at the Dutch Art Institute, where we’ve been teaching workshops since 2008. In the space, DAI student-made publications are presented alongside a range of archival materials from recent study groups, as well as a reading table focusing on the current COOP.

With Snejanka Mihaylova, Lisa Montan, Frédérique Bergholtz, Anna Buyvid, Nada Gambier, Patrick Freriksen, Agnese Krivade, Bel McLaughlin, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Alva Roselius, Hannah van der Schaaf, Agnese Spolverini and Mia Tamme.

Image description

Participants in the performance are on the black stage standing in a circle. They are all tapping their left arm with their right hand. In the background hang colorful textile compositions.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator

– Seated event

– Gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing is organized in collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute. If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

If I Can’t Dance
WG-Plein 881

1054 SM Amsterdam

Tickets: €7.50 & €5 (students)

Voice as Landscape

Voice as Landscape is a performance platform concerned with the near boundless potential of the voice and voicings. Born from a love of language that called for its undoing – or renewal – in the materiality of sound, and a desire to find the juncture between the uttered and the inhabited, Voice as Landscape is entering its second year with an emboldened sense of community and a sober grounding in the political reality in which we labor to make art. The warped and increasingly aggressive logics of empire would have us force the finality of categorization. Our small work here against this trend is a platforming of works built in the fluid forever of togethers in motion. Voice as Landscape is an initiative of Alec Mateo and Lorenzo García-Andrade

horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion

Performance Programme

Saturday 24 May 2025, 16:30–23hr

1/9

A day-long dramaturgy curated by Voice as Landscape (Lorenzo García-Andrade & Alec Mateo) on the idea of transformative correspondence. Moving between our theater space, the WG Terrein, and Het Ketelhuis, the event includes convivial moments and performative encounters.

With Kaixin Chen & Sankrit Kulmanochawong, Aitana Cordero, Kike García & Jesús Bravo, María Jerez & Élan D´Orphium, Phantom Wizard.

Programme*:
16:30 Gather at If I Can’t Dance theater
17:00 Dinner with Kaixin Chen and Sankrit Kulmanochawong
19:00 La Siesta with Aitana Cordero at Het Ketelhuis
20:00 Gather at old plane tree in front of If I Can’t Dance, WG-Plein 881
20:15 Reclamos with María Jerez and Élan D´Orphium
21:00 Paisaje Tres with Kike García and Jesús Bravo at If I Can’t Dance theatre
22:00 Phantom Wizard at If I Can’t Dance theatre

Image description

People sitting in small groups on a red and white picnic blanket that covers the entire floor and rises up over a table in the center of the room. One person is walking in back of the table which has a plant, water and cups on it. In front of each person on the floor is a small white package and an envelope.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator

– Seated event

– Gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion is co-hosted by Perdu and If I Can’t Dance and supported by het Cultuurfonds (with support by the Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds), Acción Cultural Española, and the Spanish Embassy. If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

Emmaplein, WG-Plein & If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam

(meeting point at Emmaplein at 16:30hr)

Tickets

Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić

Ana Vujanović is a researcher, dramaturge, writer and lecturer in performing arts, film and culture. She has published numerous articles and several books, the latest one being Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy with Bojana Cvejić (Berlin, 2022). She is a mentor at SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam, and guest professor at the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)

Bojana Cvejić is a practicing dramaturg and writer whose research spans performance theory, critical theory, philosophy and dance studies. Among several books, she is author of Choreographing Problems (2015) and Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy with Ana Vujanović (2022). Since 1996, she has collaborated on works of opera, dance, and theater as co-director, dramaturg or performer. Bojana is Professor at Oslo National Academy of Arts and has taught at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels) since 2002. Her research in social choreography, transindividuality, and practical dramaturgy transforms into a practice through the self-organization of collective platforms for experimental production of knowledge and life (including Performing Arts Forum, Saint-Erme since 2005).

