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

With immense love and gratitude, If I Can’t Dance says goodbye to its Founding Director, Frédérique Bergholtz, after twenty years. As of 1 May 2026, Anik Fournier, Sara Giannini, and Annick Kleizen have formalized their roles as co-directors, guiding the organization toward a collective governance model. If I Can’t Dance will always be indebted to — and inspired by — her vision, integrity, and experimental spirit. Good luck with the next dance, dear Frédérique! You can read Frédérique’s farewell words via the link in our bio. 📷 Portrait of Frédérique Bergholtz. Photo: Prins de Vos [Image description: Semi-bust portrait of Frédérique gazing serenely toward a distant horizon, beyond the camera’s view. She has fair skin, green eyes, and shoulder-length bronze hair. Her face is tilted gently toward the light. She is wearing a sky-blue blouse whose color resonates with her eyes, along with a golden hoop earring. Her posture is calm and solemn against an empty off-white background.]

'for the listen to live here' is moving into its final two workshops, which will be guided by shy*play. In the upcoming one, shy*play brings a collective space where languaging is practiced through performative scores. Shaped by “man of autism” Adam Wolfond’s conception of the embodied concept, languaging is approached as language in movement across the limitations and exclusivity of signification alone. It attends to the many languages that gather around words, into sentencing and beyond, those that move vibrantly between and below words while remaining in relation. The workshop will be structured around a text by artists and architects Arakawa and Gins, which will be transformed into a playful score. Multiple performativities will be activated through it, such as rhythm, vocalisation, spacemaking, movement, affect, sense and nonsense in intertwinement. Experimentation with collectivity is central, with prompts for doing and improvising together while remaining in difference. Instead of prioritising representation, meaning and fluency in communication, the score proposes a detour, foregrounding languaging as a practice of sociality-making and valuing what emerges through it. Participating in this session requires no prior experience. Drinks and snacks will be offered throughout. 📍WG Plein 881 Saturday 23 May 🕔14-17hr (doors open at 13.50) Free 🔗 Tickets via the link in bio ➝Covid testing To help everyone feel comfortable and safe, please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available at the venue. ➝Accessibility If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately, without elevator access. There is also a narrow staircase inside the space. Two gender neutral WC on the first floor Language: English Flyer design: nor akelei with drawings created by participants in a workshop led by Sam Metz at ATD in Amsterdam, as part of the “What If… Neurodiversity?” symposium, January 2025. Supported by Pictoright Fonds and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. [ID in comments]

The contemporary visual arts and creative industries (BKCI) in Amsterdam are under severe pressure. Although BKCI institutions are highly regarded internationally and indispensable to the city, conditions are becoming increasingly difficult. Recent research commissioned by the Municipality of Amsterdam and MOKER reveals that there are significant financial problems and uncertainties behind the scenes. In the Visual Arts and Creative Industries Emergency Plan, we call, on behalf of MOKER, for structural additional investment of €4.4 million per year and policy adjustments by the Municipality of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Arts Council and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts. This is necessary to strengthen the sector, secure its position within the local arts ecosystem, and offer prospects for development and growth. 🔗 For more information and to view the emergency plan, please visit https://moker.amsterdam/ --- De hedendaagse beeldende kunst- en creatieve industrie (BKCI) in Amsterdam staat onder grote druk. Hoewel BKCI-instellingen internationaal hoog aangeschreven staan en onmisbaar zijn voor de stad, worden de omstandigheden steeds moeilijker. Uit recent onderzoek in opdracht van de Gemeente Amsterdam en MOKER blijken er achter de schermen grote financiële problemen en onzekerheden te spelen. In het Noodplan Beeldende Kunst en Creatieve Industrie roepen wij namens MOKER op tot structurele extra investeringen van € 4,4 miljoen per jaar en beleidsaanpassingen door de Gemeente Amsterdam, de Amsterdamse Kunstraad en het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. Dit is noodzakelijk om de sector te verstevigen, een stevige positie te geven binnen het stedelijk kunstbestel en perspectief te bieden op ontwikkeling en groei. 🔗 Voor meer informatie en om het noodplan te bekijken, ga naar https://moker.amsterdam/ [ID: Colourful typographical slide with Dutch text on a green background and a stripe of three other colours (orange, sky blue, and magenta) on the right. The text reads: "Noodplan MOKER. Drie stappen om de hedendaagse beeldende kunst en creatieve industrie in Amsterdam te redden." The MOKER logo in black and magenta is placed in the bottom right-hand corner.]

