If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Wg-Plein 881, Amsterdam (2026)

20/10/2025

You are warmly invited to the launch of Ferals and Ruderals: History through the Cracks, a year-long project by Milena Bonilla, developed within If I Can’t Dance’s current field of inquiry, Body as Memory. Over the coming months, the artist will conjure a series of workshops, mappings, and speculations exploring the historical significance of the spontaneous plant life surrounding our building in the WG-terrein—a former medical site with a long and layered history, from plague house to modern hospital and finally artists’ community.

On 1 November, we begin with a workshop around the former Vrouwenkliniek (Women’s Clinic), a key site in the history of sexual and reproductive healthcare in the Netherlands. Through walking, observing, talking, and drawing, we’ll learn how feral and ruderal plants signal knowledge, memory, and recipes for the future, revealing the living stories of resistance, healing, repression, and liberation that intertwine with the seemingly silent memory of the soil.
After the workshop, Milena Bonilla will be in conversation with If I Can’t Dance Curator Sara Giannini to introduce her practice of dissident botany and counter-historical research. The talk, open to a wider public, will also include the screening of video works from the I am Life I am Beautiful trilogy on Rosa Luxemburg’s herbarium (2020/22); and Below the Sun. A Taxonomy of Light (2023), on Antonin Artaud, the pe**te plant, and the fabrication of what is considered ‘real.’
We’ll close the day with a seasonal soup and drinks.

Saturday 1 November
WG-Plein 881, Amsterdam

Workshop
14:00–16:00
Free, spaces limited, RSVP at https://if-i-cant-dance.weticket.io/ferals-ruderals-and-other-narratives-of-the-soil/shop

�Screening & Artist Talk
17:00–19:00
Tickets: https://if-i-cant-dance.weticket.io/ferals-ruderals-and-other-narratives-of-the-soil/shop

Accessibility: If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor and unfortunately has no elevator. Full access info on ificantdance.org

Milena Bonilla’s project is kindly supported by AFK and Cultuurfonds

Image: Milena Bonilla’s notebooks, 2025
ID: Handwritten notes about the Vrouwenkliniek with a drawing of a hand in the soil and midwives’ fingers.

18/09/2025

This year, we’re participating in WG Open Studios on Sunday, 28 September with a garage sale of old If I Can’t Dance publications, alongside a display of our research-in-progress about our space: the ‘Collegezaal’ of the former Gynaecology Ward of the WG hospital (the ‘Vrouwenkliniek’).

Drop by between 12 and 5pm for free (or almost free) books, and have a chat with us about the histories of the medical theatre we’re housed in.

More than 60 artists from the WG community will open their studio doors on both 27 and 28 September—don’t miss the full programme on atelierwg.nl (https://atelierwg.nl/open-atelies-2025)

The Collegezaal Inside Out
Open Studio
📍WG Plein 881, Amsterdam
🕔 Sunday 28 September, 12–17hr
Free entrance

Image: Theatrum anatomicum Lycei Patavini (University of Padua), copperplate engraving by J. Ph. Tomasini, 1654.

ID. Event announcement with Times New Roman text on an olive-green background. The text reads: “OPEN STUDIO, The Collegezaal Inside Out, garage sale of books & research display on the history of our medical theatre. 28 Sept 2025, 12–17hr.” Positioned centrally on the right side is a black-and-white historical illustration of an anatomical theatre titled "Theatrum Anatomicum Lycei Palatini." The theater is circular in shape with multiple concentric balconies rising vertically. At the center of the structure is a human figure lying on a table, likely representing a cadaver prepared for dissection.

10/09/2025

Continuing our collaboration with researcher and writer Chandra Frank, we’re excited to launch the Tidal Studies Quarterly Reading Group—a new online series beginning this month and continuing throughout next year. Join us for fluid, interactive reading sessions exploring the entangled themes of water, colonialism, swamps, and tides, as they emerge through Frank’s research and our shared programming since last year.

In our first session, we’ll dwell on the meaning of the edge, guided by Macarena Gómez-Barris’ essay “Life Otherwise at the Sea’s Edge.” Together, we’ll consider how the edge offers insights into ecological destruction, conquest, and in-between zones, as well as the lifeworlds and imaginaries of intertidal spaces. Thinking with the edge as a generative material, temporal, and historical site, we ask: What happens when we tap into what Gómez-Barris describes as “ecological memories” and “affective sensibilities” to relate differently to the world around us? And how might we think and experiment with the edge in art/performance/writing practices?

