These are the participants of RIDCC 2026!
Here you can find all the information about the sixteen duets participating on June 18-20 in Rotterdam.
7AM – Anna Beghelli & Maé Nayrolles
All Honesty Aside – Zach Enquist
Attempts Left – Adam Khazhmuradov
Castling The Unknown – JA Collective
Ergo – Marc Sayer Cassú & Milica Bajčetić
GÁRGOLA – QABALUM
Kenavo – Tim van den Bos de Lucas
Mother May I – People Watching
Mister Sparkle Told Us To Dance. It Was An Unpretentious Encounter. – Dorėja Atkočiūnas & Rhiannon Beausoleil-Morrison
RESET – Zhang Xi & Youngdae Park
SAUZE – Indhhia & Kham
Self, Reality – SenTen
The World Ends With You -すばらしきこのせかい – Ignacio Fizona
Towards Equilibrium – Kuo Chueh-Kai
When we collide – Alessio Damiani
Young Woman with Her Eyes Closed, c.1890 – Alex Soares
7AM
By Anna Beghelli & Maé Nayrolles
About the choreography 7AM
7AM explores the impact of contemporary society on the body and its progressive homogenization. In the collective imagination, 7AM marks the hour of awakening a prescribed time enforcing productivity, automatism, and conformity. This tension runs through the piece, between societal constraints and the urgent need for personal awareness and bodily emancipation.
Two hooded, faceless performers embody anonymous identities, where the body becomes the sole space of resistance. Through fragmentation and disorientation, the piece moves between control and absurdity. Gradually, the body cracks open and re-emerges, intimate, vital, and expressive ; shaping the poetic signature of 7AM.
About the choreographers
Anna Beghelli, of Italian origin, trained between hip-hop and contemporary dance. She has performed in major opera productions under Éric Ruf, Valérie Lesort & Christian Hecq, and Christian Lacroix, and collaborated with renowned choreographers including Blanca Li, Hervé Diasnas, Tanya Lazebnik, Abou Lagraa, and Nawal Aït Benalla. She is currently a performer with Jann Gallois’BurnOut Company.
Maé Nayrolles trained in classical, jazz, and contemporary dance before working with companies such as Georges Momboye, Inosbadan, Emma Terno, and La Baraka Company. She is currently a performer with Mourad Merzouki’s Käfig Company and Pierre Rigal’s Dernière Minute company. She also took part in the Paris 2024 Olympic opening ceremony.
Credits
Choreography: Anna Beghelli & Maé Nayrolles
Performers: Anna Beghelli & Maé Nayrolles
Music: “Better in my day” – NYX, Gazelle Twin / “Ora” – Daniela Pes / “Unflesh” – Gazelle Twin / original creation nape – Julien Vila
Lights: Emmanuelle Stauble
Costume designer: Manon Hachad
All Honesty Aside
by Zach Enquist
About the choreography All Honesty Aside
All Honesty Aside is a retelling of that argument between you and your partner that you’ve had a thousand times before, but “you don’t know if it’s the argument you need to have, or if it’s just the one you know… the one you’re comfortable with.” Blending a distinctive physical vocabulary with witty, incisive language, and set within a deeply familiar narrative landscape, the work examines the nuances of communication, the comfort of habit, and the quiet power of what goes unsaid.
About the choreographer
Zach Enquist is originally from Minnesota (US), where he grew up as a hybrid competition kid, choir nerd, and theater enthusiast—and has spent the rest of his life negotiating those competing interests. He graduated in 2014 from SUNY Purchase College and has since performed with Hubbard Street 2 and Tanz Luzerner Theater, before moving north to join GöteborgsOperans Danskompani in 2020. His work aims to shine a light on the mundane, the overlooked, the everyday – each show emerging from a collaborative process between artists whose skills stretch across disciplines, creating works that feel honest, familiar and deeply immersive.
Credits
Choreography: Zach Enquist
Performers: Rachel McNamee & Zander Constant
Music: Esperança by Garoto
Attempts Left
by Adam Khazhmuradov
About the choreography Attempts Left
TBA
About the choreographer
TBA
Credits
Choreography: Adam Khazhmuradov
Performers: Adam Khazhmuradov & Wilchaan Roy-Cantu
Music: TBA
Castling The Unknown
by JA Collective
About the choreography Castling The Unknown
A JA stage work inspired by the events of Fischer vs Spassky, Reykjavik 1972.
About the choreographers
JA Collective, founded by Los Angeles–born artists Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry, blends contemporary dance, hip-hop, theater, and video to forge a distinct and compelling world. The duo first gained prominence through their direction and choreography for the band half•alive, whose music videos have amassed millions of views online. Their other commercial work includes collaborations with artists and brands such as: Talking Heads, Doja Cat, Future, Paul McCartney, Frank Ocean, Reggie Watts, Margaret Qualley, Mike Mills, Taika Waititi, Brockhampton, Apple, Allstate, Snapchat, Belvedere Vodka, Meta, and Invisalign. JA Collective choreography has earned awards at various international dance festivals, they were presented at the big TED conference in Vancouver, and they recently created their first ballet, for BalletX, which premiered at Vail Dance Festival. Jordan and Aidan also currently tour internationally as dancers in William Forsythe’s “Friends of Forsythe.” As Kaufman alumni, they are especially grateful to premiere this new work on the USC Kaufman students.
Credits
Choreography: Jordan Johnson & Aidan Carberry
Performers: Jordan Johnson & Aidan Carberry
Music: Eric Pham
Ergo
by Marc Sayer Cassú & Milica Bajčetić
About the choreography Ergo
Other people’s understanding of us is made up of so many complex misunderstandings. Anyone who wants to be understood will never know the delight of being understood, ergo, simple souls, the ones who other people can understand, never feel a desire to be understood. Between projection, misinterpretation, and the wish for true encounter, two people search for connection. A raw dialogue in motion.
About the choreographers
Marc Sayer Cassú was born in Girona in 2001. He started dancing in Girona at a young age and eventually entered the Real Conservatorio Profesional de Danza Mariemma (Madrid) with Juan Polo Cobos as a teacher, where he graduated. Later in 2025, he graduated with honors from Codarts University for the Arts in Rotterdam. He worked in the Staatstheater Nürnberg season 2024/2025. Currently, he is working at the Saarländisches Staatstheater.
Milica Bajčetić, born in 2003, was raised in Belgrade, Serbia, in a family of theatre artists. She began dancing at the age of 10 and graduated from Ballet High School Lujo Davičo in 2022, performing during her studies with Bitef Dance Company and at the National Theatre in Belgrade. She later graduated with honors from Codarts University for the Arts in Rotterdam in 2025. She completed an internship with TanzMainz (2024/25) and began her professional engagement with Club Guy & Roni through Poetic Disasters Club, continuing into the 2026/27 season.
Credits:
Choreography: Marc Sayer Cassú & Milica Bajčetić
Performers: Dušan Bajčetić & Milica Bajčetić
Music: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – Gravin Bryars
GÁRGOLA
by QABALUM (Diego Pazó & Lucía Burguete)
About the choreography GÁRGOLA
GÁRGOLA is QABALUM’s latest project, conceived as an exploration of the symbolic relationship between humankind and the animal, the creature, the essence of biological existence.
In GÁRGOLA, two characters without names or concrete identities, two masses of flesh and bones, search for each other, repel each other, break apart –literally– into pieces, attempting to cross the boundaries that separate them, both from each other and from the world.
Just as our ancestors invented images and rituals, they try to invoke permanence, to open the door back to the womb of an increasingly distant reality, that which we call nature.
About the choreographers
QABALUM is a spanish contemporary dance collective founded in 2020 by Lucía Burguete and Diego Pazó. Since their start, audiences have praised the technical brilliance of the performers, the creation of a distinctive style and their ability to command the space and captivate the audience. Their works bet on the body as a narrative and poetic force and on the evocation of emotional atmospheres and landscapes that shape the spectator’s experience of time. Diego and Lucía also develop their careers as performers with choreographers and companies such as Peeping Tom, Daniel Abreu, LED Silhouette and Jesús Rubio, among others.
Credits
Choreography: Diego Pazó & Lucía Burguete
Performers: Diego Pazó & Lucía Burguete
Music: Maria W. Horn, Keeley Forstyh
Music composition: Diego Pazó
“Kenavo”
by Tim van den Bos de Lucas
About the choreography “Kenavo”
Kenavo is a poetic and physical ode to loss and the elusive emotions that follow when you lose someone dear. In a surreal world filled with imagery, sound, and movement, two performers take you on a journey through grief, memory, and transformation. Together with a live musician on synthesizer, the performers explore a new, sensitive vocabulary within parkour. Guided by the live music, they move through a twilight zone between circus, dance, and freerunning. Kenavo (Breton for “see you again”) is a tribute to a lost friend. Their bodies speak where words fall short: capturing absence, falling, resilience, and farewell in pure physical expression. A visual and physical story, vulnerable, comforting, and filled with gentle hope.