The next session of the ‘for the listen to live here’ series is guided by Hazara Afghan/Dutch artist Raoni/Muzho Saleh. Through his ongoing practice ‘Mourning Sociality’, Raoni creates ceremonial gatherings where grief is expressed collectively through moaning and listening. In this space, he invites to play with grief as a psychosomatic, spiritual experience that is always political. Expressing grief collectively creates space for embodying other worlds. This iteration, ‘moaning with/through textile bodies’, will focus on how touch and sound can move one another closer, into shared emotional utterances, while being enwrapping in shared fabrics. Raoni/Muzho will provide a structured container to play with simple movement and sound exercises. The emphasis lies in playing and play-acting with the experience of grief, and participants are encouraged to take responsibility for what arises for them. We will learn how to listen to and receive the moaning calls of others through the membrane of our skin, and to locate what this listening opens up within us. Participating in this session requires no prior experience with movement and sound. There will be some sweet snacks and a light dinner after the session. 📍WG Plein 881, Amsterdam 🕔Saturday 25 April 15-19hr (doors open at 14:50hr) Free 🔗 Tickets via the link in bio ➝Covid testing To help everyone feel comfortable and safe, please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available at the venue. ➝Accessibility If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately, without elevator access. There is also a narrow staircase inside the space. Two gender neutral WC on the first floor Language: English For a more detailed description of the space, contact [email protected] Flyer design: nor akelei. Drawings featured on the flyers were created by participants in a workshop led by Sam Metz at ATD in Amsterdam, as part of the “What If… Neurodiversity?” symposium in January 2025. ID in comments.

𝗜𝗳 𝗜 𝗖𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗽𝗲𝘁𝘀! These carpets will become co-hosts of a gathering and listening space developed by artist/researcher yasmine eid-sabbagh, as a new iteration of her ongoing project 𝙁𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨. From 20 June to 11 July 2026, the space will host collective listening sessions, reading circles, and conversations engaging the complexity of Palestinian life through the stories of Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp located southeast of Tyre, Lebanon. Your carpet will become part of this space of connection, reflection, and resonance, shaping how we gather, sit, listen, and spend time together. We will take good care of your carpets and return them clean right after the project concludes. If you are interested, you can find all the details via the link in our bio. Thank you! This chapter of 'Frictional Conversations', presented within the context of If I Can’t Dance Edition X – Body as Memory, was commissioned as part of the Consortium Commissions—a project initiated by Mophradat. The presentation is further supported by the Mondriaan Fund, AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), het Cultuurfonds and the DOEN Foundation. 📷 'Frictional Conversations' at documenta 15, Kassel, 2022. Photo: Rozenn Quéré [ID. A large room is filled with a multitude of carpets of different colours and styles. Spread around are also straw cushions and white paper cards. A small portion of the white concrete ceiling is visible. One arch gently divides the room. The frontal wall opposite the camera is covered with long greyish/purple curtains. In the corner next to it are located a drum set and a grand piano.]

The housing cooperative de Nieuwe Meent (dNM), together with a coalition of Amsterdam-based cultural institutions formed by de Appel, Framer Framed, and If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, have launched an open call for the realization of a semi-permanent mural on the North facade of the dM building in Watergraasmeer, Amsterdam Oost. You can download the open call via the link in bio. We will host two info meeting on the 18th of April at 17:00 and on the 8th of May at 19:30. During the info session you can visit the site, meet  de Nieuwe Meent members and the organizers, and ask questions about the procedure.

. 16/04/2026 - 19:30 Bulegoa z/b SAVERIO CANTONI: THE OPPOSITE OF SILENCE IS A SHOCKWAVE Presentación de Saverio Cantoni al comienzo de su residencia en Bulegoa z/b. // Saverio Cantoniren aurkezpena, Bulegoa z/b-en egindako egonaldiaren amaieran. * The opposite of silence is a shockwave es una producción de Bulegoa z/b como parte de access: practices and habits (acceso: prácticas y hábitos), un proyecto de colaboración a largo plazo con If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Ámsterdam, Holanda) y Askeaton Contemporary Arts (Askeaton, Irlanda). Su objetivo es desarrollar la accesibilidad como una práctica creativa en el centro del trabajo de estas organizaciones artísticas. Access: practices and habits está cofinanciado por la Unión Europea. . . #residenciaartistica #egonaldia #residency #bulegoazb #oficinadearteyconocimiento #bilbao #solokoetxe . . @leire_vergara @beacaviapardo @saveriocantoni @askeatoncontemporary @ificantdance_

