Chapters of Celebration is a full evening’s dance marathon, a collective ‘museum of revelry’. The musical leitmotif is La Folia (‘madness’) or Folies d’Espagne, a 15th-century musical theme from Iberia that reverberates like a heartbeat through the history of classical music thanks to arrangements by composers such as Bach, Vivaldi, and Rachmaninov. 

Composer and pianist Wouter Deltour arranged the various compositions into a sparkling contemporary whole. Director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe asked seven renowned choreographers to liberate the carousing body in chapters that combine baroque dance with ballroom, jazz and rave. As archaeologists of celebration, they work with seven singing dancers in an attempt to capture the freedom and madness that originally existed in human communities. In Chapters of Celebration, we hear political, ritual echoes of the exuberance that humanity gradually seems to have lost.

After the highly praised Madrigals, director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe and composer Wouter Deltour are again exploring their shared love of classical music and ritual. Chapters of Celebration is a powerful reminder of the universal need to celebrate, an infectious antidote to individualism. So that we don’t forget to always keep dancing.