The session will be facilitated by Chandra Frank together with If I Can’t Dance Curator Sara Giannini.

Tidal Studies Quarterly Reading Group
Online (via zoom)
Session ~1~
🕔 Wednesday 24 September 2025, 16-17hr
👉 Register & get the text via https://if-i-cant-dance.weticket.io/tidal-studies-reading-group-session-1/shop

Image: Tidal zone on Texel, photo: Chandra Frank
ID: Intertidal life on the North Sea. A small orange crab on a muddy rock, surrounded by water, seaweed, and underwater vegetation.

08/09/2025

For the launch of ‘A Q***r Feedback Handbook’ by In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities (IPOP), we’re excited to welcome back its co-founders, Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak, to If I Can’t Dance.

Elioa and Szymon are artists working in the field of performance and alumni of DAS Theatre in Amsterdam, where in 2021 they founded IPOP and began to reimagine what it means to give and receive feedback in support of q***r artists and practices.
Elioa Steffen (she/they, USA/NL) works across performance, visual art, and curation. Her practice explores communal narratives, cultural norms, and systemic violence, with a focus on q***r belonging and entanglement beyond normative structures. She’s currently part of several collaborative constellations exploring trans-feminine voice in religious ecstasy and the pedagogical possibilities of madness.

Szymon Adamczak (he/him, PL/NL) is a writer and theatre/performance maker working across disciplines, with a focus on art and civic engagement. As a dramaturg, he supports LGBTQ+ artists through questions of self-representation and auto-theory. His ongoing research looks at HIV-related culture and transnational q***r activism across post-Soviet contexts.
Come meet them and celebrate the launch of a publication shaped by three years of collective practice and q***r pedagogical experimentations.

The presentation will be followed by drinks and snacks!
🕔 Thursday 11 September, 18–20hr (doors at 17:30)
📍 WG Plein 881, Amsterdam

– Tickets via: https://ificantdance.stager.co/shop/default/events/111566011

Img. 1 Szymon Adamczak. Ph. Elodie Vreeburg
Img. 2 Elioa Steffens. Ph. Erin Burrows
Img. 3 IPOP Participants sitting in circle creating ‘Feedback Ecologies’. Ph. IPOP

01/09/2025

After collaborating with them through our Open Rehearsal programme, we are thrilled to host the Amsterdam launch of the first handbook published by In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities (IPOP)—an educational and pedagogical platform founded by Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak.

IPOP explores theories and methodologies for q***ring performance feedback within educational institutions, while supporting the development of LGBTQ+ artists. Participants meet regularly to present their work to a cohort of peers and co-devise techniques for receiving feedback.

Emerging from IPOP’s first three cycles, this publication proposes a need-based and performative approach to feedback. It views sessions as experiments co-designed with artists and researchers, empowering them to cultivate their desires and foster communal learning within a caring environment.

For the launch, Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak are joined by some participants to reflect on IPOP’s methods, offering key concepts such as ‘feedback ecology’, ‘promiscuous care’, and ‘non-identitarian q***rness’, alongside teaching resources and feedback activities to try. This work is an invitation for anyone involved in supporting artistic development and interested to reimagine feedback culture through a new lens.

‘A Q***r Feedback Handbook’
Book launch
📍WG Plein 881, Amsterdam
🕔 Thursday 11 September, 18–20hr (doors open at 17:30hr)

• Tickets €7.50 / €5 (students) via: https://ificantdance.stager.co/shop/default/events/111566011

Accessibility:
– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately without elevator access
– Seated event
– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

ID. A purple and black book cover with the words IPOP: A Q***r Feedback Handbook, Experiments in Otherwise Arts Education written in white stylized capital letters. In smaller white print are the names Elioa Steffen and Szymon Adamczak. There is a small white and black photograph in the top right corner depicting people sitting in a circle around posters spread out on the floor. In the bottom left corner is another black and white image of two people sitting on a wooden floor writing on sheets of paper and notebooks.

15/05/2025

For Amsterdam Art Week’s West Night, If I Can’t Dance is thrilled to host the second day of ‘horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion,’ a performance programme by Voice as Landscape.

After an evening at Perdu on 23 May, the programme unfolds into a day-long gathering — an invitation to experience the different materialisations of time in daily life through eating, shifts in light, mood, and place.