The housing cooperative de Nieuwe Meent (dNM), together with de Appel, Framer Framed, and If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, are launching an open call for a mural that will inhabit the north facade of the dNM building in Amsterdam East. dNM is one of Amsterdam’s first housing coops and has recently been nominated for the Amsterdam Architecture Prize 2026. Rooted in the housing rights movement, dNM is a social, political, and architectural project completely developed through a community-led process. dNM is an experiment in co-design, shared living, and solidarity economy. The mural will form an integral part of the building and its vision. We’re looking for proposals with a strong conceptual, poetic, or political message that engage with dNM principles and values. We especially welcome experimental, community-driven approaches that involve dialogue with residents or nearby communities. Open to artists, writers, designers, architects, and activists. No prior mural experience required, as we are interested in proposals that expand our idea of what a mural can be or who a mural artist is. We strongly encourage applications from BIPOC, queer, trans, disabled, and non-binary practitioners, and those engaging with housing, commons, and social justice. 📅 Deadline: June 1, 2026 Info meetings & site visits: April 18, 17-18hr & May 8, 19:30-20:30hr @woonruimtecooperatief / @nooncoffeeculture (corner dNM). Questions via [email protected] 🔗 Full open call at the link in bio. dNM is a project by dNM coop members and @timetoaccess i.c.w. Roel van der Zeeuw Architects. Flyer: Raoul Audouin. [ID. Flyer announcing an open call for a mural at de Nieuwe Meent (dNM). Using a white background, it features a photograph of a red-brick residential building behind a railway platform, with overhead cables and bare trees in view. A faint rectangular outline marks the proposed mural location on the facade. Bold, sans-serif black typography highlights “OPEN CALL for a mural,” while subtle diagonal lines referencing the train cables add movement to the design. The logos of de Appel, Framer Framed, and If I Can’t Dance are listed at the bottom.]

The next session of the ‘for the listen to live here’ series is guided by voice and sound artist, researcher, and performer Angelo Custodio. Through listening, he facilitates processes that hold space for regenerative movement and nourish relational understandings of the bodymindvoice. His work develops sonic encounters with the vulnerable, opening “cracks” to wild(er) spaces that utterly invite freer ecologies of living. This session emerges from a collaboration between Angelo Custodio and shy*play to explore diffractive practices of polyphony. This means composing in difference yet in relation, where each voice carries its own worlds, creating a multivocality that follows no hierarchy and seeks no unity. Through various scores, a range of different possibilities of participation will be prompted, from the use of the voice for humming, murmuring, stuttering, etc., to engaging in spatial movement or stimming practices such as rocking and circling. The space will be arranged with hanging fabrics to avoid the need for facial centering and other neurotypical conventions. Those who feel marginalized or silenced in mainstream spaces are especially warmly invited. Participants require no prior experience. Drinks and snacks will be offered throughout. 📍WG Plein 881, Amsterdam 🕔Saturday 4 April, 14-17hr (doors open at 13.45hr) Free 🔗 Tickets via the link in bio ➝Covid testing To help everyone feel comfortable and safe, please take a Covid test before the event; if you have symptoms, please do not attend and let us know so we can offer your spot to someone else. Tests and masks will be available at the venue. ➝Accessibility If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor, unfortunately, without elevator access. There is also a narrow staircase inside the space. Two gender neutral WC on the first floor Language: English Flyer design: nor akelei with rawings created by participants in a workshop led by Sam Metz at ATD in Amsterdam, as part of the “What If… Neurodiversity?” symposium, January 2025. [ID in comments]

