MEET THE MAKERS

FRAGILE PRESCENCE

This choreographic concept explores change as a fundamental condition of the human experience, starting from a central question: how does the body shape our inner life, our emotional state, and our way of being in the world? Through dance, the body becomes the space where the tension between external expectations and inner fragility is expressed. The performers move between the desire to disappear and the unconscious will to resist. In this struggle, the body does not give in: it vibrates, adapts, falls but continues to transform. It is within this change that a deeper truth emerges: change is not merely a transition from one state to another, but a living process, inscribed in the flesh, in the breath, in the gesture. Dance thus becomes a space of resistance and renewal, where the human being confronts their own limits and discovers, through movement, the possibility of going beyond them.

Performed with Gabriél Vassilli Biondini
Photo: Jacopo Greppi
Music: The Beatles, Nils Frahm

Chiara Mucciarella is a freelance performer and choreographer. She graduated in Italy at ArteMente, a center for advanced dance training, and since then has collaborated with several choreographers who have profoundly shaped her artistic journey, including Constanza Macras (Non ho l’età, Lunella Cherchi (Societas), Simone Donati (The Weight of Air), Maria Giovanna Delle Donne (41), and Vittoria de Ferrari Sapetto (Turn it on/off).

Over the years, she has developed her own choreographic language, driven by the urgency to give voice to contemporary, often political, issues, with the intention of provoking critical reflection on today’s world. Her creative research grows out of personal experiences and seeks a kind of movement that feels necessary, authentic, and rooted in emotion.

She draws inspiration above all from bodies not trained in dance, observing how they move in specific situations and translating this into gestures that are alive, real, and never ornamental. Every creation begins with an emotion, exploring how it arises and takes shape in the body spontaneously. In her process, she guides performers through dedicated training that allows them to access deep emotional states, from which sincere and transformative movement can emerge.

In 2024, her co-creation with Anna Bonechi, Il Paradiso sa di mare, was selected for the MilanOltre Festival as part of the Affollate Solitudini Teens program, and was presented in October 2024 at Teatro Elfo Puccini.

BOUND

This is McKenna’s new work in progress. Bound explores the process of setting and unraveling boundaries as an impetus for change. What limits exist purely in one’s mind? How can we approach situations with more curiosity and fewer pre-conceived ideas about how things are supposed to go? Conversely, how can setting limits open us to more creativity?

Music: Gwenno Morgan

McKenna is an autodidact contemporary dancer creating and performing in Amsterdam and beyond. She created the platform Fledgling Dancers Amsterdam as a gathering place for blossoming dancers to perform. She can also be seen performing with contemporary collective Modern Bruises, improvisation collective Movement Laboratory, and freelancing as a dancer, actress, and producer in Europe and the United States.

ACHTERUIT

‘Achteruit’ is a personal and raw contemporary dance piece that tells the story of the choreographer Marije Neumann, who’s been diagnosed with severe heart disease only a few months ago at a young age, through a small group of young dancers. 

They interact with each other in different ways through rhythmic, shifting and fractured movement to capture the different stages of grief. They move through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, all in their own ways. Connecting with each other, breaking up and being on their own, being caught in moments of frustration and helplessness, but also in quiet attempts to hold on.  

It’s about losing control of your plans for the future but also of today while feeling like you’re constantly trapped inside your own body.   

‘Achteruit’ offers an honest glimpse into the different sides that come with medical uncertainty. It is not supposed to be a ‘sob story’ or a victimizing narrative. It’s about visibility of the invisible, about showing what chronic illness can look like beneath the surface, especially in young people. 

‘Achteruit’ means backwards in English, because sometimes feeling like you’re going backwards doesn’t have to mean you can never move forwards again. 

Performed by: Marije van de Velde, Jula Verleg, Imke ter Riet

Music: Tom van Wee

ACHTERUIT

Marije Neumann is a 22-year-old Dutch dancer who’s exploring her way into the professional dance world. She started taking dance more seriously when she turned 15, but took a break around 18 years old to take some time to grow into herself as a person. Now at 22 years old she’s been back for the past almost two years and is happier than ever to fully commit to dance. Mostly trained in contemporary with a foundation of ballet and some urban touches here and there she likes to create phrases and pieces with the knowledge she attained in these different styles during past years. 

Her choreography is grounded, raw, with a technical base and is formed by the dancers who perform it. She finds tuning into your own body while dancing very important and she uses that during choreographing and teaching, because each body is different and has its own unique qualities.

THE ROOM

“The Room” arises from a personal need: to question the image I have built through waacking. The performance delves into the subtle tension between being and appearing within a context—waacking—where aesthetics and character construction can often impose limits on identity.