About the choreographer
Tim van den Bos de Lucas, 26, Spain, began his practice in the world of parkour 13 years ago. Later he had the opportunity to begin circus studies: “Carampa” and “Fontys Academy of Circus and Performance arts”. Today he is becoming a circus Maker, introducing a branch of parkour he developped through his practice, mixing different movement disciplines, in the field. He uses movement as a communication language; interacting with his surroundings; whether scenography, other performers, or the audience. He uses his technical knowledge to communicate his concerns, rooted in personal experiences, human and social themes.
Credits
Choreography: Tim van den Bos de Lucas
Performers: Ahmed Mokadem & Diego Ganchou
Music: Joran le Gall (Noraj)
Stage Design: Koen Van Dommelen, Tore Van Den Bos
Production: Trickingtim
Coproduction: Keep An Eye
Outside Eye: Pieter Visser, Ganna Poppea, Ruben Mardulier
Photography: Jona Harnischmacher
Video: Annabelle Zwarter
Special thanks to: Sandra Smiths, Stephan Bikker, De Warande, Maria De Lucas, Bng Price, Festival Circolo
Mother May I
by People Watching (Sabine Van Rensburg & Natasha Patterson)
About the choreography Mother May I
The piece is rooted in feminine power, with a strength that allows for true equality to exist between the dancers. The structure remains playful: like a deconstructed childhood game – a constant testing of limits, using counterweight as the main vocabulary. The duet passes through the different forms that the relationship holds, at times a reflection of self, friendship, love and intimacy. Mother May I honours the invisible thread that binds them.
About the choreographers
Sabine Van Rensburg (b. 1996, South Africa) and Natasha Patterson (b. 1996, San Francisco) are Montréal (Tio’tia:ke)–based performance artists, co-founders & directors of People Watching. With roots in circus, their multidisciplinary practice blends partnering with a visceral mode of storytelling.They have performed internationally with leading companies and created acclaimed works including XENO, SOFT SHELLS, and PLAY DEAD.
Expanding into directing and collaborative creation across stage and film, their new work ‘DOGMA’ will premiere in Montréal this December.
Credits
Choreography: People Watching (Sabine Van Rensburg & Natasha Patterson)
Performers: Sabine Van Rensburg & Natasha Patterson
Music: Apo Mesa Pethamenos by Danai, arranged by Colin Gagné
Mister Sparkle Told Us To Dance. It Was An Unpretentious Encounter.
by Dorėja Atkočiūnas & Rhiannon Beausoleil-Morrison
About the choreography Mister Sparkle Told Us To Dance. It Was An Unpretentious Encounter.
This is a duet about nothing in particular, exploring what happens when two people meet.
We met in the studio on an impulse and tried to create free of judgment, seeing what happens when we don’t try to do something earth shattering but rather follow each others dynamics and moods. We encouraged each other to focus on the purity of just us together here and now. Proposing instinct, unfiltered elegance, the way we would paint ourselves and our place under the sun.
About the choreographers
Dorėja Atkočiūnas was born in Los Angeles (USA) and grew up in Lithuania. She studied at Codarts University of the Arts (Rotterdam), and has also worked with ICK Dans Company (Amsterdam), Landerer&Company (Hannover), and joined the BIELEFELDER STUDIO in August 2023.
Rhiannon Beausoleil-Morrison was born in Ottawa (Canada) and studied at Arts Umbrella (Vancouver) under the artistic direction of Artemis Gordon. In 2023 they participated in the Ballet BC annex program under the direction of Medhi Walerski.
Since the 2024 season, Dorėja and Rhiannon have both been working with Tanz Bielefeld under the artistic direction of Felix Landerer.
Credits
Choreography: Dorėja Atkočiūnas & Rhiannon Beausoleil-Morrison
Performers: Dorėja Atkočiūnas & Rhiannon Beausoleil-Morrison
Music: Ivry (Laaraji Love of my Life Remix) by Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith
Video: Richèl Wieles
Guidance: Felix Landerer
RESET
by Zhang Xi & Youngdae Park
About the choreography RESET
Reset, update, restart, ascend, initialize, break and rebuild.