Toward a Transindividual Self

Book presentation

Monday 16 June 2025
17–19:30hr (doors open at 16:30hr)

1/6

An afternoon programme dedicated to Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy, a book by Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić. The authors are joined by Sruti Bala, Marija Cetinić, and Antonella Fittipaldi, who each offers reflections in relation to their respective research and practices. The book examines the process of performing the self, introducing transindividuation as a new way to think about collectivity in 21st-century Western neoliberal societies.

Image description

Marija Cetinić, Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić are sitting on white chairs on the If I Can’t Dance theater stage. Ana is speaking while holding the mic, while both Marija and Bojana smile, listening to what is said.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator
– Seated event
– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

Acknowledgements

The event is organized in collaboration with SNDO as part of their 50th anniversary celebration.

If I Can’t Dance
WG-Plein 881

1054 SM Amsterdam

Tickets: €7.50 & €5 (students)

In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities (IPOP)

In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities (IPOP) is an educational and pedagogical platform founded by Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak.

IPOP explores theories and methodologies for queering performance feedback within educational institutions, while supporting the development of LGBTQ+ artists. Participants meet regularly to present their work to a cohort of peers and co-devise techniques for receiving feedback.

A Queer Feedback Handbook

Book Launch

Thursday 11 September 2025

18.00 – 20.00hr (doors open at 17.30hr)

Launch of the first handbook published by In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities (IPOP), an educational and pedagogical platform founded by Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak. Drawing on three years of experiences developing a queer communal feedback model, this book proposes a need-based and performative approach to feedback. For the event, Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak are joined by some participants to reflect on IPOP’s methods, offering key concepts such as ‘feedback ecology’, ‘promiscuous care’, and ‘non-identitarian queerness’, alongside teaching resources and feedback activities to try.

Image description

A purple and black book cover with the words IPOP: A Queer Feedback Handbook, Experiments in Otherwise Arts Education written in white stylized capital letters. In smaller white print are the names Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak. There is a small white and black photograph in the top right corner depicting people sitting in a circle around posters spread out on the floor. In the bottom left corner is another black and white image of two people sitting on a wooden floor writing on sheets of paper and notebooks.

If I Can’t Dance

WG-Plein 881

1054 SM Amsterdam

Tickets: €7.50 & €5 (students)

Studium Generale Rietveld Academie

For the first afternoon of the Studium

Generale Conference-Festival, If I Can’t

Dance has invited writer and curator Dani

Blanga Gubbay to create a dramaturgy of

moments drawn from his four-part Mousse

Magazine column, Notes on Spitting,

which explores the relationship between

dance and choreography, and sex and

pornography, merging theory and fiction

within a 24-hour storyline.

Notes On Spitting

Wednesday 18 March, 13-17hr

Notes on Spitting is presented as an

expanded reading by Dani

Blanga Gubbay in which the text is

interwoven with video works by Anchan/

Anna Daučíková and Christina Della

Giustina, an exhibition of drawings by

Alina Popa (1982–2019), a score of ghostly

gestures conceived by Alex Baczyński-

Jenkins, and soundscapes by Krzysztof

Bagiński that merge into a DJ set. The

result is a constantly shifting atmosphere,

exploring unproductive pleasures, sexual

drives, non-phallic eroticism, and the

eruptive forces of volcanoes and bodily

movement.

ft.

soundtrack from Maria Hassabi’s STAGED

scenes from Fassbinder’s Querelle

two saliva-inducing drinks

Image description

Two juxtaposed images in portrait format. The first is an ink on paper drawing by artist Alina Popa in which black lines take flight across the page in different directions and interrupted by various much tighter scribbles. At the bottom is written ‘my inner energy’ and the date 16-12-2016. The second image, mirroring the first, is a black and white photograph of choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata. He is in full movement, his weight being transferred over to his right hip, while his naked torso and flowing long black hair lean in the opposite direction. His hands are slightly raised toward the left and his fingers gesture elegantly. Hijikata’s is immersed in a cloud of white haze.

