De Dansers
De Dansers is a Utrecht-based company of dancers and musicians, led by choreographer/dancer Josephine van Rheenen and composer/musician Guy Corneille. We create “dance concerts”: organic meetings of modern dance and live music. Performances by De Dansers tell accessible, intuitively compelling stories about liberation and surrender, in which playful anarchism is never far away. We want to break free from what can make you feel stuck.
De Dansers wants to inspire physicality and a personal connection, especially in a society in which we increasingly live on screens. We do this by simply making contact and giving energy, in everything we do. De Dansers particularly believes in the value of dance at a young age. Then your body is full of movement, it asks for running, jumping, touching. Then the imagination must run wild in your brain. What you miss out as a child, you will not redo later. We make work that appeals to the liveliness of children and that re-invokes forgotten desires for surrender and physical contact in adults.
“The Dancers is a lively band full of raw dance poets, a young group that rocks, swings, rolls, sings, races, sighs and rhymes.” – Newspaper de Volkskrant
“Suggestion to health insurers: include a visit to this cheerful dance and music company in the standard health plan. It will significantly reduce the cost of antidepressants.” – Daily paper Theaterfestival Boulevard
De Dansers is expert in the first encounter with dance and creates work for adults and children / families. We find our audiences everywhere. We play at (pop) festivals with national coverage and theaters throughout the country. We play many school performances in theaters and gyms, in towns and cities, in which we connect with education and sow and nurture passion for movement and creativity; and we work with partners in Utrecht in custom made outreach-projects. In this way we help build the dance audience of the future. With over 130 performances a year, De Dansers reaches 18,800 visitors annually.
De Dansers’ work includes:
- family performances that inspire liveliness in theaters and schools throughout the country
- performances for adults that can be seen at both leading dance stages and (pop) festivals
- performances on location in full dialogue with the environment, at festivals such as Oerol and Over het IJ Festival
- international tours in our neighboring countries but also at festivals in Italy, Indonesia or America
- education in particular in partnerships with schools in Utrecht in the context of Cultural Education with Quality. View the education offer 2020-2021 here
The board of De Dansers follows the Code Cultural Governance.
De Dansers receives funding from: