Jonas Vermeulen

Prince K. Appiah

Ontroerend Goed

Five contenders. Five rounds. Your vote. Only one will survive. The stakes: your attention, your love, your approval, your laughter, your compassion, your weak spot, your guilty pleasure, your heart, your support, your choice. We help you to decide through random checks, voting signposts, coalitions, campaigns, debates, consultants, exit polls, spin doctors, opinion gauges, list pushers, referendums. We’ll do anything to make the best not win.

Fight Night has been touring the world, playing from Australia and Belgium to Canada, from Hong Kong to Swiss. Remakes have been made in Russia and Turkey, whilst a French version was touring Europe. Fight Night remains one of the most popular Ontroerend Goed shows, making audiences vote since 2013.



Fight Night, created in 2013, has traveled the world, from Australia to Hong Kong to Canada, from Aalst to Switzerland. There have been remakes in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey, and the French version toured Europe. Fight Night is one of the most popular shows in the Ontroerend Goed repertoire and has been reworked for the Belgian election year 2024, ready to let the audience vote again for a decade.

The language of this performance is English.

Read here an interview about this performance in De Morgen: https://www.demorgen.be/tv-cultuur/ontroerend-goed-herwerkt-het-politieke-spel-fight-night-2024-is-wereldwijd-het-verkiezingsjaar-en-we-zijn-allemaal-doodsbang~b7aa9aea/

and in Knack: https://www.knack.be/nieuws/cultuur/theatermaker-angelo-tijssens-de-zevende-dag-zit-vol-met-zogenaamde-underdogs/

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Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

Fight Night

Ahmed El Gendy

The Rooms Performance Festival returns on the last weekend of January 2025.

Line-up: Sofie Kramer, Ahmed El Gendy, Amparo González Sola, Tabor Idema, Samah Hijawi, and Johannes Offerhaus

Proudly presented by: Marres, VIA ZUID, Dansateliers, FASHIONCLASH,  MU en de Brakke Grond.

Expect vibrant theater, edgy dance, a culinary performance, kinetic textiles, intimacy, activism, and much more. Your day pass grants access to a full day with six performances.

As a Rooms visitor, you'll also get an exclusive first preview of the exhibition Vultures & Fireflies. Mexican artist Alejandro Galván will start on this project at the end of 2024, which will ultimately become a full-house painting portraying the perspective of Nezahualcóyotl: one of the largest working class suburbs in the Valley of Mexico.

As a partner, de Brakke Grond, presents the work of Samah Hijawi on Rooms. The performance will travel after Rooms to the Brakke Grond and will be on view during Beyond the Black Box Festival (agenda/674/beyond-the-black-box-2025)

Rooms Performance Festival 2025

Van 30 januari tot en met 2 februari 2025 staat Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond weer in het teken van het Festival Beyond the Black Box, het festival voor kunst die onder je huid kruipt. Een ontdekkingsreis langs allerlei zintuigen, kunstvormen en ruimten die de waarneming oprekt. De live ontmoeting met publiek staat centraal. Tegelijkertijd gaan de werken ver voorbij de grenzen van 'the black box' van het theater en 'the white cube' van het museum. 

Het volledige programma volgt binnenkort, dus houd de website in de gaten en laat je verrassen!

Beyond the Black Box 2025

Just before the start of the Sri Lankan civil war, Ahilan Ratnamohan's parents emigrated to Australia. Ahilan's parents deliberately choose to speak only English - and no Tamil - to their sons. That way the boys do not stand out in Australia because of their language.

But what if years later it turns out that the curiosity about your parents' language is too great?
What if your mother's language is not your mother tongue?

During his childhood in Sydney, Ahilan never learned Tamil. For the past seven years, he has improved his spoken Tamil through Skype conversations with his mother, allowing them to communicate in “their” native language for the first time. But it soon became clear to him that he would have to spend hours studying to master written Tamil perfectly. Unfortunately, you can't learn Jaffna Tamil in textbooks or by watching the news. It is passed down through (grand)parents and through the community. It continues through diaspora meetings around the world. That makes it beautiful and at the same time elusive.