Accessibility information

-The Teijin Auditorium can be reached with the elevator from the ground floor
-Seating includes chairs and pillows
-Language: English
-More extensive access info can be found on the website of the Stedelijk Museum
-The event will be livestreamed via the Studium Generale Rietveld Academie YouTube Channel

Acknowledgements

Daučíková and Della Giustina’s videos are in dialogue with the exhibition ‘yOu aRe VarIatioNs’, jointly organized by If I Can’t Dance with Vleeshal, Middelburg, where it is still on view until March 22 2026. The exhibition is curated by Sara Giannini and Martha Jager.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Teijin Auditorium

Museumplein 10

1071 DJ Amsterdam

Tickets

Livestream

De Nieuwe Meent

dNM is a housing cooperative located in Amsterdam Oost. It is one the city’s first housing cooperative projects and was completed in 2025. Rooted in the housing rights movement, dNM is a social, political, and architectural project completely developed through a collaborative and community-led process. dNM is an experiment in co-design, shared living, and solidarity economy.

Mural

Open Call

Together with de Appel and Framer Framed, If I Can’t Dance has formed a coalition of Amsterdam-based cultural institutions supporting dNM in the development and realization of a semi-permanent mural on its north facade. The mural will form an integral part of the building and its vision. Overlooking Science Park Station and the railway, it will be a highly visible urban surface for both the local community and train commuters. The call is open to artists, writers, designers, architects, and activists. No previous experience with mural art is required. In the spirit of dNM, experimental and community-driven approaches are welcome. More information in the open call.

Image description

Flyer annoucing an open call for a mural at de Nieuwe Meent (dNM). Using a white background, it features a photograph of a red-brick residential building behind a railway platform, with overhead cables and bare trees in view. A faint rectangular outline marks the proposed mural location on the facade. Bold, sans-serif black typography highlights “OPEN CALL for a mural,” while subtle diagonal lines referencing the train cables add movement to the design. The logos of de Appel, Framer Framed, and If I Can’t Dance are listed at the bottom.

The Open Call is currently being updated. More information will be shared soon.

Info meetings & site visits:

April 18 2026, 17hr

May 8 2026, 19.30hr

Woonruimte Coöperatief/Noon Coffee Culture, Kruislaan 259A, 1098SH, Amsterdam (corner dNM).

2024-25

Master course

DAI-COOP

The Word and the Wound 2 / And Now You Are Ready to Sing

Course

2024-25

1/16

The focus of this study group remains on practice. As a continuation of last year’s study group, the encouraging rephrase of guest tutor Lisa Montan’s “And now you are ready to sing”, is reformulated to reflect on what it means to be ready to sing? What does it mean to sing with others? What is the relation between the individual voice and the voice of the group? How does it connect to the body, to (bodily) memory? What are the resonances of singing (together) – in time and space? In what way does singing mobilise our critical and artistic potential? Singing is proposed not only as an emanation of sound, but as an embodied practice of listening. Therefore, the research is articulated around questions of acts of listening, (a)tuning, transmitting, testing and exercising with sounds, with a particular interest in the somatic element of singing, as well as storytelling, folk traditions, the re-interpreting and re-writing of text. In her workWords to write it. The Word and the Wound (after which the study group is named) the Italian feminist Wanda Tommasi identifies the practice of writing as a process of symbolic creation that leads to repair. Special attention is thus brought to the relation between the performative and the restorative, thinking of the potential of performance to be a reparational practice.

