We have moved. It's real. Settled down on the Boorstraat. It is not just a practical move, an address change, but a story. And a proposal: to do it differently. Something we wrote a lot about – even before this place came into view – but now we are going to discover what it really is. We're going to do it now. The good thing about moving is that nothing is taken for granted anymore. Or has to be.

In us is history. As a company. As people. Just like in this house. Some parts we take with us, others we let go or change. Someone wrote in response to our press release that our movement is a worthy follow-up to all the houses before us and all the houses that may (not) yet exist.

I have long said that I love institutions. The theaters, the companies, the production houses, the museums. That I like to be critical of them, but always from the inside. At the same time, in recent years I have come to see institutions as temporary gatherings of people. That we temporarily – like in a choreography – come together, presenting an image. That it is never forever or always has the same form. It constantly changes. Sometimes it disappears. And then it reappears somewhere else, in a new composition. In that respect, the “making” of an institution is not so different from making theater. We just take them more seriously, as if they are meant to last forever.

I believe that institutions should be fluid. That we can break them down to carefully rebuild them (and differently) again. Sometimes the cause is more disastrous; then they are broken down by something from outside. It is precisely then that it is up to us to see what we can build again from the remnants. Our own remnants, and those of another. We can also take those under our care into the new house.

So besides the fact that I love institutions, I love people even more. They make the institution; they are the movement. We - you and I, all of us, from performer to technician to spectator - are that movement. 

“Who is alone always loses,” as Vincent Van Gogh said when he wrote about setting up a house for artists in southern France, I believe this is what it is about. Together we can create something that you cannot do alone. Because you can never be an institution, a movement, by yourself.

The good thing about moving is that nothing has to be taken for granted anymore. We are settling down on Boorstraat because I believe it can be different – a BIS company, making theater, putting art into the world. And that it has to be different, in this time. That we are going to stand in the middle of the world. Opening the doors, meeting each other. That we set up a vibrant headquarters from which we will go into the city and the country, fly over the world and connect with it.  

Flying over the world? Yes. Figuratively, of course. With pride, we also present the world premieres of two of our performances at the international Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels. Navigating between the aversion and fascination for male power dynamics, Carolina Bianchi exposes connections between misogyny, sexual violence, and the theater world in her performance The Brotherhood. In FRANK – from Frankenstein – Cherish Menzo explores the figure of the monster: Beyond an exclusively physical or visual representation, she studies the monstrous as an embodiment of beliefs and narratives that frighten and horrify us but also fascinate us.

Right now, it is important to look beyond borders, to broaden and shift our perspective. To see that we are part of a larger whole, beyond national borders, and to actively stand for that as the Centre for Performing Arts. To question the established way of seeing and thinking: beyond how we always do it. To exchange stories and perhaps find each other in what is just different. And then to take that back with us.

So that we continue to find each other anew. Because you are never alone in a movement.

This letter to the audience from Anne Breure is taken from the newsletter. Do you want to receive monthly updates? Sign up via the registration form in the footer.