Two queer artists from Brazil and Denmark meet between dance and circus in "You dream in a language I don't speak" — an intimate interdisciplinary performance about love beyond borders. Bodies translate what words cannot, proving connection can outgrow culture. The piece explores intimacy, migration, language, and the radical act of loving across differences.
Even in deep connection, each person remains partly unknown to the other. Cultural, political, and personal differences create distance yet love insists on proximity.
For Clarice, this creation is deeply personal. After relocating to the Netherlands, she encountered a more restrained social climate where physical affection felt distant. The absence of touch became artistic material, while falling in love across cultures reshaped her understanding of home. Without religious affiliation, she describes love as her closest spiritual force.
The work carries clear social engagement, amplifying queer and non-European immigrant voices within European performing arts. By centering lived experience, it challenges dominant narratives and invites audiences to encounter difference through tenderness rather than fear.
The piece speaks to immigrant communities, binational families, and LGBTQ+ audiences while remaining open to all willing to reflect on how they relate to the unfamiliar. It proposes that affection is not weakness but strength, and that love, whether romantic, communal or simply human, remains transformative.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Clarice Franco is a queer Brazilian performer working across dance and theatre. Trained in styles ranging from ballet to contemporary dance, she studied at EFG em Artes Basileu França in Goiânia, Brazil (2022/23) and at SPECIFIC by Loris Petrillo in Tuscania, Italy (2023–2025).
After moving to the Netherlands in 2025, she joined Dox Club in Utrecht. Since 2026 she has been part of Dox Club Lab, where she created "You Dream In A Language I Don't Speak." She is currently also working on the play Carmen (must die) by Giovanni Brand.
Maddie Thomas is a Danish circus artist and dancer in her second year at Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg. She began her artistic path at 18 at a full time circus academy in Denmark, and has since trained at AFUK circus school in Copenhagen (2020–22), INAC professional circus school in Portugal (2022), and SPECIFIC by Loris Petrillo in Tuscania, Italy (2023–24). At Fontys she specializes in acro-dancing, blending acrobatic technique with the fluidity of dance.