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova, Frédérique Bergholtz

Guest tutors: Lisa Montan, Angelo Custodio, Sara Giannini, Anik Fournier

Students: Anna Buyvid, Agnese Krivade, Alva Roselius, Agnese Spolverini, Bel McLaughlin, Hannah van der Schaaf, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Mia Tamme, Nada Gambier, Patrick Freriksen

Gatherings

PAF, St. Erme

NIDA Art Colony, Vilnius

Nicosia, Cyprus

If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam

Nicosia, Cyprus (forthcoming)

Bachelor course

SNDO

Codes of in/accessibility within performance practices

Course

2024

In dialogue with If I Can’t Dance’s current research on disability justice and accessibility, this class looks at the different implications that accessibility can take, as well as, the functions it can serve in the creation and circulation of performance practices. In thinking with and alongside access, concepts such as presence, embodiment, perception, interpretation, scoring, and communicability become more layered, leaving space for questioning and deepening. How do bodies-in-performance appear for publics on-stage and off? What are the unconscious ableist structures that enable or disable access within our field and beyond? The dichotomy between abled and disabled bodies is misleading; bodies are rendered enabled or disabled by an uneven construction and distribution of access within racial capitalism and ongoing colonial violence. The seminar aims to unpack those entanglements and explore the correlations between disability and wider mechanics of exclusion, marginalization and harm. Working with material from the If I Can’t Dance archive, a selection of readings, and visits to exhibitions presently open in Amsterdam, the students will be given opportunities to work on small exercises in which they will be asked to explore accessibility in their own work and life.

Course tutors: Anik Fournier and Sara Giannini

Read full syllabus

Sites

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

2023-24

Master course

DAI-COOP

The Word and the Wound

Course

2023-24

1/14

The study group opened a series of reflections on practice and its roots in everyday life. The “word” is synonymous with work; the “wound” denotes an environment. In this sense, the title is open to different questions about the relationship between artistic practice and context. This form of ‘work’ can be viewed in connection to what we can call the creative process. But what is creation? How do we actually initiate a process of creation? How do we form, and how are we formed by, daily life? And how can we – as proposed by Italian feminist Wanda Tommasi – understand working as a process of symbolic creation that leads to repair?

These questions are used to encourage the study group to think about their daily (artistic) practices, and to find methodologies through which individual and collective work can be performed and sustained.

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova, Frédérique Bergholtz

Guest tutors: Angelo Custódio and Lisa Montan.

Students: Ania Yilmaz, Ariell Zéphyr, Cristina Ramos González, Elif Cadoux, Helena Estrela, Lisa Vlamings, Maria Miguel Pratas, Sam Mountford, Seán Bean, Stephen McEvoy, Tereza Darmovzalová, Valeria Moro, and Yi-Hong Wang (Hong).

Read full syllabus

Gatherings

PAF, St. Erme

NIDA Art Colony, Vilnius

PAF, St. Erme

Essaouira, Marrakech

Vleeshal, Middelburg / If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam

Essaouira, Marrakech

2022–23

Introductory event

Edition IX

Bodies and Technologies

Finale

September 2023 – February 2024

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to the Finale of Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies, featuring artists (collectives) Black Speaks Back and Constantina Zavitsanos, and researchers Susanne Altmann, Devika Chotoe, Samia Henni, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Grant Watson. During a seasonal festival, taking place from September 2023 through February 2024 across Amsterdam venues, they present their new productions and publications. Each in their own way, they tackle the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies – from experiences of pleasure and intimacy to the ongoing embodied realities of colonial and ableist frameworks.

Image description

Cover of the programme booklet, with text in Times font on white background, stating: Finale Edition IX – Bodies and Technogolgies; names of the participating artists and researchers: Susanne Altmann, Black Speaks Back, Samia Henni, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Constantina Zavitsanos; dates: September 2023-February 2024; and the city where the programme will take place: Amsterdam.

Acknowledgements

The Edition IX commission series is curated by programme curators Sara Giannini and
Megan Hoetger in conversation with the If I Can’t Dance artistic team.

Venues across Amsterdam

Programme booklet

Artist Commissions

Black Speaks Back

Black Speaks Back (est. 2016, Brussels. Based in Amsterdam) is a Belgo-Dutch grassroots media platform for multidimensional Black narratives. Their film tackles issues of hyper-sexualisation, cultural fragmentation and collective remembrance at the boundaries between intimacy and sexuality, freedom and conditioning, and myth and reality. The Zwarte Ibis project is led by Chris (Ci) Rickets and Alexine Gabriela in collaboration with Smita James.

Musoke Nalwoga on ZWARTE IBIS

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Musoke Nalwoga, photo by Simara van Bochove.

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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the premiere of Black Speaks Backs’ film ZWARTE IBIS we invited curator and researcher Musoke Nalwoga.

Read the visitor report

Inside ZWARTE IBIS

Artist talk and Film screening

Saturday 3 February 2024, 17hr

Behind-the-scenes documentation of 'Zwarte Ibis', 2023, photo: Henck Pengel.

This moving artist talk connects BSB’s installation at CBK Zuidoost with the Bijlmerbios movie theater. Members of the collective gather to discuss their collaborative production process, as well as the central role of Amsterdam’s Bijlmer neighbourhood within their project.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The artist talk and screening are realised in partnership with CBK Zuidoost and the Bijlmerbios. Special thanks to CBK event programme curator Claudio Ritfeld for his support of the artist talk.

Begins at CBK Zuidoost
Anton de Komplein 120
1102 DR Amsterdam

Free with registration for the film screening

ZWARTE IBIS

Film premiere

Friday 12 January & Saturday 13 January 2024, 19hr

Poster for 'ZWARTE IBIS'. Design by Naomi Quartey.

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The collective invites audiences to join them for world premiere of ZWARTE IBIS, their newest short film, which portrays a young Black woman’s quest for intimacy in a world where the boundaries between the individual and the collective, the political and the personal, the past and the present, become ever blurrier. The screenings are accompanied by a welcoming DJ set, singing bowl performance, and post-screening panel discussions on black intimacy featuring members of the cast and crew.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as the film’s production supervisor. The production of the film was made possible with the support of a “Research, Act & Reflect” grant from Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, and the premiere programme is realised in partnership with Africadelic, Caribbean Creativity, and Re/Presenting Europe. Special thanks to Melkweg, Amsterdam for hosting the programme.

Co-producer: La Fam

Director: Emma-Lee Amponsah

Composer: Chris “Ci” Rickets

Writing team: Nohely Koeyers, Emma-Lee Amponsah, Chris “Ci” Rickets, and Alexine Gabriela

Director of Photography: Henck Pengel

Edited by: Chris Tjong Ayong

Color grading: Yavuz Salim Isler

Text: Mathieu Charles

Narrator: Burnice Hiwat

Lead Actress: Henriette “Aelia Sapph” Valies

Melkweg

Lijnbaansgracht 234A

1017 PH Amsterdam

Tickets:

€11 regular / Cineville free

First screening (fully booked)

Second screening (fully booked)

Zwarte Ibis: An Exploration of Black Intimacy

Exhibition

Thursday 7 December 2023 – Saturday 3 February 2024

Exhibition Opening Thursday 7 December 2023, 17–20hr

Free with registration here

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As a culmination of their time in CBK Zuidoost’s BijlmAIR residency, the collective’s presents an installation featuring audio and visual materials from their production process, including: recordings from their 2022 Kitchen Table Talks, collective notes from scriptwriting in February 2023 and behind-the-scenes footage from filming in summer 2023.

Accessibility information

– Seats available

– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: Dutch and English

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The installation is realised in the frame of the CBK Zuidoost BijlmAIR Residency programme as part of the exhibition ‘AIR in Zuidoost #2023.’ Special thanks to Renske de Jong and Yazan Maksoud for their support with constructing the installation.

CBK Zuidoost
Anton de Komplein 120
1102 DR Amsterdam

Opening times: Tuesday – Friday 11–17hr; Saturday 10–17hr

Free

The Making of Zwarte Ibis

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: Preliminary Experiments’ (2022), performance presentation for the If I Can’t Dance Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies Introductory Event, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw.