For a long time, I inhabited a “constructed” image that I genuinely believed was mine. Yet, at a certain point, cracks began to show: I started to wonder whether what I was expressing was truly sincere, or merely a response to external expectations.

This rupture led to a central question that continues to guide my research: “Is my dance authentic, or am I simply performing what the mainstream expects of me?” In this performance, waacking becomes both a vehicle of liberation and a symbol of constraint, a metaphor for a dual impulse: the desire to belong and the deeper urge to remain authentic.

“The Room” is an invitation to embrace imperfection, to create space for complexity, inadequacy, and nonconforming beauty. It is an act of honesty towards oneself. And perhaps one day, that little girl will find a place beyond what others expect of her.

Music: Yann Tiersen, Watchdog, Kool & the Gang

My name is Irene Maglio and I'm a dancer and choreographer with a versatile background in contemporary dance, hip hop, and a strong specialization in waacking — a discipline I have explored deeply both in Italy and abroad. I began my training in ballet and contemporary dance in my hometown in Italy, and over time, I expanded my practice to urban styles, with a growing focus on the expressive, performative, and community-driven dimensions of waacking.

Over the years, I’ve been part of the Torino Waacking Project, an experience that opened the door to international performances and battles across Europe. I’ve worked as a dancer with choreographers such as Sadek Berrabah (Moncler – Milano Fashion Week), Simone Bua (Faces), Claudia Quaglia (About My First Love), Lorena Venezuela, and Urban Theory (America’s Got Talent), performing in both theatrical and street contexts in cities like Milan, Paris, Amsterdam, and Los Angeles. In theatre projects like Plastik Diva and Faces, I had the opportunity to explore the intersection between contemporary and urban choreographic languages.

Alongside my work as a performer, I’m active as a freelance choreographer and teacher of waacking and hip hop and I also collaborate as an event assistant for WaackDictionary, and continue to cultivate a strong interest in improvisation, interdisciplinary research, and collaborative creation.

DE WIND EN IK

This piece is about standing in the wind to feel (uitwaaien). It's about finding peace when everything feels hectic, and feeling your inner storm when everything seems to stand still. It’s about accepting change within yourself and the changes that happen every day around you.

Performed with Rosa Grillo

Music: Småland, Lily Chou Chou

(UN)FAMILIAR

(un)familiar is both a personal and universal reflection on transition — the tension between rootedness and exploration, between safety and possibility. It explores the inner conflict between longing for change and the fear of losing connections, stability, and control. By weaving her own experiences of relocation into the work, Ania Skotniczna examines the themes of belonging, attachment, fear, courage, and freedom.

(un)familiar is an ongoing research, drifting through questions: Where do we truly belong? What ties hold us in place? What does it take to loosen our grip on the comfort we so carefully weave around ourselves? Is growth possible without letting go of stability and control? Might the unfamiliar hold freedom rather than danger? And what unfolds when we let go of all we know and step into the unknown?

Music: Nils Frahm

Ania Skotniczna is a dancer, performer, and emerging maker from Poland, currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and soon relocating to Barcelona, Spain. Drawing on her background in psychology research and dance experience, she creates work that explores the complexity of human emotion, thought, and behaviour. Rooted in improvisation, her practice seeks to capture the authenticity and depth of human experience, translating inner landscapes into movement. 

INEVITABLE

Inevitable speaks to our longing to hold on, to shape what cannot be shaped, to resist the flow of life. Change, the only true constant, moves faster than we can grasp, touching us even in silence, even when we are unaware. In our struggle to resist changes, we meet only tension, suffering, and inevitable failure. Yet the question remains: how do we soften and surrender to what we cannot control? 

This piece captures a struggle between resistance and release, embodying the tension of letting go and the grace of becoming. What begins in conflict finds its way to acceptance, carrying a thread of hope. Because change is inevitable, the path of least suffering is learning to be graceful.

Inevitable grew out of a broader exploration of change and improvisation-based movement research guided by Ania. The final composition is a co-creation shaped by the collective voices of performers McKenna, Seline, and Wiktoria.

Performed by: Wiktoria Zygumunt, Selin Yucelbak, McKenna Mahacek

Music: McKenna Mahacek

YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL

This is a modern/contemporary solo delving into the theme of change. It questions whether love will last even when external things such as beauty and age change, exploring how time inevitably changes us all.

Music Lana del Rey

ImpostORA

“I want you to never stop flying for anyone.

I want your voice to be louder than anyone who wants to silence you.

I want you to never submit.

I want your light to never go out.

I want you to learn your lesson right away. You can make mistakes, but don't repeat them.

I want you to leave at the first sign of danger,

Without waiting for disasters to happen.

I want you to never sell out your dignity,

Because in your hands is the power to build what you want.

I don't want you to be like me,

I want you to be a better version.

