The Reflector is a trajectory that Domein previously organized with Festival Cement in 2021/2022. Together, they sought a sustainable way of reflecting on art, a new connection between artist and critic. In 2025/2026 Domein organized a new – dance – edition of The Reflector together with and made possible by Dansateliers Rotterdam. Read critic Joost Jungsik Vormeer Sidenotes here below. Read Joosts’ short story The Braille Room here. Want to know more about this awesome project? Read a recap by mentor Anna van der Kruis.

Initially, I wanted to write a series of short essays or diary entries about my experience of dancing. In other words, I wanted to start dancing myself and see how my body’s responses connected with Ashley and Domenik’s work. However, I share some traits with the character I’ve created.

Vasti

Vashti is based on the protagonist of one of E. M. Forster’s short stories, ‘The Machine Stops’ (1909)¹. In the story, her name is Vashti – I dropped the ‘h’. 

In recent years, The Machine Stops has gained notoriety as it is thought to foreshadow the internet age, and more recently, the sense of isolation experienced during the Covid-19 crisis. In The Machine Stops, life on the Earth’s surface has become almost impossible, and most people live in hive-like communities underground in small, single rooms, all connected to an entity called the Machine. The Machine enables them to order food, talk to other people, listen to lectures and find information. Each room is equipped with a giant apparatus involving a screen and a handbook describing its buttons and features. There is no need to leave one’s room. Meeting each other, and especially touching each other, has become unnecessary and impolite. Direct experience is frowned upon. However, Forster’s Vashti is perfectly content with this way of life.

outside

The performanceI have lived anywhere but here feels like the antithesis of seclusion. It is meant to be performed in public, outdoors, for everyone to experience. In my view it is all about direct experience. Ashley and Domenik told me how police officers tasked with enforcing social distancing regulations were looking on during a performance once. The piece conveys a sense of immediacy and intimacy that feels vastly different from isolation at home. At the same time, its history can be understood in the context of a global health crisis. A moment in time when people felt isolated and despondent. 

When I first saw the performance in 2025 at the Jaarbeursplein in Utrecht, there was a festive atmosphere among the crowd. People stood around the dancers — some intrigued, some bored — while others filmed with their phones. Meanwhile, the lengthy tarpaulin took on the quality of a makeshift stage that could be manipulated, lifted up or down, turned around, and/or turned inside out — like the digital figures (figurations) of PC screensavers in the late ’90s. I still remember the moment when a girl playing crossed the ‘stage’, while Ashley held one end up with her hands and Domenik lay on the ground under the other end. The girl was moving quickly, in contrast to Ashley and Domenik’s slower movements. 

all her books 

Like the character in ‘The Braille Room’, Forster’s Vashti is an art critic. She was created as a criticism of Oscar Wilde who, in ‘The Critic as Artist’, postulated that in the future, ‘critical and cultured spirits, will grow less and less interested in actual life, and will seek to gain their impressions almost entirely from what Art has touched’.² Vashti exemplifies this vision to an absurd extreme: her sole preoccupation is the world of ideas. Direct experience is of no importance to her. When her rebellious son Kuno appears on her screen, asking for an in-person visit, real human contact (instead of ‘video calls’), she is reluctant, not wanting to leave the safety of her room, being too busy with her ideas, her reading, her lecturing. 

the act of writing 

The debate about whether direct experience is more important than secondary experience seems to be still relevant in the current internet age. However, the concept of direct experience becomes unstable when people spend so much time online, experiencing life in virtual spaces. Meanwhile, art criticism has lost much of its authority, status and impact. Contrary to Oscar Wilde’s prediction, critics have not become artists. In fact, the opposite is true: to some extent, artists have become their own critics. Reflecting on and communicating one’s own work to the public is part of contemporary artistic practice. 

It is interesting how Ashley & Domenik take this a step further. Reflection appears not merely instrumental, but integral to their work. Asking me to follow them fits in with this approach, although I wondered what I, as a critic, could contribute. Perhaps that is why I wrote a story. 

Like critics, Ashley and Domenik are able to use the language of theory effectively, which has an aesthetic quality of its own. They create texts around each performance, or perhaps continuously. Words of their own or from others. During performances and try-outs, I have read or heard poems, diary entries, recipes, emails, printed WhatsApp conversations and voice recordings.    .    

Initially, I thought there would be a clear distinction between the act of reading and writing and the act of dancing. This is why I decided to start dancing myself. Out of my house and into the world. (Although, as Sachi Rihal’s YouTube videos aptly demonstrate, you can dance at home on your own.) However, when I’m trying to understand the work of Ashley and Domenik, I keep reaching the point where I realise there is no real boundary between the body and language, whether spoken or written, or between text on paper and movement on stage. If I couldn’t read like Vasti, I would miss something, but perhaps I would perceive other things much better.

shape

Every letter and character has its own shape. But each hand has its own unique way of writing them down. If any alphabet were a choreography, writing by hand would be its performance. Even if I couldn’t read, I would still appreciate the handwriting on Ashley and Domenik’s website. The repetition. Its rhythm. The structure. These elements convince me that there is an overlap between text and dance in Ashley and Domenik’s work.

Now that I am learning Korean, I have started writing letters by hand again to familiarise myself with the different shapes of the letters. The movements on paper feel completely new. Sometimes I cannot properly read what I have written. Very occasionally, I find a rhythm.

two people

Although Ashley and Domenik are on stage together, there is hardly any sense of traditional togetherness. They are speaking on stage, but not necessarily to each other. Occasionally, one performer will look at the other, but this gaze is not often reciprocated. 