The grassroots media collective introduces aspects of their film-in-the-making Zwarte Ibis through a series of three media campaigns that share elements of their research, scriptwriting and filming processes. Featuring a Zwarte Ibis music playlist, the studio page includes re-broadcasted material from the group’s Instagram story archive and a wide network of hyperlinks to follow, taking visitors inside the topic of intimacy, histories of (Black) cinema and the behind-the-scenes of their film set.

Image description

Full colour photo depicting in the foreground a row of three, loosely positioned full-length mirrors, free standing on wheels, with each having several wax lights on their base. In the background are two people sitting on a table, in front of a wall covered in a red glow and depicting the video-projected sentence: ‘Has your Blackness formed your experience of intimacy?’. The mirrors reflect fragments of a theatre tribune, flight cases and the audience.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived and realised the online studio room in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies

Screening & Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies’ (2022), screening and performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw.

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A multimedia performance in which the collective experiments with audio, visual and somatic strategies for approaching the question, ‘how do Black people navigate the intimate sphere in a context where their bodies are heavily politicised and under constant interrogation?’ The mirror plays a key role, foregrounding the frameworks of projection and internalisation through which intimacies with self and others are formed.

Image description

Square graphic logo in black-and-white monochromatic colour scheme where ‘the ground’ is flat black and ‘the figure’ a stark white pairing of the words ‘Zwarte’ and ‘Ibis’. ‘Zwarte’ appears more-or-less in the centre of the graphic, and ‘Ibis’ is right-centred with the ‘Ibi’ aligned directly below the ‘te’ of Zwarte. The ‘s’ in Ibis transforms into the long-beaked head of an ibis bird.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Jessika Khazrik

Jessika Khazrik (b. 1991, Beirut. Lives in Beirut and Berlin) is an artist, composer, writer and technologist whose ‘indisciplinary’ practice involves performance, machine learning, ecotoxicology, cryptography, visual art, history of science and music. Working towards a hyper-media performance, she explores the convergences of the histories of science and magic through fieldwork and rehearsals in environmental medicine research centres and scientific laboratories for sonocytology, biomedical imagery and exposome studies.

قرابادين Pharmakopoeia

Essay-Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

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The artist maps out the plural strands of research that depart from pharmacopoeia, the formularies of shared remedies that would, up until some centuries ago, thoroughly instruct how to identify ailments and prepare compound medicines. Questioning the linguistic, environmental and techno-political links between remedies, medicine and media, Khazrik delves into the divinatory afterlives and militarised roots of biomedical practices of sonification, sensing, imaging and anamnesis.

Image description

Palimpsestic project image of قرابادين Pharmakopoeia. Realised digitally, the graphics mixes, almost in a steganographic way, different colours (ranging from acid green, to red, purple and pink), geometric patterns (mainly circles, crescents, lines and triangles), slightly floral shapes, images and Arabic scripts. The composition has a square landscape orientation. It centres the project title in light fluorescent green and an image of colourful small balls or pearls. These two elements are positioned against a light, patterned, square background that is framed by stronger green- and purple-coloured shapes.

Acknowledgements

Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and co-produced with Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts as part of their Holes, Spirals, Waves (2022) programme. Part of the research is carried out at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Munich where Khazrik is an artist in residence from spring 2022 to spring 2023.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Constantina Zavitsanos

Constantina Zavitsanos (b. 1977, Reading, United States. Lives in New York City, United States) works in sculpture, performance, text and sound to elaborate what’s invaluable in the re/production of debt, dependency and means beyond measure – sometimes sculpting inaudible sound waves or the performance of everyday life like school loan debt or years of sleep. Continuing their interference with what is perceivably accessed, they experiment with heat, infrared light, infrasound, haptics and written scores beyond sight and fixed form.

Staci Bu Shea on Entrophy

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Staci Bu Shea, photo by Zazie Stevens.

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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For Entrophy we invited curator and writer Staci Bu Shea.

