7 February 2026
by Wendy Lubberding

Seen on 6 February 2026, Holland Dance Festival, Theater aan het Spui, The Hague

Dance is for every body. Leaving aside the fact that it is good for a body to dance, or that it can be beautiful to watch a body flow, turn and open up. Dance is; the body is.

The inclusive cast of HubClub ’26 by Introdans, in co production with the anniversary celebrating Holland Dance Festival, embraces that idea in a programme featuring five works by four guest choreographers, danced by thirteen performers with very different bodily realities. Some are professional dancers, others are not; some have just graduated from dance school, others finished their training in a completely different era, or did not attend an academy at all but learned to dance within their company or on the streets.

When you look at the works in this programme, you realise that it does not really matter. Where there is intention and attention not to work together in academic shorthand, but to be open to reduced sight or hearing, to a body that needs more recovery time after work, to a different sensitivity to stimuli, you still arrive at a dance work with expressive power.

This is shown most beautifully in Live, Live, All We Can Do Is Live by Jordy Dik, a newly created piece by the artistic director of Compagnie Tiuri, made especially for this HubClub. Five men enter the stage, alternately dressed in black or white suits. They line up from left to right. All of them wear a veil over their heads, evoking images of brides and women in mourning. Life and death, side by side and intertwined. Their dance begins with a deeply sensory act for the dancer’s body: slowly they pull the veils away from themselves, gripping the front and moving their hand slowly straight down.