The programme begins in the afternoon at Emmaplein with a food offering by Kaixin Chen and Sankrit Kulmanochawong, followed by a guided collective siesta by artist Aitana Cordero. The gathering then moves to the WG-terrain for artists María Jerez and Élan D’Orphium’s imaginaries of inter-species communication. With the change of light, the programme enters the If I Can’t Dance theater for a dance performance by K**e García and Jesús Bravo, and a concert by Phantom Wizard.

‘horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion’
Curated by Voice as Landscape
📍 Emmaplein, WG-Plein & If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam
🕔 Saturday 24 May, 16:30–23hr (meeting point Emmaplein)

Accessibility information for If I Can’t Dance:
– If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, with unfortunately no elevator
– Seated event
– Gender neutral WC

• Tickets and info: https://tickets.voordemensen.nl/perdu/event/1302

Voice as Landscape is a performance platform focused on the relationships between body, vibration and territory. It is also an editorial line at Perdu, where it explores poetic experimentation beyond verbal language and into other fields. Voice as Landscape is initiated and curated by Alec Mateo and Lorenzo García-Andrade. This year, Voice as Landscape is working with the notion of ‘correspondence’, both as a theme and as methodology.

Supported by Cultuurfonds Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver, Accìon Culutural Española, and la Embajada de España en la Hay

Image: K**e García y Jesús Bravo. Festival Sâlmon, Antic Theatre, Barcelona, 2024. Ph. Mila Ercoli.

ID: A pair of dancers in a slow-dance embrace. One partner, possibly male, faces the camera with short brown hair. Their head is bowed, resting softly on the other’s shoulder. The other dancer, less tall, and is seen from behind. They wear a flowery shirt and have short white hair.

14/05/2025

Following a three-day workshop in our theatre space, our Dutch Art Institute’s COOP Study Group ‘The Word and the Wound’ invites you to a public sharing of their ongoing practice of ‘thinking-in-assembly’. All welcome!

Developed by tutor Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘thinking-in-assembly’ is a method that connects thinking and listening, deepening the relations between personal experiences and collective voice. During the gathering, we will reflect together on the acts of listening and singing, and explore their potential as reparative practices in times of grief, violence, and harm.

This occasion also marks the launch of a new section on our website, dedicated to our long-standing collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute, where we’ve been teaching workshops since 2008. In our physical space, you’ll find a display of DAI student-made publications and a variety of archival material gleaned from our most recent study groups as well as a reading table focusing on the current COOP.

We look forward to thinking and singing together!

The COOP Study Group are: Anna Buyvid, Nada Gambier, Patrick Freriksen, Agnese Krivade, Bel McLaughlin, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Alva Roselius, Hannah van der Schaaf, Agnese Spolverini, Mia Tamme. Tutor team: Frédérique Bergholtz, Snejanka Mihaylova, Lisa Montan.

‘The Word and the Wound - And Now You Are Ready to Sing’
Conversation and Performance
📍WG-Plein 881, Amsterdam
🕔 Friday 23 May, 17-19hr (doors open 16-21hr)

• Tickets and info: https://ificantdance.stager.co/shop/the-word-and-the-wound/events/111512954

Accessibility information:
– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator
– Seated event
– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

Image: Performance by ‘The Word and The Wound’, part of DAI COOP Summit, Dar Souiri (Association Essaouira-Mogador), Essaouira, Morocco, 5-7 September 2024. Ph. Nikos Doulos.

ID: Aerial view of a circle of people seated on a floor with blue floral-patterned tiles, surrounded by stone columns. Adjacent to the circle is a slightly elevated surface covered with red-tinted carpets and a white fabric, on which lie threads and other undefined objects. On the sides hang two white fabrics featuring paintings of circles.

12/05/2025

Join us for this special evening with poet, translator and scholar Jennifer Scappettone, who will read passages from her forthcoming publication ‘Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism’ (Columbia University Press, Sept. 2025). After the reading, Scappettone will be in conversation with fellow poet Mia You and If I Can’t Dance curator Sara Giannini.

Coalescing two decades of research, the book uncovers a stateless, polyglot poetry of resistance—the poetry of motherless tongues. Raised within or in the wake of fascism, authors who write this poetry occupy languages without a perceived birthright or sanctioned education; they compose in ecstatic ‘orphan tongues’ that rebuff nationalist ideologies as well as globalization, uprooting notions of belonging ensconced in nativist metaphors of milk, blood, and soil.

