I have mixed feelings about the month of October. Twenty-three years ago, during this time, my entire world, which I was so passionately constructing, came crashing down without any warning.
At that particular moment, I was in Utrecht, The Netherlands, deeply immersed in my studies. The subject of my master’s thesis was already defined, focusing on the exploration of a now forgotten political event. It was an engaging pursuit that consumed my intellect. Until that day when the phone rang and…
I received the most unexpected and devastating news. Struck like a bolt from the blue, I was in disbelief, unable to accept the reality of what I had just heard. Yet, in the blink of an eye, I was on a plane, heading to attend my father’s funeral.
But all the denial in the world couldn’t fill the growing void in my chest. Something inside me had broken and my perspective on life had irrevocably shifted. I became acutely aware of life’s inherent fragility, and the subject I had been investigating for my thesis suddenly seemed trivial.
It was a moment of reckoning that brought me back inside, to the vastness of my inner world. I somehow reached an unexpected realization – that the outer reality with all that political unrest was merely a result of our inner world. That paving the way to a more peaceful world had to start from within with healing our inner selves.
In the wake of this life-altering experience, I made a pivotal decision and redirected the course of my thesis towards an exploration of the inner rather than the outer world. A year later, I presented my thesis performance “Inertia,” which represented my state at that time, at Veem Theatre in Amsterdam.
Followed by two decades of creating performances dedicated to exploring “body, thoughts and feelings in space and time.” And at the same time, I invited my performers and audience to explore their own.
If you’re curious, you can go to my Artist site and view images from my performance work, including Inertia.