Archive NEXT 2021

Spectacles

Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe (Belgium) & the unrequired love (Belgium)

Minimum age 16+
90 minutes

Sadly, this performance is cancelled due to illness. 

“The opera has never sounded and looked more fresh and fruity” (Els Van Steenberghe, Focus Knack)

Countertenor, performer and opera director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe and producer Laurens Mariën again join hands for an electronic concert that wavers between a spectacle and a love ritual. Various genres and atmospheres, operatesk dada-blues-punkpop, a high voice, dark beats and theatricality make the spring of this grand intimate spectacle.

Together with dancer Hanako Hayakawa and writer Louise van den Eede they cherish the hope for a different world ; one in which people find each other back around poppy fires, where spectacles have a liberating primal force, where all possible shapes of love continually change costumes. Reality is adjusted to a surreal ideal. An unusual ultra-musical ritual comes into being. “Spectacles” is a call for new experiences.

Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe is one of the most talented and quirky young makers of the Flemish performing arts. With his retro-futurist ballet A Revue he was selected for Het TheaterFestival in 2021.

Laurens Mariën, who is not only a composer but also a designer and a verbal artist, has already created music for Meirhaeghe's spectacles before and is the founder of the indie popband Soldier's Heart, the very first winner of the Nieuwe Lichting of Studio Brussel. Louise van den Eede founded the company Hof van Eede and is a dramaturge.

CONCEPT, REGIE, PERFORMER Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe / CONCEPT, COMPOSITION, PERFORMER Laurens Mariën / CONCEPT, DRAMATURGY Louise Van den Eede / STYLING Paule Josephe / MIXING Jasper Segers /  MUSICIAN, RECORDING Mattias De Craene,  Lander Gyselinck, David Numwami / DANCE Hanako Hayakawa / PRODUCTION Muziektheater Transparant, d e t h e a t e r m a k e r/ COPRODUCTION Ancienne Belgique, STUK, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, DE Studio, Pilar, Het Nationale Theater, C-Takt, Perpodium / WITH SUPPORT OF Tax Shelter van de Belgische Federale Overheid en de Vlaamse Overheid.