Coerced & Freely Given

English

With Coerced & Freely Given, Merel Severs returns to a newly built arena, where dance and martial arts once again come together. This time, she explores the role of the body in times of political despair.

Following her critically acclaimed performance Try Not to Know What You Know, Merel delves deeper into the complex relationship between pleasure, violence, exhaustion, and resilience. Together with performers Matilde Tommasini (formerly Milou van Duijnhoven) and Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura, she presents another intense performance, filled with her signature energy. The trio challenges existing capitalist and patriarchal systems, exploring a world of intensive physical effort and soft connection. As raw blows transform into tender embraces, the performers turn the stage into a suggestive landscape of possibilities.

"We need to learn how to practice love such that care – for ourselves and others – is understood as political resistance and cultivating resilience."

— Adrienne Maree Brown

In Coerced & Freely Given, the body is put under pressure, activating both discipline and pleasure as the three performers strive for radical softness.

Biography of Merel Severs

Theater maker, performer, and martial artist Merel Severs (1991) creates engaged, confrontational, and physical performances. She draws inspiration from intersectional feminism, body politics, and martial arts. With her distinctive signature, she questions the violent structures of the world around her, using the transformative power of the body. In 2020, she made her debut with the solo Let me tell you something you already know, which won the Best of Fringe award and earned her a nomination for the BNG Bank Theater Prize. Her second performance Try Not to Know What You Know was once again nominated for this prize.

In addition to her work as a creator, she is the co-founder of Dance Space Destiny, an open space in Amsterdam where community building, artistic exchange, and experimentation are central.