Anne Maike created the performance Birds with Dalton Jansen in the spring of 2022. A collaboration that started with the concept development and ended with the final direction. Dalton and Anne Maike found each other in combining dance and theater, in creating a world in which the physical adds up to the linguistic, an emotional visual language, an urgent social topic and the convergence of text theater and dance. Birds has received dance awards, full theaters and raving reviews and reactions. From the end of January ‘24 Anne Maike, Dalton and DOX, supported by Nineties and Theater Rotterdam, with a fresh new cast, will once again bring this extraordinary story to the theaters.
Birds is the starting point for collaborations between Black Birds and Nineties. In the coming years, several performances will appear in co-production, fueled by a curiosity about the encounter between the emotional language of dance and the often more conceptual language of theater.
‘Solitude is a good place to visit, a bad place to stay. Birds powerfully sums this up.’
Volkskrant ★★★★☆
Real freedom, what does that look like? Award-winning choreographer and dancer Dalton Jansen often looked out the window at the birds outside, in the youth care facility where he grew up. They were free, but busy all day gathering their food. How would he fare himself when he was free later? Would he manage, out there in the outside world? Dalton depicts the difficult road to adulthood for young people who cannot live at home.
Due to its success, Birds is back in theaters. In this 12+ performance full of dance, spoken word and music you will be sucked into the world of a young person living in a youth care institution. How do you deal with the future if you haven’t had a safe home? Are you ready for society? And is society ready for you?
‘Birds is confrontational, intelligent and intense. It makes big questions and dilemmas in youth care understandable. There is no right or wrong, but there is right ánd wrong.’
Aimee Heijdenrijk, director Pameijer Foundation
With Birds Dalton wants to show that it can be done: fighting your way out of a predicament, although it’s not easy. “When you live in a youth care facility, you can feel like an outsider. Parents, vacations, a ‘normal’ life: you don’t know all that. Thinking about the future can therefore be very frightening. Through the performance Birds, I can make it more discussable and give young people in a youth care facility a voice.”
In Birds, Dalton translates the stories of the young people he spoke with into a kaleidoscopic mix of disciplines that challenges to reflect. How do you deal with adversity? Do you dare to dream? Do you spread your wings, hoping to fly?
Prices Birds
Dalton made his first full-length performance with Birds at DOX in 2022. He won the Silver Cricket in the “most impressive production” category that same year. “To him, the birds outside are freedom; in here, the boy can’t go anywhere. Birds opens for us the door to his inner world, literally and figuratively. Although his sadness, anger and despair are gracefully mirrored in the dancers’ movements, Birds is above all raw and straightforward,” the jury said. During the 25th anniversary edition of the Nederlandse Dansdagen, the choreographer also received the Jonge Zwaan (‘22) for “the most impressive youth dance production.” From the jury report: Dalton Jansen has processed the socially topical and very personal theme of a long-term stay in youth care into a penetrating performance in which dance and acting are equal and complementary. Text, choreography and design are powerful, expressive and poignant.
Who is Dalton Jansen?
Dancer and choreographer Dalton Jansen (Rotterdam, 1993) graduated from the Urban Contemporary (JMD) program in Amsterdam in 2018. His choreographies are at the intersection of hip hop and contemporary dance. In 2021, he founded his own dance company BLACK BIRDS. Besides the awards for Birds, he also received the BNG Dansprijs (‘21), the Prijs van de Nederlandse Dansdagen (‘21), the DOX Award (‘21) and incentive award NEXT (‘22). In recent years he has been exploring - within the framework of the new maker’s subsidy from Fonds Podiumkunsten - his own dance vocabulary under the wings of Conny Janssen Danst, DOX and Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam (TR).