MEET THE MAKERS

FREE FALL

Free fall is a piece about falling in love. The feeling you get in your stomach on a rollercoaster at the very peak before the fall, a mix of fear and excitement, is similar to the double coined feelings that come with falling in love. Makes you giggle, and makes you nauseous. Just like all love stories, this one has a tinge of melancholy.

Music: Olivia Rodrigo

Bio: Selin is one of the producers of Fledgling. She is back with this performance after a year long hiatus from dance. She’s also a light technician in venues across Amsterdam.

TOO WHAT?

"Too What?" is a work-in-progress solo piece that seeks to reveal the internal tensions and struggles that arise between expressing one’s desires and the fear of doing it. What happens when a woman has always learnt not to take too much space, not to disagree too strongly, not to get too angry, not to express too strong opinions, not to be too ambitious? Drawing a parallel between all the women through history who were denied or even silenced for departing from their prescribed role and those who today still feel trapped by societal expectations, the piece denounces what an oppressive system does to women’s bodies.

Music: Floating Points

RESHAPING ROOTS

“Reshaping Roots” is a multidisciplinary performance combining monologue, reading, and dance. The piece explores the tension between movement and stillness: our urge to discover new realities while holding onto routines, silence, and memory. Through autobiographical reflections, the work examines personal struggles and invites the audience to consider how we carry and preserve both past and present within ourselves.

Music: Outward - Rhythm & Sound, Mind Chatter - Re:um

Social Media : @jorjinamrk

ANATOMY OF A CRACK

Anatomy of a Crack "The performance originates from an intimate research on the theme of vulnerability. The starting point of the work is a series of eight photographs I have taken over the years of people who are deeply important to me. These are not constructed or heroic images, but fragments of presence in which I recognize an authentic vulnerability that the body preserves and reveals.

Beginning from these photographs, the research develops through an attempt to physically translate the emotional essence of the images without reproducing them faithfully. Each photograph becomes a bodily landscape made of tensions, collapses, resistances, postures, and absences. The body moves through shifting and unstable states, constantly oscillating between protection and openness, between the desire to disappear and the need to be seen.

Vulnerability is explored in its ambiguous and dual nature: on one side as fragility, the possibility of being hurt, and exposure; on the other as a space of strength and relation, since it implies the abandonment of defences and the acceptance of the other. In this sense, the body becomes both an emotional archive and a political space, a place where fragilities can exist without being hidden or corrected.

The theme of departure runs through the project as an experience of transformation and separation. The photographs represent presences connected to time, to relationships that change, and to bodies that cannot be held in their original form. The performance therefore emerges from a process of transition: departing from the image in order to let it transform into the body, departing from memory to enter a living, unstable, and shared space. Departure is not understood simply as physical leaving, but as an emotional condition of change, loss, and exposure to the other."

Music: Abel Ghekiere

Artist Bio: Chiara Mucciarella is a freelance performer and choreographer. Her choreographic practice explores contemporary social and political issues through an authentic, emotionally driven movement language inspired by the observation of untrained bodies.

Her works have been presented at festivals and venues including MilanOltre, BASE Milano, Teatro PimOff, Spazio Mercurio, and Dijktheater. In 2026, she was selected for Art Gang Expo (MTD Trajectory & WORM), where she developed Anatomy of a Crack, presented in Milan and Rotterdam.

BOUND

What boundaries keep us safe? What boundaries keep us small? In her solo, McKenna explores the unravelling and rewriting of boundaries to give oneself both creative freedom and psychological safety at the same time.

Music: Gwenno Morgan

Artist bio: McKenna Mahacek is a freelance dancer and choreographer originally from Michigan. She is the founder of Fledgling Dancers Amsterdam and has given a stage to over 100 dancers and choreographers. Her artistic practice is rooted in community and collaboration, and she has spent the last 3 years performing with contemporary collective Modern Bruises, and instant composition collective Movement Laboratory. She recently premiered her first feature length choreography “McKenna Mahacek turns 30,” a dance theater piece about aging alongside a cast of 14 dancers. McKenna is embarking on a new journey in Chicago and New York, and hopes to continue dancing throughout the remainder of her life.

BIRD

Bird' a solo about freedom, happiness and finding your own expression and power. A bird that was stuck, but always flies. Showing freedom in dance and movement and in connection with the public and the space around us.

Music: Argile & African Cultural Music

Artist Bio: Simone Heijloo is a performer, producer, choreographer, movement coach and dance therapist. Specialized in African Contemporary dance and a unique teacher in this dance technique in the Netherlands. 

Simone studied African Traditional and African Contemporary dance in Senegal

(École des Sables, Germaine Acogny) and in Burkina Faso (École de Danse Irène Tassembédo, EDIT), Africa. And completed many internships in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Burkina Faso.

With local artists in the Netherlands and Africa, Simone produced several African Contemporary dance and music events and performances. 

Simone teaches all ages and loves sharing her passion for dance and connecting people. So everyone, young and old, can move and experience the joy of dancing! 

Performances, workshops and classes are available for businesses, weddings and parties and any other event!

www.simoneheijloo.nl

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 Data van der Zaag for filming.

Thank you to Selin Yucelback for production and lighting.

Thank you to Georgina Markopoulou for hosting.

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

Sincerely,

McKenna (our founder)