During the Nederlandse Dansdagen you can experience dance live on stage in Maastricht as well as online. The online program of the Nederlandse Dansdagen will feature, among other things, three new Virtual Residencies. For this edition, the following makers have been selected:
Yoko Haveman (Dansateliers)
James Parnell (Korzo)
Skypunch Collective (Dansbrabant)
At the live event, all three makers and their works for the Virtual Residencies will be presented. Take a look into their creative process and engage in conversation with the makers.
About the Virtual Residencies
For the Virtual Residencies, makers are selected who work on projects in which digital media play a central role. Think of the use of film, motion capture, or digital avatars in combination with dance. During the Nederlandse Dansdagen we provide a digital glimpse into their creative process. Not finished works, but projects in development; exploratory, experimental, and constantly in motion.
Nederlandse Dansdagen collaborates with three organizations that together cover a large part of talent development in dance: Dansateliers, Korzo, and Dansbrabant.
Work by Yoko Haveman
“During the Virtual Residency of the Nederlandse Dansdagen, this presentation offers an in-depth look into the research trajectory surrounding the visual components of a tribute to everything that breaks. At the heart of this process is the development of a virtual projection: a 2D/3D animated female figure that moves both synchronously with and disruptively against my body and choreography. This digital avatar will detach itself from narratives of conquest, implosion, or sacrifice. Supported by Dansateliers, Vera Bonder (artistic coordinator) will present my work and explain the creative process through virtual sketches, choreographic documentation, and in-depth conversations. A tribute to everything that breaks is an ode to the inner forces of a constantly transforming female body, which through deconstruction offers new perspectives on what it means to be human.”
Work by James Parnell
For Virtual Residencies, James Parnell is developing an “interactive fiction game,” inspired by his choreography Hold Me Closer, which he created earlier this year for the CaDance Festival 2025. In this experience, the online player not only determines the course of the story, but also shapes how the final choreography will unfold— as a journey where dance, identity, and agency merge.
Work by Skypunch Collective
In this pilot for a new work, Skypunch Collective explores a cinematic fiction: a virtual world in which bodies inhabit and transcend both their own space and each other’s. By layering and overlapping images, the figures encounter one another without the restriction of time and space. This creates a new, redefined form of closeness— a radical intimacy, beyond the physical boundaries of the body.
Image: Edward Hermans
