Creative
Astrid Boons
The Flemish Astrid Boons is deliberate and modest, but radical in her work. She sees movement as a natural form for everyone and dance is a way for her to approach life. Through dance, Boons continually discovers new layers in human beings. Transformations form the central focus of her work.
Astrid has seen many dreams come true: at the age of eleven she danced at Studio 100, then she attended the dance course at the KCA (Antwerp) and Codarts (Rotterdam), where she skipped a year, she also danced in the Netherlands for such groups as Dansgroep Krisztina de Châtel, Itzik Galili, Dansgroep Amsterdam, and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.
In her work movement is a continuous, slowly transforming form of energy. Astrid poses existential questions about human movement and subsequently attacks this subject physically and mentally. She is often influenced by organic processes, and her creations can therefore be experienced like landscapes. The performer’s body is emptied, to then be driven by a deeper force. The state of being of the performers is very crucial for the work, as is concentration and precision. The state of being transcends the narrative, but gives her movement language a sculptural as well as an organic quality that makes the work palpable and intense. Astrid’s work unfolds slowly before your eyes and other senses. She works together very precisely with the music, lighting, and set design. Her work demands a deep concentration from the performers and audience alike.
Astrid fully enjoyed her career as a dancer, but during a creative process with the Japanese Saburo Teshigawara for the Göteborgs Operans Danskompani, dance gained a new and richer significance. She carefully began to create for herself and was given the freedom to do so by the company. She is still grateful for the trust she received and still receives to do this. Choreography gives her an enormous sense of freedom.
She decided to return to the Netherlands to concentrate entirely on choreography. She sent her work to theatres, and to Korzo in particular because she got to know Korzo during her time at the NDT. To her own surprise she was invited to create a short choreography for Here we live and now in 2016. She created the duet Rhizoma that directly won her the BNG Dance Prize. A year later she made the duet Vestige for Here we live and now 2017 that was acclaimed by Het Parool as one of the 5 best dance performances of the year. In that same year she also won the Haagse Piket Kunstprijs. In 2020 the NRC acclaimed her as one of the promising talents.
Astrid believes in continuity and mutual trust. Her work process can be characterized by the workshops with her dancers lasting a few days. She says, ”The art of being a dancer lies in finding yourself in the language of the other”. That’s why she sees it as a priority that her dancers believe in themselves and really want to work with her, so that they can work from a sense of mutual trust.
At Korzo, Astrid created for Here we live and now, Rhizoma (2016) and Vestige (2017), and also the full-length performance Fields (2019).