Soft senses, hard reset
This fall, Body of Art/Annemijn Rijk presents Vertical Blue, an immersive performance; a horizonless, blue world where you freedive alongside dancers, light, music, and a slowly changing environment.
In a world where the overactive, modern human urge to constrain imposes the illusion of control, life can sometimes take dangerous turns. Waves come and go. Grief, happiness, the aftermath of a broken heart, a missed opportunity, a new child. Life is overwhelming. The tendency to control both the world around us and our inner world, in an attempt to cope with overwhelming feelings and experiences, makes us unruly. The big clash, with our environment, others, and ourselves, seems inevitable.
In Vertical Blue, the wave shifts, we are engulfed, and we allow ourselves to be carried away by the undercurrent. We fall deep into the ocean, our breath held, but our bodies soft. Sounds vibrate palpably, performers sweat their way into the depths, the environment transforms into an elusive perspective. The world speaks, the senses listen.
After The Lab (Body of Art, 2025), where visitors relinquished the pillars on which we navigate and move as modern humans, it is now time to explore which sensations, insights, and blind spots lie in the deep unknown, begging to be highlighted. To do this, we will dive deep and let go of everything. Not out of indifference, but to open our hands, eyes, and minds to that which cannot be held or controlled. We are heading for a hard reset. To then collectively form an alternative response to an overwhelming world.
The act of surrender.
We better get ready.
Where do we go now?
The work is a response to the world around us, in which control, efficiency, mastery, and dehumanization seem to color our view of humanity. Through beauty and awe, perception, the body, and the creation of space for what now wants to resonate, Vertical Blue forms an antidote to today’s hardening, accelerating world.
What if we felt the extreme pressure of the threatening world around us, instead of constantly trying to escape it, hide it, extinguish it, solve it, declare it false, or try to outsmart it? What if control doesn’t save us, but prevents us from feeling what we already know? What if we don’t fight harder, but become softer?
In a world where what has always sustained us no longer serves us or our surroundings, but rather damages them, Vertical Blue offers a radically different proposal: What if our response to crisis is not to fight, to arm, to overpower, but to listen, to surrender, to create reciprocity, and to realign?
Credits
Artistic Direction, Choreography, Concept: Annemijn Rijk
Performers: Noemi Calzavara, Teresa Avino, Sana Sanaki, Matilde Çobanli
Scenography: Theun Mosk
Lighting Design: Wout Panis
Composition and Music: Aura Bouw
Costume Design: Annemarije van Harten
Technical Producer: Cedric van Daalen – Stage-Mate
Marketing, PR, and Communications: Marieke Josselet
Business Director: Milou Vogels
Co-production: Schweigman&
Vertical Blue is made possible in part by the Performing Arts Fund NL, the Municipality of Tilburg, the Municipality of Breda, the Province of North Brabant, and the Icke-Lemmens Foundation.
Read Soft senses – hard reset, an essay by Annemijn Rijk and the foundation of Vertical Blue. Also available as PDF here.