PINK PANTHER PARTY XXL on Dans Magazine

October 31, 2025
by: Joost Groeneboer

Introdans’ Pink Panther Party is entering a new phase. A roundtable conversation about the XXL version with choreographers Chantal de Vries and Adriaan Luteijn, guest dancers Debbie Ruijter and Guetjens Bazier, and social coach Geertje Francke from the Gelderland social development company Scalabor, which connects work and talent.

“First breathe! Hold on to each other somewhere, stay in touch. I need to feel it!”
As marketing & PR officer Lonneke Koelemaij leads me to the studio where Chantal is already rehearsing with the Introdans dancers and guest dancers to You Should Be Dancing by the Bee Gees, we weave through a maze of small staircases and hallways. The traces of the former Arnhem nightclub Pink Panther are still clearly visible in the building. “That was the vestibule,” Lonneke points out, “and over there was the drinks and snacks bar.” “Yes, and underneath the theater hall the glass disco floor is still there,” adds Adriaan, passing by. When I peek over the balcony railing, I see the spot where Arnhem’s disco youth once let loose, and on the floor are two dancers with a different physical reality, Eva Eikhout and Joseph Tebandeke, warming up for the run-through of Iungo (see Dans Magazine 2024/4), another Introdans production featuring guest dancers. The Pink Panther Party dancers have been invited to watch. Their performance afterward sparks plenty of conversation.

You’ve just seen Iungo as a gift. What did you think?
Debbie: “I’d seen it before, but it hit me just as hard this time. It really gets under your skin!”

And now you’re performing Pink Panther Party yourselves. I hear you have a background in waacking, an expressive dance style that originated in 1970s Los Angeles. Will that be reflected in the show?
Debbie: “Definitely. My background is in voguing and waacking. It’s really special to bring Street and Club styles back into the theater—styles that were born within the LGBTQIA+ community out of a need to express yourself and simply exist. That was the 1970s, but in 2025 it’s just as relevant.”

You’ve already performed the show twice before—once in the small hall of Stadstheater and earlier in the former nightclub. What’s different about the upcoming XXL version, Adriaan?
Adriaan: “Guetjens! (everyone laughs). But seriously, we’re performing Pink Panther Party in two large concert halls this time—Musis Arnhem and De Vereeniging Nijmegen. With 22 dancers, the cast is bigger than before. We’ve paid extra attention to creating a good mix of cultures—and I don’t just mean geographic cultures, but social ones too: age, gender, all beautifully intertwined. And also a mix of dance cultures. Debbie and Guetjens are great examples of that. Guetjens brings his own unique style again.”

What’s your style, Guetjens?
Guetjens: “A mix of hip-hop and krumping. Krump is a dance form full of passion—it’s expression, expression, and more expression. That’s where I feel at home. But I find it really interesting to set my usual styles aside a bit and combine them with new ones. It’s fun to do something different from what you’re used to. And I think it’s going well, if I may say so myself. I really want to develop my skills further. So I’m seizing this opportunity.”

And how did you get involved in this project?
Guetjens: “My world is pretty broad. I’m very creative with my hands—I design clothes and teach dance to children. I studied at the MBO Rijn IJssel for three years and then did a preparatory dance program at ArtEZ. But during the COVID period, due to personal issues, I couldn’t finish my training. That’s how I ended up with Geertje from Scalabor. Together we explored what suited me best. We tried all sorts of things, but I mainly wanted to dance again—to move and feel that spark again.

I was lucky to take part in Scalabor Bruist in 2024, an inclusion project by Adriaan in collaboration with Scalabor and ArtEZ dance students. And now he’s asked me to join Pink Panther Party. It’s really amazing. We’ve only been working for a week, but it already feels like such a close group—a place where we can truly be ourselves, beyond the dance.”

How has it been for you, Debbie?
Debbie: “I felt comfortable right away. Adriaan and Chantal are really good at breaking the ice and bringing people together quickly. They do it in fun ways, with little games and exercises. For example, Adriaan had us interview the person next to us and then introduce them instead of ourselves. And Chantal had us speed-date!”

“Connection is really important to me. From day one, everyone dove straight into the project. And by day two, we already felt like a family. It was very open and accepting—that energy worked instantly.”