Studying experiments between languages by immigrant, refugee, and otherwise stateless authors—from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven to Emilio Villa, Amelia Rosselli, Etel Adnan, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Chika Sagawa, and Sawako Nakayasu—Scappettone explores how these poets practice strategic forms of literary and linguistic barbarism, proposing modes of collectivity that exceed geopolitical definitions.

‘Poetry After Barbarism’
Jennifer Scappettone
📍WG-Plein 881, Amsterdam
🕔 Thursday 22 May, 20:30hr (doors open 20-22hr)

• Tickets: https://ificantdance.stager.co/shop/poetry-after-barbarism/events/111530081

Accessibility information:
– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator
– Seated event
– Gender neutral WC
– Language: English

Event co-organized with the Utrecht University's Network for Environmental Humanities

ID. Book cover of ‘Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism’ by Jennifer Scappettone. The title appears on the right side against a black background, with the colors of the letters echoing the hues of the artwork on the left half of the cover. This artwork is a watercolor fragment of an open notebook, with horizontal lines layered in turquoise, yellow, orange, and ochre. Arabic words are written along the lines, with a larger, thicker black letter at the center.

09/05/2025

After some quiet months behind the scenes, we're excited to welcome you back to our space during Amsterdam Art Week for three gatherings that explore resonance, correspondence, and collectivity through vocality, listening, and poetry.

‘Poetry After Barbarism’
Thursday 22 May, 20:30 (doors open 20–22hr)

An evening with poet, translator, and scholar Jennifer Scappettone, who gives a special preview presentation of her forthcoming publication ‘Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism.’ Following a reading from the book, Scappettone is in conversation with fellow poet Mia You and If I Can’t Dance curator Sara Giannini.
https://ificantdance.stager.co/shop/poetry-after-barbarism/events/111530081

‘The Word and the Wound’
Friday 23 May, 17–19hr (doors open 16–21hr)

Our Dutch Art Institute COOP Study Group ‘The Word and the Wound’ shares their practice of ‘thinking-in-assembly’, a method that connects thinking and listening, deepening the relation between personal experience and collective voice.
https://ificantdance.stager.co/shop/the-word-and-the-wound/events/111512954

‘Voice as Landscape’
Saturday 24 May, 16:30–23hr

A day-long dramaturgy curated by Voice as Landscape on the idea of transformative correspondence. Moving between Emmaplein, the WG Terrein, and our theatre space, the event includes convivial moments and performative encounters.
https://tickets.voordemensen.nl/perdu/event/1302

We hope to see you at one of these gatherings! More details coming soon!

ID. Graphic announcement for Amsterdam Art Week, dated 20–25 May 2025. Bold black text appears on white diagonal stripes that cut across a vivid red background.

19/12/2024

We take a moment to reflect on three soul-nourishing days with those who participated in ‘Tidal Gatherings’, an experimental symposium on the intersections of water, ecology, and Dutch colonialism, curated by Chandra Frank as part of Sound System Ecologies, a collaborative project with DJ Lynnée Denise.

Unfolding across our space, CBK Zuidoost, and Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, on October 4, 5, and 6, the programme included study sessions, lecture performances, conversations, film screenings, and radio broadcasts featuring Paula Albuquerque, Sharelly Emanuelson, Desiree Mwalimu Banks, Toni Giselle Stuart, Lisandro Suriel, and Geo Wyex. Throughout, the symposium invited us to acknowledge the waterways that connect us across bodies, dimensions, and times, while also creating much-needed space for mourning, remembrance, and critical thinking. Its various contributions linked different contexts of destruction—from the transatlantic slave trade to the necropolitics surrounding current migration routes in the Mediterranean, from the devastating impact of Dutch colonial policies to the genocidal and ecocidal realities in places such as Sudan, Congo, and Palestine.

You can read the visitor report of Wigbertson Julian Isenia (https://ificantdance.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IICD-VisitorReport-Tidal-Gatherings.pdf), as well as listen back to ‘A Letter to the Lemniscate’, a radio piece by artist, scholar, and priestess Desiree Mwalimu Banks on the archive of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee (https://jajajaneeneenee.com/shows/a-letter-to-the-lemniscate).

We are deeply thankful to Chandra Frank, our partners CBK Zuidoost, Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Sound System Ecologies, all participating artists, and everyone who gathered with us!

Images: ‘Tidal Gatherings’, symposium, 4-6 October 2024, If I Can’t Dance & CBK Zuidoost, location SHEBANG, Amsterdam. Photos Prins de Vos.

