Conny Janssen has selected choreographer Maciej Kuźmiński for the fourteenth edition of the talent development project DANSLOKAAL. She discovered the talented choreographer during the Rotterdam International Duet Choreography Competition (RIDCC) in 2025. As part of this talent development project, Maciej is working with Conny Janssen Danst dancers Yanaika Holle, Gaspar Ribeiro and Yashasvi Shrotriya. We asked Maciej a few questions.
What does it mean to you to be one of the choreographers in DANSLOKAAL?
Maciej: “It means a lot, mostly because it gives me a chance to return to the Dutch dance scene in a professional context. I’ve made of work here before, especially with Codarts and ArtEZ, while in Germany I’ve been creating for large theatres for years. So, somehow, I still feel I have work to do in the Netherlands — to make my work seen and supported in the country where I actually live. I’ve been here for 3.5 years now. There were opportunities before, but the pandemic erased most of them. In a way, I had to start again.”
What is it like to work with the dancers of Conny Janssen Danst?
Maciej: “Yashasvi, Yanaika and Gaspar are all very charismatic, but also very different from one another. This makes the cast versatile, but also challenging — in a good way. What I appreciate most is their commitment and openness. Whatever I throw at them, whether it is physical, strange, very precise or still unclear even to me, they respond with curiosity and engagement. For me this is probably the best part of the work: having dancers who are willing to enter an idea before we completely know where it will take us, and really make it theirs.”
What was the first image, idea or feeling you had for this piece?
Maciej: “The idea shifted several times, but it began with For What Is to Come, a duet I made in 2024 about one woman caring for another. It received the Production Prize from Conny Janssen at RIDCC — which is why I’m a part of Danslokaal now. I wanted to revisit movement and relationships from that duet. Then came Sigur Rós’ Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do, with its music boxes and porcelain-like sounds — music I had worked with years ago for a project interrupted by the Covid Pandemic. So, this piece became a coming back. A reworked retrospective. Maybe a little Retrotopia.”
What can people expect when they watch your piece in DANSLOKAAL?
Maciej: “Something physical, dynamic and hopefully intriguing, but also quite fragile underneath. The piece circles around a very simple and impossible question: what does it mean to be human? There are very different movement qualities and personalities, memories that seem to live inside the body, moments of care, machinery, repetition and disruption. I imagine it a little like entering the heart of a porcelain music box — and discovering the strange machinery inside that makes the figures move. Except here the figures are us, with all the beauty, awkwardness, tenderness and unpredictability that comes with being alive. And the machinery? I think we all ask this question nowadays – what is this machinery we created?”
DANSLOKAAL 14 in HUIS Conny Janssen Danst
Thu 17 until Sun 20 Sep + Fri 23 & Sat 24 Oct
HUIS Conny Janssen Danst, Rotterdam
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DANSLOKAAL 14 at Nederlandse Dansdagen
Sun 4 Oct
De Bordenhal, Maastricht
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DANSLOKAAL 14 on tour
Thu 24 Sep until Sat 31 Oct
In different theatres across the country
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