The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan is a story of a son and a mother. A personal story of memory, loss, language fascination, identity and diaspora. Ahilan plays the performance entirely in Tamil. His mother - next to him on stage - is his language teacher who corrects him, prompts him and operates the English/Dutch surtitles. In this way, Ahilan traces the roots of his language loss.

For the performance on February 11, we are organizing a sensory-friendly reception for neurodivergent audiences. More info will follow.

The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan

Tijdens deze residentie onderzoekt geluidskunstenaar Stijn Demeulenaere de audiovisuele mogelijkheden binnen zijn praktijk. Vanuit een fascinatie voor zowel kijken als luisteren onderzoekt hij met A Thing Heard Is Seldom Seen (ATHISS) hoe geluid en beeld elkaar veranderen als je ze tegenover elkaar zet. Dit aan de hand van een archief van meer dan 10 jaar aan field recordings en foto- en videomateriaal die vorm krijgen in audiovisuele live sets.

Residentie: Stijn Demeulenaere - A Thing Heard Is Seldom Seen

Sound Track - een muziekparcours voor Vlaams en Brussels talent komt weer naar Amsterdam. Na de eerste editie in 2021 zijn we verheugd een nieuwe lichting aanstormend talent te verwelkomen. Tijdens een residentieweek, 19 t/m 23 februari, komen enkele laureaten in residentie bij de Brakke Grond. Deze veelbelovende artiesten volgen deze week inspirerende Sound Track-sessies, hebben professionele speeddates en zullen de residentie afsluiten met een showcase.  

Sound Track is een samenwerking van VI.BE, Clubcircuit, Ancienne Belgique en Entree.



Over Sound Track

Sound Track is het tweejaarlijks traject waarmee VI.BE (steunpunt voor artiest en muzieksector) en de live sector in elke regio op zoek gaan naar de meest beloftevolle acts van Vlaanderen en Brussel. Sound Track is een podium voor een brede waaier aan nieuw muzikaal talent met liefst 23 selectie- en 6 finaleshows in de fijnste clubs en jeugdhuizen. Maar Sound Track is méér dan een muziekconcours, de artiesten krijgen namelijk een éénjarig parcours op maat waarin coaching, residenties, netwerking, speelkansen en exposure centraal staan.  

Bekijk hieronder de terugblik op Sound Track '23.  

https://img.youtube.com/vi/E2vA318HPNM/maxresdefault.jpg

Sound Track

Maandagavond on Tour, de leukste literaire stand-up avond van De Nwe Tijd, met sprekers, nieuwe teksten, live muziek en verse soep, is TERUG!

In een ontspannen salonsfeer ontvangen Freek Vielen, Suzanne Grotenhuis & Ellis Meeusen Vlaamse en Nederlandse gasten, schrijvers en muzikanten waarmee ze de toestand in hun leven en de wereld bespreken. Verwacht live muziek, interviews en gastoptredens, persoonlijke ontboezemingen, actuele politieke statements en literatuur.  

Bij Maandagavond on Tour start je de week ontspannen en geïnspireerd, met voorafgaand aan het programma een kom (gratis) vegetarische soep. Je zit voor de verandering niet op de tribune, maar bevindt je in een cafésetting op het podium, met een bar in de zaal waar je je favoriete maandagavonddrankje bestelt. 

Maandagavond on Tour is de reiseditie van het succesvolle programma Maandagavond van De Nwe Tijd, dat elke eerste maandag van de maand in het café van hun Antwerpse theater plaatsvindt.


Voor deze editie werkt de Nwe Tijd samen met Mezrab, The House of Stories.  
De concrete invulling van de avond wordt op een later moment bekendgemaakt, dus check regelmatig deze webpagina en onze socials voor de laatste updates!

Maandagavond on Tour #1

In Dark Habits #3, Simon Van Schuylenbergh - along with other performers from the Ne mosquito pas network - presents five short group performances about unspoken morality. By perverting conservative values a gray zone opens up, allowing us to rethink our own values.

For these performances, they delve into Simon's fascination with the “morally ambiguous,” or the impossibility of being pure in a moral sense. For this, they focus on the nun, as described in Pedro Almodovar's film Dark Habits (1983). Not the film's storyline, but especially the nuns' dark habits capture their imagination.

Another reference is The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of queer activists in the 1980s who held ceremonies in homemade nun costumes. Gay men infected with AIDS, whom no one dared touch, were declared sacred. The concept of purity within the Catholic faith was thus completely replaced by the opposite: these nuns preached an anti-normative form of canonization with “the dirty" or "filth".

Dark Habits #3

Geoffrey Burton

In every_body, choreographer Alexander Vantournhout, in collaboration with Emmi Väisänen, explores everyday movements and transforms them into a multitude of body dynamics. A simple handshake evolves into a complex interplay of arms, elbows and shoulders, and an endless strut reveals the potential of leg and foot work. Every_body develops into a complex choreography in which the most subtle movements become remarkable.

The duet is accompanied by a newly created soundtrack by composer and guitarist Geoffrey Burton. Fashion designer and scenographer Tom Van der Borght develops costumes and a surreal universe in which the movement game takes place.

In the past decade, Alexander Vantournhout has created a diverse oeuvre, with group performances such as Foreshadow (2023) and SCREWS (2019) and solos such as VanThorhout (2022) and ANECKXANDER (2015). Every_body (2024) is already his fourth duet, after Through the Grapevine (2020), La Rose en Céramique (2018), and Raphaël (2017) and takes a next step in dissecting everyday movements to push the boundaries of what the human body can do.

every_body

No heights without lows. No end without a beginning. In Beyond the Edge, a group of young people move across a life-size installation of ladders. A performance about how we all try to get higher, but depend on each other in every position.

Circus and dance maker Piet Van Dycke is only 26 but already a well-known name at home and abroad. In 2014, he danced for the first time in Karolien Verlinden's fABULEUS production dUb. In Beyond the Edge, he tests the limits of a mixed cast of young people aged between 13 and 23, at the intersection between acrobatics, dance and parkour. Physical dependence has never been more exciting.

How do we try to get higher? To what extent do we rely on each other for that? Is height the scariest, or is searching for balance even more exciting? In Beyond the Edge, eight young people move across a life-size installation of ladders. Together they explore the extremes and test how far they can take each other. Physical dependence has never been so exciting.

After Exit (2022) and Glorious Bodies (2023), circus and dance maker Piet Van Dycke collaborates for the first time with young people between 13 and 24 years old. Beyond the Edge is a project of the cultural centers of Maasmechelen, Genk, Heusden-Zolder, Houthalen-Helchteren, Lommel and Tongeren together with HET LAB/Krokusfestival and fABULEUS.

Beyond the Edge

Adam

Maggie

Christie

Eric

Anna

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De Brakke Grond is er voor Vlaamse kunstenaars en Nederlandse kunstliefhebbers die hun grenzen willen verleggen. We initiëren en realiseren programma’s en samenwerkingen in ons huis in Amsterdam.

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

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Fight Night

Rooms Performance Festival 2025

Beyond the Black Box 2025

The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan

Residentie: Stijn Demeulenaere - A Thing Heard Is Seldom Seen

Sound Track

Maandagavond on Tour #1

Dark Habits #3

every_body

Beyond the Edge

December

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond

206

131

Fight Night

Rooms Performance Festival 2025

Beyond the Black Box 2025

The Tamilization of Ahilan Ratnamohan

Residentie: Stijn Demeulenaere - A Thing Heard Is Seldom Seen

Sound Track

Maandagavond on Tour #1

Dark Habits #3

every_body

Beyond the Edge

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December