Read the visitor report

Entrophy

Saturday 30 September 2023, 15hr & 18hr

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A set of three performances (on-site and online) catalysed by the artist and conjured with the performers who co-create them through an experimental score belonging to no one. In a space of collaboration and not-knowing, the works unfold through chance, improvisation, shared in/capacities and desire. Moving across thresholds of perception, the performance(s) are inhabited by sound, infrasound and infrared light. Each has air and water; some have fire and only one has earth. Repeated twice at different tempos, time flows in many directions as well as through layered descriptions, interpretations and captions.

Performers and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex

Image description

A cropped photograph taken in a two-mirror Schlieren system (with knife edge) shows a black background that hosts otherwise invisible entropic air currents against the shadowed ground of a telescope mirror. Two fingers curl over an igniting open flame that lights a candle. It’s serving something in the blur of mourning and celebration; the vibe is a bit of a full moon feel.

Accessibility information

– Hybrid performance(s), online and on-site
– Live-stream on Zoom
– The on-site performance(s) are seated. There will be priority seats for wheelchair users as well as for deaf and hard of hearing audiences. If you come a bit earlier, our hosts will help you find a spot
– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC downstairs via elevator; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English
– The performance(s) employ sound and infrasound (vibrations)
– Sign language interpretation (NGT on-site, ASL online)
– CART captioning (Dutch and English on-site, English online)
– Poetic audio description (English, both on-site and online)
– Masking during the performance(s) is welcome and highly encouraged; masks are available at the entrance
– Splendor has a café where you can hang out before and after the event

Acknowledgements

Concept: Constantina Zavitsanos
Initiator of the score: Constantina Zavitsanos
Performers and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex
Curator and production manager: Sara Giannini
Stage manager: Annick Kleizen
Set design: Constantina Zavitsanos with the performers
AV: Leroy Chaar
Light design: Marion Tränkle
In-house technician and floor manager: Thomas Myrmel
Live-stream production: Hans van Eck, Barry Jonas and Zsolt Szederkényi
Production assistance: Sancha Meca Castro
NGT interpreters and Dutch CART: Faye Schippers and Clarissa van den Elzen
ASL interpreters: Candace Davider and company
English CART: Veerle Haverhals
Audio description on-site and online: Constantina Zavitsanos
Front of house team: Naomi Collier Broms and Sancha Meca Castro
Accessibility advisors: Staci Bu Shea and Annick Kleizen
Zoom production advisors: Patrick Mahaney and Lauren Parrish
Accessibility financial support: I Wanna Be With You Everywhere

We would like to thank I Wanna Be With You Everywhere for their generous contribution in making the event more widely accessible. We are also very grateful to Eliane Baudet, Staci Bu Shea, Marja de Kinderen, Annick Kleizen, Patrick Mahaney, Lauren Parrish and Simon(e) van Saarlos for sharing their expertise and advising us in different phases of the project. Finally, a warm thank you to the Splendor collective, and in particular to Nora Fisher, for hosting the programme.

On-site:
Splendor
Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116,
1011 LX Amsterdam

Tickets:

€16,50 regular / €10 students

– First slot: Saturday 30 September 2023, 15-16:30hr (Fully booked)*

– Second slot: Saturday 30 September 2023, 18-19:30hr (Fully booked)*

Online:
The event will be live-streamed on zoom
Free with registration

* Each slot includes all three performances.
They are presented one after the other with no intermission.

Entrophy

Score

A twist on the deductive reasoning game Twenty Questions, this performance score reflects the artist’s research into entropy, polyvocality and indeterminacy. Initiated by the artist, it is formed collectively with the performers who will stage it. With Zavitsanos in the role of the guesser, the performers are asked to think of ‘absolutely nothing’ before answering a set of twenty yes/no questions about the performance they will enact. Their answers determine the performances in a space of collaboration and not-knowing, unfolding through chance, improvisation, shared in/capacities and desire.