Applications to our upcoming MA 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 are open until April 1! Led by curator and writer Eva Posas, 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 is a two-year temporary MA offered by If I Can’t Dance in collaboration with the Sandberg Instituut. The programme intersects Eva's research ‘Phantom Languages’ within the context of Nations Without State with the work done by If I Can’t Dance over the past 20 years in the field of performance and performativity.⁠ ⁠ The programme aims to explore the rich and interdisciplinary field of performance not as an outcome but as a research methodology. The entry point to this field is the phantoms that live in and outside us, bringing forth experiences of repression and erasure, either on an individual or collective level. Embodying the interplay between body and environment, these phantoms function like scores; they create a threshold, a lifeline between the verbal and the nonverbal, the material and the immaterial. The MA aims to equip participants with tools to engage with the unseen, unacknowledged, and erased, yet still here, addressing the impalpable and yet present set of actions and knowledge inscribed within bodies, their genealogies, behaviours and relations.⁠ In doing so, they will be supported by an outstanding group of artists, thinkers, and practitioners, working at the undisciplined, de-genred intersections of performance studies, heart epistemologies, anti-colonial, and anti-racist thinking, lived experience, situated knowledge, critical theories, and DIY technologies. Next to Eva Posas and If I Can’t Dance curators Anik Fournier & Sara Giannini, we are thrilled to announce that Noor Abed, Lynnée Denise, Venuri Perera, Yin Yin Wong, and Amy Suo Wu have joined the programme. ⁠ ➝Visit the programme page via the link in bio. ➝Online info sessions with Eva Posas on Monday 23 March 8PM and Wednesday 25 March 11 AM (links in bio). 📷 #1 Yin Yin Wong, ‘Psalm for a Hungry Ghost’, ph. Bart Treuren, 2025, #2 Portrait Noor Abed, ph. Miquel Munoz, #3 Portrait Lynée Denise, #4 Portrait Venuri Perera, ph. Luka Alagiyawanna, #5 Portrait Amy Suo Wu, ph. Roel van Tour.

Don’t miss the third and final iteration of ‘YoU arE varIAtions’, now on view until 22 March. Your last chance to experience the exhibition in its final form! The exhibition has unfolded in three monthly stages. In each stage, works changed and shifted position. Currently ‘Variation III’, includes: 🕒 ‘water diary 03’ by Christina Della Giustina now appears on the big screen as a video work. A stripe of water slowly traverses the projection, subtly moving up and down with the tides in Amsterdam. Notes gathered during this time drift in and out of the water, forming a moving poem. With this work, Della Giustina turns towards working with water, tides, and trees, connecting her ongoing research on language and gender with ecological questions. 🕟 The seminal collaborative video 'Acquabelle' (1995) has returned to the monitor installation, now shown in dialogue with 'Queen's Finger' by Anchan/Anna Daučíková, ‘you are variations, version 08, interpretation 03 — Spruce and Beech at Ore Mountains’ (2019) by Christina Della Giustina with a special hand intervention by Daučíková, and the archival compilation put together by the exhibition curators. Exhibition calendar: • Variation I | 18.1–8.2 • Variation II | 9.2–1.3 • Variation III | 2.3–22.3 [currently on view] ID: A stripe of water slowly traverses the projection, subtly moving up and down with the tides. Stream-of-consciousness notes drift in and out of the water, forming a moving poem.

Seedlings, buds, sprouts. Spring is coming. Within this moment of transition, you are invited to join us on the Spring Equinox for the second workshop of Milena Bonilla’s project 𝗙𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝘀: 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘀. Guided by the sprouts emerging in the area, we will cross the portal of memory and turn our attention to the medical and carceral institutions that have occupied the grounds of our site since the 17th century. We will begin at the former Pesthuis (‘Plague House’)—later renamed the Buitengasthuis (‘Isolation Hospital’)—and cross the bridge that originally connected the now-disappeared building with the rest of Amsterdam. Along the way, we will reflect on the water borders that have historically been linked to the exclusionary treatment of illness, otherness, and divergence within the frameworks of coloniality and modernity. Through exercises rooted in the ‘doctrine of signatures’ and other oracular healing practices officially dismissed by the Dutch healthcare system, we will re-learn how to read space not only as a document, but as a living agency, a teacher, and a wounded healer. 📍 WG-Plein 881, Amsterdam 🕔 Saturday 21 March Free, RSVP 14.30–17.30hr 🔗 RSVP via link in bio Accessibility: If I Can’t Dance is on the second floor and unfortunately has no elevator. The workshop will be held in English. Milena Bonilla’s project is kindly supported by @afk020 and @cultuurfonds . 📷 #1Feral Elm tree (Ulmus minor), ph. Milena Bonilla, #2 Notebook page, Milena Bonilla, #3 XVII century drawing of the Pesthuis, Stadsarchief Amsterdam. [ID: #1Flyer announcing the 2nd workshop in the series ‘Ferals and Ruderals’ is overlaid on the photograph of a feral plant growing through the cracks of a sidewalk #2 Photograph of a notebook laid on a yellow surface depicting the drawing of a Nettle leaf and its roots coloured in green. The drawing is surrounded by notes in pencil. #3 Old architectural drawing showing the aerial view of a square building with inner courtyard and four towers on its corners. The building is secluded by a water canal and rows of trees.]