“Reset: Returning to factory settings,” all caches will be reset to zero.
If all memories are forgotten,
I am the time that was missed.
About the choreographers
Zhang Xi
Representative of APX DANCE COMPANY
PhD in Education, Gachon University, South Korea
MA in Dance, Kangwon National University, South Korea
Zhang Xi has won numerous gold awards in modern dance competitions both at home and abroad, and her works have been highly acclaimed by both professionals and audiences.
She continuously innovates in different spatial concepts, emphasizes the relationship between choreography and dancers, explores more unknown possibilities of dancers, and presents modern dance works with distinctive personal style.
Representative Works: Dome, Monologue, After Dark, Little House, Thirteenth Month, Dislocation, Reset, Infinity
Youngdae Park
Co-founder of APX Dance Company
Ph.D. Candidate in Performing Arts, Kyung Hee University
Adjunct Lecturer in Modern Dance, College of Dance, Kyung Hee University
Adjunct Lecturer, Graduate School of Global Future Education, Kyung Hee University
Awards
• 2025 Best Dancer of the Year, Korea Modern Dance Association
• 2024 Gold Award in Choreography, Seoul International Dance Competition (Work: Reset)
• 2018 1st Prize, Men’s Advanced Category, Korea International Modern Dance Competition
(Granted military service exemption)
Credits
Choreography: Zhang Xi & Youngdae Park
Performers: Chang Hongji & Feng Haoran
Music: RESET – Wang Yuanqing
Lighting technician : Chen shiyue
SAUZE
by Indhhia & Kham
About the choreography SAUZE
Sauze is a dance piece that explores abandonment and memory through the body. It emerges from the image of spaces that slowly empty, where stories fade and silence begins to inhabit them. The work asks what remains and how these traces continue to live within us.
Drawing on a personal language influenced by urban dance, the piece is built on the connection between two bodies that support, transform, and need one another. The movement is physical, organic, and detailed, shifting through states of weight, support, and resistance, creating a constant dialogue between presence and memory.
About the choreographers
Indhhia & Kham, Gabriel Camprubí and Jennifer Jaime, of Latin American origin, met in Barcelona within the world of urban dance. For the past seven years, they have developed a shared practice driven by the desire to bring their work into a more performative and creative context. Through an ongoing research process with a strong conceptual approach, they have built a movement language rooted in continuous physical connection. Their work explores union, listening, and presence, placing the relationship between their bodies at its core.
Credits
Choreography: Indhhia & Kham (Gabriel Camprubi & Jennifer Jaime)
Performers: Gabriel Camprubi & Jennifer Jaime
Music: based on compositions by the artist Gustavo Santaolalla, remixed by Gabriel Camprubi & Jennifer Jaime
Self, Reality
by SenTen (Daichi Yamaguchi & Shintani Souki)
About the choreography Self, Reality
This work questions the memories we unconsciously construct and the “self” formed by them. We tend to equate the self with reality, but is that truly the case? What we see, what we touch, the events that remain in our memory. The world unfolding before us may be nothing more than a fiction shaped by our perception.
About the choreographers
Formed in 2014, SenTen is a dance duo by Daichi Yamaguchi and Souki Shintani. Based on POPPIN, street dance and performing arts are mixed to create original pieces. The works focus on the mass, space, and dimensions that exist between people and the world. Major achievements include the Jury Prize at the SAI DANCE FESTIVAL 2025 and the Session House Award at Dance Flower 2026. In addition to activities in Japan, international invitations include festivals in Finland, South Korea, and Poland.
Credits
Choreography: SenTen (Daichi Yamaguchi & Shintani Souki)
Performers: Daichi Yamaguchi & Shintani Souki
Music: GarakUta – CE↳↰
The World Ends With You -すばらしきこのせかい
by Ignacio Fizona
About the choreography The World Ends With You -すばらしきこのせかい
Two bodies in black suits, trapped in a timeless space, surrender to invisible forces that drag them into chaos. Their bodies oscillate between the rigidity of control and the fragility of memory, getting lost in a labyrinth of interrupted encounters and inevitable voids. They linger between resistance and surrender, between fading memories and a reality that collapses. They search for an exit that perhaps never existed.
About the choreographer
Ignacio Fizona is a contemporary dance performer and choreographer currently working with La Veronal, directed by Marcos Morau, appearing in Totentanz: Morgen ist die frage and La mort i la primavera. He graduated in contemporary dance from CPDA. Ignacio was part of the GoOD project (2019–2020, 2021–2022) and the young company Gerard Collins (2020–2022). He later joined IT Dansa (2022–2024), under the artistic direction of Catherine Allard, performing works by choreographers such as Ohad Naharin, Akram Khan, Cayetano Soto and Gustavo Ramírez.
As a choreographer he directed and choreographed two duets: Despliegue de la Penumbra and The World Ends With You, both currently on tour
Credits
Choreography: Ignacio Fizona
Performers: Ignacio Fizona & Pol Vázquez
Music: Thom Yorke, Jerskin Fendrix
Costume design: Ignacio Fizona
Towards Equilibrium
by Kuo Chueh-Kai
About the choreography Towards Equilibrium
“Equilibrium is an ideal endpoint between myself and the other.”
Moving towards it means responding to every shift and deviation, coming closer through a state of continuous imbalance.
About the choreographer
Kuo Chueh-Kai is a contemporary dance choreographer and performer from Taiwan. His practice explores the dialogue between the body and objects — how physical experience can reshape perception and challenge the boundaries of habit. Often questioning social norms and what people take for granted, his movement language merges contemporary dance with martial arts, acrobatics, and tricking to create a raw yet poetic expression of freedom and constraint.
Credits
Choreography: Kuo Chueh-Kai
Performers: Hsu Li-En & Chen Yu-Chi
Music: Melodium
When we collide
by Alessio Damiani
About the choreography When we collide
“When we collide” explores the imprint of a hug—one that is longed for, remembered, and desperately needed. It begins with absence: a missing embrace that lingers in the body like a trace of something once deeply felt. As the movement unfolds, the search for this lost connection grows urgent, almost unbearable. What starts as a gentle memory becomes a necessity, a visceral need. The piece reaches its climax in a powerful collision—an embrace so intense it borders on destruction.
About the choreographer
Alessio Damiani, born in 1993 in Palermo, Italy, where began his dance training. At 18, he joined the Agora Coaching Project in Reggio Emilia. Since 2013, he has worked as a freelance dancer and teacher in Italy and Germany. In 2017, he joined the Hessisches Staatsballett in Wiesbaden, collaborating with renowned choreographers. Recently, he has developed his own choreographic voice, with works like Burdens of Being touring internationally.
Credits
Choreography: Alessio Damiani
Performers: Enzo Boffa & Alessio Damiani
Music: Path 5 (Delta) – Max Richter
Costume design: Alessio Damiani
Light design: Alessio Damiani
Dramaturgy: Alessio Damiani
Young Woman with Her Eyes Closed, c.1890
by Alex Soares
About the choreography Young Woman with Her Eyes Closed, c.1890
Inspired by Camille Claudel’s terracotta sculptures and her personal life, the duet Young Woman with Her Eyes Closed, c. 1890 (also the title of one of her works) aims to capture the paradox of emotions that defined her existence: anger, disapproval, and rejection within a predominantly male artistic world, intertwined with delicacy, the defiance of conventions, a profound love for the human body, and the deep, raw emotions that Claudel poured into her marble and bronze sculptures.
About the choreographer
Alex Soares, (Brazil) has had a career as a dancer in São Paulo City Ballet, performed works by choreographers like Ohad Naharin, Mauro Bigonzetti, Itzik Galili, Angelin Preljocaj, Cayetano Soto, Henrique Rodovalho, among others. Alex also studied film-making, with the purpose of using this knowledge in his scenic productions and also in the creation of video dances.
As a choreographer and videomaker, he had developed works for dance companies in Brazil and abroad, like São Paulo City Ballet, São Paulo Dance Company, Chilean National Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2 (USA), Northwest Dance Project (USA) and KOMA Ballet (Denmark).
He is currently the Artistic Director of Cia Jovem de Jundiaí, a company focused on the professional development of young talents.
Credits
Choreography: Alex Soares
Performers: Maria Eduarda Castro & Maxmiler Junio
Music: Voice of Florence Nightingale / We Don’t Need Other
Worlds, We Need Mirrors by Ben Frost & Daniel Bjarnason /
Constellation Hiraeth: Adagio for Sonata in B minor for
violin and piano, BWV 1014 by Tamar Halperin & Etienne Abelin
Costume & Lighting design: Alex Soares