Acknowledgements

Concept and score: Constantina Zavitsanos
Performers, interpreters and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex

Experimenting with Entrophy

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Two images of the glowing filaments mounted above the central plane of the methanol pool fire

In their studio room, the artist opens a window into their own studio while working towards Entrophy, a series of collaborative performances riffing on questions of entropy, heat, interdependency and shared in/capacities. Here they share the research and experimentations that underlie these performances: from visual references and tests with heat and infrared cameras, to different engagements with accessibility and modes of seeing.

Image description

Two side by side images. Against a dark background, cold blue smoke-like shadows are scored by repeating horizontal lines of bright light.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Entrophy

Lecture-Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

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The artist shares their experimentation with heat through technologies and performance tactics that unravel at the perceived limits of the sensorial, opening up sight, sound and measurability to a dimension of feeling. Instead of treating heat as something that can be captured for observance by an audience, the artist works with the felt, shared qualities of heat among bodies in space.

Image description

A black screen hosts two lines of overlapping projected captions in white and grey. The two texts interrupt and join one another in partial occlusion that complicates the legibility of one and produces new texture. Joined text reads as: ‘Slick in the The way up and down is the same the Heisenberg cut like a band Each lives the death of the other cedes our birth.’

A black screen hosts two lines of overlapping projected captions in white and grey. The two texts interrupt and join one another in partial occlusion that complicate the legibility of one and produces new texture. Joined text reads: ‘Hotel, motel, you don’t tell. She got a boson for her birthday and wore it out in quar.’

Acknowledgements

Entrophy is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Sara Giannini.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Research Commissions

Susanne Altmann

Susanne Altmann (lives and works in Dresden) is a feminist art historian, curator, and leading scholar in the contextualisation of women’s artistic production in former East Germany, working to reorient historical understandings of the region in relation to Eastern Europe rather than to the West. Her new research investigates media experimentation connecting women’s art and working methods, from the early Soviet avant-garde through the last years of the Eastern Bloc.

Elisabeth Rafstedt on When Technology Was Female

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Elisabeth Rafstedt, photo by Rietlanden Women's Office.

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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the conversation and film programme accompanying the launch of Susanne Altman’s publication we invited designer Elisabeth Rafstedt.

Read the visitor report

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989

Publication

Available via the If I Can’t Dance webshop

Continuities and ruptures between the early Soviet (c.1917) and late state socialist (c.1980s) periods are examined through detailed discussions of a wide range of women’s artistic practices, including Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Tina Bara, Sibylle Bergemann, Věra Chytilová, Natalia LL, Dora Maurer, the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, Běla Kolářová, Evelyn Richter, Zorka Ságlová, and many others. Featuring over one hundred images of works ranging from costume sketches and stage maquettes, to photographs and film stills, the book offers a sweeping study of over seventy years of women’s artistic production and is meant for any reader engaged at the intersections of feminist and (post-)socialist art histories.

Author: Susanne Altmann
Graphic design: Experimental Jetset
Managing editor: Megan Hoetger
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Copy editor: Janet Grau
Page count: 320
ISBN: 978-94-92139-22-1

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989 is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication.

Special thanks to all who allowed for image reproductions, including: A.Lupas, P420, Bologna, and the Pejkoski Collection, London; The Art Institute of Chicago/ Art Resource, New York/ Scala Florence; the Deutsche Fotothek; Dóra Maurer and the Vintage Galéria, Budapest; Else Gabriel; the Estate of Běla Kolářová; the Estate of Zorka Ságlová and Hunt Kastner Gallery, Prague; the Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig; Jan Krumbach and the Ester Krumbachová Archive; the Kunstsammlung Jena; Lindenau-Museum Altenburg; the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; MOMus – Museum of Modern Art – Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki; Monika Andres; the Museum of Modern Art, New York/ Scala, Florence; the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Ostkreuz – Agentur der Fotografen GmbH; the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Tina Bara; Verena Kyselka; and Zofia Kulik and the KwieKulik Foundation.

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989

Publication

Susanne Altmann

Design: Experimental Jetset
ISBN: 978-94-92139-22-1
320 p, bw, pb, 14,5×20 cm, English, 2024

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