03/10/2024

Introducing ‘Tidal Gatherings’ ~ DAY 3 ~ Sunday 6 October, CBK Zuidoost / location SHEBANG

On its final day, ‘Tidal Gatherings’ moves to Amsterdam Zuidoost for a special visit of Sharelly Emanuelson’s exhibition ‘Between a Dance and Sitting in a Chair’, a project initiated and curated by CBK Zuidoost. Sharelly Emanuelson’s first mid-career solo exhibition, ‘Between a Dance and Sitting in a Chair’ offers an overview of her oeuvre as a documentary film maker, researcher, and visual artist. Through her work, Emanuelson focuses on life in the Caribbean islands, revealing the underlying impacts of colonialism that persist to this day. The exhibition explores issues such as language, ecology, dance and movement, education, poverty, trade, and tourism. After a group visit to the exhibition, the artist will be in conversation with Chandra Frank about her work and how it connects to the questions addressed in the symposium.

‘Tidal Gatherings’ ~ DAY 3
Sunday 6 October 2024
15.30–17hr

CBK Zuidoost, location SHEBANG
Hettenheuvelweg 8, Amsterdam

Free entry

For full symposium programme see: https://ificantdance.org

‘Tidal Gatherings’ is a three-day symposium on the intersections between water, ecology, and Dutch colonialism taking place at If I Can’t Dance and CBK Zuidoost on October 4, 5, 6. It is curated by Chandra Frank in the framework of ‘Sound System Ecologies’, a collaborative project with DJ Lynnée Denise, and is organized in tandem with Sharelly Emanuelson’s exhibition ‘Between a Dance and Sitting in a Chair’ (CBK Zuidoost, location SHEBANG, 3 October – 24 November 2024).

30/09/2024

Introducing ‘Tidal Gatherings’ ~ DAY 2 ~ Saturday 5 October, If I Can’t Dance

On Saturday 5 October, ‘Tidal Gatherings’ takes place at If I Can’t Dance, featuring an afternoon and evening programme. The day starts at 15hr with a new lecture performance by scholar, interdisciplinary artist, and priestess Desiree Mwalimu Banks. Entitled ‘Water Ecologies: A Voyage Into the Water Mandala’, Mwalimu Banks’s performance weaves together glimpses of her relation to water-keeping, the sacred feminine, indigenous identity, apiary culture, and the poetics of eros and eroticism.

After a communal dinner at the WG Café next door, the gathering continues at 20hr with a series of short films and a conversation. Using water as a methodology of inquiry and image-making, the videos in this session question the way we see, know and remember, bringing forth the latent power of that which has been buried, injured, tamed, and erased in processes of colonization.

‘Tidal Gatherings’~ DAY 2
Saturday 5 October 2024
If I Can’t Dance
WG-Plein 881, Amsterdam

15–18hr
Introduction, lecture performance by Desiree Mwalimu Banks, aftertalk

18–19.30hr
Communal dinner
WG Café, Marius van Bouwdijk Bastiaansestraat 52, Amsterdam

20-22hr
Film programme and conversation
With short films by Paula Albuquerque, Desiree Mwalimu Banks, Toni Giselle Stuart, Lisandro Suriel and Geo Wyex

Day tickets (dinner voucher excluded): €7,50 & €5 (students)
Dinner voucher: €15 (last day to get your voucher!)

For tickets and more information see: https://ificantdance.org

‘Tidal Gatherings’ is a three-day symposium on the intersections between water, ecology, and Dutch colonialism taking place at If I Can’t Dance and CBK Zuidoost on October 4, 5, 6. It is curated by Chandra Frank in the framework of ‘Sound System Ecologies’, a collaborative project with DJ Lynnée Denise, and is organized in tandem with Sharelly Emanuelson’s exhibition ‘Between a Dance and Sitting in a Chair’ (CBK Zuidoost, location SHEBANG, 3 October – 24 November 2024).

Images: Still from ‘Ghost Island’, Lisandro Suriel; Still from ‘Muck Studies Dept Statement of Intent’, Geo Wyex; Still from ‘Like the Glitch of a Ghost’, Paula Albuquerque; Portrait Toni Giselle Stuart, photo: Dylan Valley; Desiree Mwalimu Banks, ‘A Voyage Into The Water Mandala’.

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution

20/10/2025

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10/09/2025

08/09/2025

01/09/2025

15/05/2025

14/05/2025

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09/05/2025

19/12/2024

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