In Speculations Mette Ingvartsen uses fiction, speculation and description to develop ideas in front of an audience. The body on the stage is part of the performance, but the choreography is in the field of language and in the spectator’s imagination. Although the spectator is not actively involved in the performance his role is essential to its creation. Language and action are equally important in the creation of a virtual performance in the spectator’s mind.

How do we, urban animals of the 21st century, relate to ‘other animals’? German choreographer Martin Nachbar aims to make our relationships with animals transparent through dance. The performance imitates animals in their habitat and in the habitat of contemporary dance (the theatre) and examines the possibilities of moving, feeling and thinking like animals.

The Brussels theatre-maker Isabelle Dumont has put together a ‘cabinet of curiosities’, a colourful collection of ‘artificialia and naturalia’ – art objects and wonders of animal kingdom. She was guided by her amazement, always welcoming surprises, and is now sharing her delight with the public. On the basis of this collection she tells a story about the relationship between man and the animals down the ages.

The philosopher Vinciane Despret asks 26 intriguing and pertinent questions about what animals do, want and ‘think’. This yields marvellous and sometimes hilarious stories, told by scientists, animal-tamers, zookeepers, etc. Stories that make us think. We are screening two short documentaries made in 2005 by film-maker and activist Didier Demorcy, to which Vinciane Despret also contributed, one on sheep, one on wolves.

Very occasionally, something makes your hair stand on end. Nick Steur’s FREEZE! is just such a performance: small in scale, big on ideas. Nick Steur creates a pile of natural stones. He doesn’t use any glue or trickery, just intense concentration and ‘a balance between my own willpower and that of the stone’.  FREEZE!, won the KBC Young Theatre Prize 2011 at Theater Aan Zee.