Emiel Vandenberghe

Emiel Vandenberghe, a 31-year-old dancer, choreographer, model, and actor. Birgit Keil, an 82-year-old ballet legend. Together, they perform a remarkable duet, an intergenerational dialogue between pupil and mentor, between artistic mother and son. Vandenberghe previously appeared at DE SINGEL in the groundbreaking Chapters of Celebration by Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, which is being reprised this season.

Afterglow is the lingering light that remains when the brilliance has faded. Just as virtuosity embeds itself in the body, familiar through a lifelong pursuit of perfection.

Although Keil and Vandenberghe now move beyond the structures of classical ballet, they still carry its discipline inside them. As a former star dancer of the Stuttgart Ballet, Keil embodies a rich artistic legacy. Vandenberghe, trained at the English National Ballet School in London, danced for six years with the Badisches Staatsballett in Karlsruhe before charting his own course as a creator.

In the interplay between care and surrender, Vandenberghe connects the discipline of classical ballet to an instinctive imagining of the bond between mother and child.