songs for friends: a vinyl developed out of the physicality of rope-skipping, a long afternoon of reminiscence, and a co-reading of Hermann Hesse’s Kinderseele and Demian (two novels that delve into a child’s experiences of guilt and shame, of light and shadow)
Ashley & Domenik grew up on opposite ends of the world. In this transmedial performance, they have built a shared world out of fractured memories that are charged with violence and intimacy. Each element – choreography, text, scenography, and sound – has been crafted by them, by hand. By placing separate memories into the same space, they activate speculative realities in which they navigate hurt, dissociation, and change, no longer alone but together. The performance offers a personal, visceral, and sometimes puzzling experience that invites spectators to connect through their own memories.
“Here is an album we have made for you. This is a record of loss, and also of growing up – which is almost the same thing. As the record plays from outside-in, the rings of trees are growing from inside-out. Time is spiralling, and we skip rope across it.
Welcome to this living room. Here, memories dismantle, marred by glitches; violence and intimacies yield to each other with tenderness. Pull, push, pull. In the emergent speculative realities, we navigate dissociation and change. This is the place where we created ourselves. Come on in. All is as constructed as it is real.”
Ashley Ho & Domenik Naue is a collection of limbs and hearts. We create transmedial performative encounters, playing across dance, poetry, music, and scenographic experiments. We believe in performance as a social practice – a political, intimate process of transforming and being transformed. More than a consistent focus on specific thematics, our works propose a way being with the world, that confronts harshness through vulnerability and playfulness. Our collaboration has been nurtured by friendship, as well as support from institutions such as Dansateliers, workspacebrussels, Over het IJ, De Nieuwe Oost, CAMPO, and Dance Nucleus. our work has been presented in festivals such as Moving Futures, FAT Leiden, Dansand, Offspring (SPRING Utrecht), and con·tact Contemporary Dance Festival.
We graduated from the Dancer/Maker Bachelor’s programme at ArtEZ University of the Arts in 2022, and are currently working between the Netherlands, Belgium, and Singapore.