I want you unprecedented, incomparable, unique.

I want you a warrior, powerful, with wings of steel.

I want you happy, passionate about what you do.

I want you complete, with a bright gaze.

I want you alive for yourself, and also for me.

I want you strong, unstoppable, indestructible.

And if someone doesn't want all this for you, tell me,

Because I'll be the one to pave the way for you”.

Julia Lechado

This is our starting point. It is a dedication by the author to her daughter, but the same thought can be used to work on ourselves.

From this dedication, a reflection begins, related to our relationship with ourselves, with our inner 'self,' which can lead us to SELF-SABOTAGE if we do not learn to accept who we are and what we have experienced.

We developed through this duet the duality of the PHYSICAL SELF and the MENTAL SELF.

The MENTAL SELF tries to create obstacles to the PHYSICAL SELF and prevents it from evolving.

The obstacles we refer to are the result of a society and culture that forces us to follow the crowd and not have our own identity.

In addition to topics concerning women, who are required to have a maternal role in order to feel like women within society, one of the most important issues for us is our art, which, especially in our country (Italy), does not always provide the opportunity to build a future, and those who choose to live from it may often feel marginalized.

We tend to chase a life that doesn’t belong to us just to avoid feeling out of place.

The MENTAL SELF makes us live between past failures and future anxieties, making us dwell on what happened, focus on negative thoughts, regret what was or wasn’t done, wonder what would have happened if... preventing us from enjoying the present moment: the HERE AND NOW.

Negative emotions and feelings should not be avoided, but welcomed and managed so that they can transform into the engine that drives us to reach our goals. We always learn from our mistakes, so we must accept all unpleasant situations as well.

This representation is a journey within ourselves, a discovery of who we are, the acceptance of what we are, and the search for balance and alignment between the PHYSICAL SELF and the MENTAL SELF.

Only by finding balance between the duality of the self we can achieve the self-awareness that is the key to realization.

“The first and greatest of all powers is self-knowledge."

Performers: Beatrice Nassi and Sara Pillino

Choreography: Beatrice Nassi and Sara Pillino

Music: Jon Hopkins, Superpoze, Chilly Gonzales, Boys Noize, Erol Alkan

UNREADY

Unready tells the story of two lovers doomed by the timing of their encounter. As they fight against the creeping poison of pessimism and mistrust, they begin to change one another in ways that damage their bond. This duet reflects on how our core beliefs ultimately shape the fate of our relationships.

Music: Childish Gambino

DREAMING BODY

Dreaming Body was created out of a desire for escape from being caught in being a body. This last year I found this sensation arising more often that usual, and I began creating moments of dream-like existence for myself when I would be out and about, particularly at the Nieuwemeer. I would let myself exit the objectifying restrictions of being in a woman’s body, drifting into a more aerial or aquatic state by identifying not with my flesh, but with how my movement and breath can synchronize with the air around me, with the waves in the lake near my home. I began to spend more and more time in these states, letting myself become increasingly a part of these motions in the world rather than a body-object imposed upon its surface. In doing this, I feel that I have found an alternative to living in a body that is so often understood as an object. These dream-like moments of lightness between moments of living I carry around with me, secretly slipping into these dreams - the lake-body, the wind-body - whenever I felt my subjecthood disappearing. Dreaming-Body is an attempt to move these dreams.

Music: Balenescu Quartet

EMDRAM - This is no Trick

I designed this piece with the idea to connect theatre and club. I wanted to create something that's in your face, and also gets back the essence of sound, what this does for us. 

Because I wanted to dive into production - choreography and sound, I chose Nina & Jeff for the performance - I think they translate the vision in their own way, and I like that.

Pulsing movement and sound carries a story about the nervous system with all kinds of layers. 

The concept is also about the fact that it is so important to listen to your own nature, even when your surroundings don't support this.

It is always you against you.

Performed by: Nina Stoter and Jeff Maljers

Music: Eefje de Visser, Nuno Dos Santos, Debbie Huisman, Sam Brickel, Josh Wink, Oma Totem

Find here the extended single by Debbie “Breakscape”

Thank you to the many people that made this evening possible. We operate without external funding and your ticket sales make an evening like tonight possible.

Thank you to all of the makers and performers who volunteer their time to show their art.

Thank you to Fajo Jansen for offering the space and technical assistance.

Thank you to Gemma Rijnders, Timothy Andrew, Ania Skotniczna, and Christina Mastori for photo and video assets.

Thank you to our intern Selin Yucelback for production support, lighting support, and hosting.

Thank you to volunteers Georgina Markopoulou, Yessica Diaz, and Sofia Garcia Miramon

Thank you to Kevin Wallace for production support.

We hope to see you at our showcases in the future!

Sincerely,

McKenna (our founder)