Who are the other dancers? Where do they come from?
Adriaan: “Among the 22 dancers, there are four permanent Introdans dancers and three interns. The rest are guest dancers. Some, like Debbie and Guetjens, joined us directly. Others come from ArtEZ, Fontys, and as many as seven interns from MBO Rijn IJssel. They all auditioned.

We find it important to make that visible too—that dance talent doesn’t only come through higher education programs. These days, I work very much from a sense of ownership. People come in as artists. You connect with others, but you also take good care of yourself. All dancers are trained to some extent, but they’re especially selected for their openness to sharing. If you come here just to show off, it doesn’t work. You can shine—but only if you want to show something of yourself. Who you are, not how high your leg goes.”
Chantal: “I am what I am.”

Pink Panther Party is also a nod to Studio 54, the legendary nightclub in New York.
Adriaan: “Yes, later it became a commercial disco, but it started as a safe space. A place where all groups that weren’t welcome elsewhere could come together. It was actually an old theater, which is part of the charm. People watched from the balconies as the crowd danced on the floor and the DJ played on stage. In Musis Arnhem and De Vereeniging, I also want to experiment with the audience setup—but how, that’s still a surprise.”

Have you ever been to Studio 54 yourself?
Adriaan: “No way, I wish I had! I was born in 1964. But I did experience a bit of the disco era when it spread to Zeeland in the late 1970s. I thought everything happening in New York was amazing. I read everything I could about Studio 54, about disco and self-expression. Well, there was no self-expression where I came from, haha. I was the odd one out in a small Zeeland village.”

And what about the original Pink Panther? Did you ever go there?
Adriaan: “No, that too was before my time! When I started dancing here in 1989, Introdans had already been based in this building for two years, and the Pink Panther went bankrupt in 1984. But we did a lot of research for our performance. It was truly an Arnhem club, but people also came from outside the city. The Moluccan and Surinamese communities who had come to the Netherlands at that time, for example, were not excluded there. Everyone mixed together. The bartenders we spoke to said that outside there were fights—but inside, it was a party! And big acts performed there too, like Kool & The Gang. The Pink Panther was grand in its smallness.”

You and Chantal share the choreography, and there are also two social coaches involved. What is their role?
Adriaan: “That’s an experiment.”
Chantal: “And a really nice one! Having social coaches is new for us, so it actually feels like a luxury. Greetje and Christa are there to handle all questions that have nothing to do with dance steps, costumes, and that kind of thing.”
Adriaan: “Their presence mainly helps solve work-related issues. I got the idea from Jordi Dik (of DIK Danstheater and Compagnie Tiuri). He spends a lot of time in the UK and told me about the concept of access work—work focused on accessibility. These are people who ensure that dancers like Eva and Joseph downstairs, as well as dancers with different mental or physical realities, can fully participate in the process. But they also make sure that we, the creators, can focus on our artistic work without distractions. We can’t solve every problem ourselves. Because we do so many inclusive projects, Introdans invests a lot of time and energy into this.”
Chantal: “We’re creating, but working with many new people, and you want to get the best out of them. It’s great to have a social coach to support that.”

Have the dancers already found their way to you, Geertje? How is it going so far?
Geertje: “I think in the first few days everyone was still finding their footing. But by the end of the week, more and more questions started coming in—even messages this morning via the app. This is quite a different world for me. Normally, we already know everyone beforehand. This time, I only knew one person—Guetjens—and everyone else was new. So it’s still a bit of a process, connecting and showing yourself. It was such a treat to just now witness the run-through of Iungo. That was really wonderful.

We’ve only just begun, so I can’t say yet that everything runs perfectly or smoothly. We’re all still getting used to it. The dancers aren’t used to having people on the side specifically there for all their personal needs.”
Guetjens: “As a dancer, I actually find it nice to have that distinction. To know who to turn to with personal issues, so you don’t burden the choreographer or teacher with something you could solve elsewhere.”
Adriaan: “Exactly. You’ve just said it—separating the artistic from the social. There’s the person, and there’s the artist.”

Pink Panther Party XXL can be seen until December 30 in Arnhem and Nijmegen.

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