Saturday, Sep 13, 2025 at 7:00pm
Deborah Hay's Performance Club
How I may see our universe, acknowledging its infinitude as I dance, is my survival.
— Deborah Hay
The Performance Club operates on the belief that live performance is a catalyst for audiences and performers. At Kaatsbaan, Deborah Hay has 20 minutes to experience a work-in-progress in the presence of the audience. As an audience member, you have 40 minutes to process any reciprocal responses to the live event you just experienced. By providing time for audiences to witness a live performance and immediately process the performance individually, in their own way—through writing, drawing, dancing, resting, meditating, etc.—unforeseen insights arise.
The Performance Club is not about critique, and no one imposes their exploration on anyone else. It is a community experiment that provides audiences and performers the opportunity to notice how they influence and inspire one another.
Turn Everywhere: Deborah Hay On Film/In Person
I cannot think of anything else in my life where there is so much unlearning and learning happening at the same time.
—Deborah Hay about dance
An evening of insightful and meditative documentaries on the interminable, inimitable, experimental choreographer Deborah Hay, her artistic relationships, and her creative process. Films by Peter Humble and David Young: Alignment is everywhere and Becky Edmunds: Turn Your F^king Head. Discussion with Hay to follow with 2025 Annual Festival Guest Curator, Michèle Steinwald.
Alignment is everywhere was shot on a 16mm hand-cranked camera using expired and hand-processed film stock, and marks Hay's return after the loss of theater innovator and dear friend, Margaret Cameron. Filmed in 2019 at Indented Head, near Melbourne, Australia, the short work is a gentle contemplation of how one "serves a tree" through death.
Turn Your F^king Head documents the final edition of Hay's iconic Solo Performance Commissioning Project, in which participating artists from around the world receive Hay's most recent solo choreography. Filmed in 2012 at Findhorn community, Scotland, the poetics and puzzles of Hay's instructions are visually combined with the landscape of the historic ecovillage.
Schedule:
1 PM - Deborah Hay's Performance Club
7 PM - Turn Everywhere: Deborah Hay On Film/In Person
Additional Dates:
