NextSteps 2026
What happens when ballet and hip hop engage in dialogue with each other? Not six-step vs. pas de chat. NextSteps looks beyond those stereotypes and brings together disciplines and dancers of the highest caliber. In what is already the third edition, the Junior Company and ISH Dance Collective continue their journey of discovery. You can experience the results on June 26 and 27 at Studio Boekman.
DARING FUSION
Within NextSteps, emerging creators are given the space to develop short choreographies for professional dancers, with ballet and hip hop as equal starting points. The program offers an inspiring environment for artistic research, experimentation, and exchange, and forms a bridge between styles, worlds, and generations.
Programme
Riff | Choreografie Savea Kagan
Riff honours and celebrates rawly unfiltered spontaneity, boldly untailored vibrance, out-of-pocket banter, and off-the-cuff uncensored sensations. Whether aware or not, we riff our way through everyday life, whether it be a serendipitous conversation with a stranger, an uncalled for witticism, an impromptu speech, the bopping of heads, clapping of hands, the tapping of a finger to the beat of a drum, our brilliant reactions when things go wrong, top rock, bottom rock, the strings of a guitar, the crack of a voice, the slip of a tendu, and the building on a theme such as this very piece.
Romance of the Edges | Choreography Tú Hoàng
Romance of the Edges is a choreographic exploration of identity, intimacy and time. The work investigates how human relationships evolve under pressure; how bodies adapt, collide, drift apart and reconnect. Through a physical movement language that balances tension and tenderness, the piece reveals identity as something unstable, continuously shaped by our experiences.
Here, then. | Choreography Mind in Movement (Sophie Tukker and Carmine Vigliotti)
Here, then. is a duet for a ballet dancer and a hip-hop dancer that explores the reunion of two childhood friends who grew up in the same neighbourhood but have taken very different paths in life. They return to the place where they once belonged together, not as children, but as adults carrying the weight, scars, strengths and contradictions of the choices they have made. Their encounter is charged with unresolved history: loyalty intertwines with rivalry, admiration with disappointment, while a lingering sense of unfinished business resurfaces the moment they come face to face.
FLUID FORMS | Choreography Lucinda Wessels
FLUID FORMS is part of an ongoing research project exploring duets between bodies, between movement languages, between the inner and outer self, and between the visible and invisible structures that shape the body. In this project, multidisciplinary artist Lucinda Wessels investigates the different ways in which bodies relate to systems, identities and inner landscapes, always with a focus on encounter and dialogue. The research will culminate in the premiere of FLUID FIGURES in November 2026, presented as part of FUTURE VOICES by Nicole Beutler Projects.