Even when they move in sync, as when they jump rope in Songs for Friends, their bodies never really seem to interact in an emotionally complimentary dynamic, as two protagonists in a ballet often do. Still, there is a heightened awareness of each other’s presence, bodies, families and histories. At times, their interaction feels almost like a confrontation.

It is perhaps a little too obvious to analyse their work in the context of the affective turn, which Louis van den Hengel defines as a renewed focus on feelings and emotions and their implications³. I have always found it difficult to understand what people mean by affect. Perhaps I can compare it to the way I view works of art in a museum. If I were to read the information next to a painting first, I would approach the image in an intellectual way. But if I were immediately moved (affected is perhaps a better word) by this work of art, without really being able to put the experience into words, that would come close to an affective moment.   

Van den Hengel follows Brian Massumi in distinguishing between emotion and affect. Emotions are subjective, personal, and meaningful experiences, whereas affect has an impersonal or pre-personal intensity. It has no meaning or content and cannot be expressed in words. This does not mean that affectivity is outside any social order. According to Massumi (Van den Hengel writes), affectivity relates to the capacity of bodies (in a broad sense) to form new connections with other bodies. 

There is the same intensity between the performers on stage, while the performance itself feels somewhat impersonal (or pre-personal). Ashley and Domenik may be forming affective connections not only with each other, but also with their surroundings, their family, and other entities. As a result of relations shaped by affectivity, the boundaries between bodies become more permeable. In Songs for Friends: A Vinyl, I got the impression that both characters were experiencing each other’s children’s games at school, albeit briefly.

from one place to the next 

Gielen and Lijster observe the globalisation of the visual arts, describing it as an increasing detachment from local contexts, meaning that place is no longer relevant to production or consumption⁴. While I am not entirely sure how this compares to the field of modern dance, when I visited Dansateliers last November, I was positively impressed by the international backgrounds of the creators. I do believe this diversity contribute to an inspiring artistic environment. 

Over the past ten years, Utrecht has become a more international and less provincial city. Ten years ago, I found it annoying when people in the city centre, such as café waiters, spoke to me in English. They were people who actually spoke Dutch, but who saw me as an international student. This made me feel dislocated, as if my Asian background categorised me as someone who was only there temporarily. This perception disregards the long-standing presence of Asian-Dutch communities in the Netherlands, a presence which is often not reflected in areas such as politics, the media, and the arts. Now, however, I don’t find it so difficult when people speak to me in English in the city centre. Often, people simply don’t speak Dutch. It’s almost liberating to speak English without feeling categorised. The city centre has truly become an international place. 

There is an ongoing debate within Dutch society about internationalisation, but I fear that not enough consideration is given to the people being discussed. These are young people from abroad and workers propping up the inner-city service sector by taking on insecure jobs in areas such as meal delivery and hospitality. It is difficult to find housing. Even when they find somewhere, the rent is often too high.  

Ashley and Domenik reflect on a more general feeling of precariousness in some parts of their work. I think the latest Songs for Friends performances (2024) are about moving somewhere new and the decisiveness this requires. At the same time, I also experienced a sense of indecision, particularly evident in the repetition of ‘I want…’ by the performers. A reference to doomscrolling by the voiceover: ‘You were in bed scrolling through the memes.’ This comes close to my own habit of staying indoors, staying awake too long while lying in bed, doomscrolling on social media platforms.  

martial arts

Last year, I talked to Ashley and Domenik about how people on the street react to I have lived anywhere but here. And they made it clear that people’s reactions could be very negative, sometimes even aggressive. Therefore, I think it takes courage to perform outside on the street. When I actually watched the performance, a couple of weeks later in Utrecht on the Jaarbeursplein, reactions ranged from benevolent to indifferent. (That’s how I experienced it.) For a moment, a young boy interrupted Ashley, making eye contact. Ashley’s reaction was subtle, difficult to describe. Perhaps it was something assertive in her posture that showed her control over her body and the situation. It reminded me of the confidence you might gain from practising a martial art.

the vegetable garden

Some writers and artists turn their attention to their surroundings as a result of affectivity, exploring new ways to connect with the entities or things around them. For example, visual artists may become preoccupied with their studio space and the view from its windows, or they may collect materials from the surrounding area. Gardening, in particular, has become a focal point, perhaps because the actions performed in this small, specific space – often one’s own backyard – can easily be linked to broader issues such as ecology, biodiversity, and climate change. 

In recent years, a magazine called Pleasant Place was founded that focuses specifically on art and gardening. There have also been exhibitions on gardening at Centraal Museum in Utrecht and NEST in The Hague.

I liked how, for Last Portrait, Ashley and Domenik built a garden on stage, surrounded by personal items such as printed emails and text messages, diaries, photographs and recipes. The garden became an archive of relationality and a template for questions about care. A gardener cares for their garden, and vice versa; there is an exchange between what is extracted and what is given back, symbolised on stage by the small bottles of medicine in the soil. This continuous, silent negotiation often reflects the way in which we care for family members and other people close to us. The fact that we are often unable to do so, or not in the way we would like, due to various forms of distance (spatial, physical and relational), is another aspect of precariousness convincingly addressed by Ashley and Domenik in this performance.

It is also a negotiation across generations. At times, I like to re-read Domenik’s grandparents’ letter (7 August 2024), which was also included on stage during Last Portrait. These two sentences demonstrate a great deal of understanding of what it’s like to be young nowadays: ‘Zweifellos spielt die Gesundheid eine Grosse Rolle. Die Möglichkeien, etwas für die Gesundheit zu tun sind Grosser geworden, die Möglichkeien sie zu ruinieren auch‘. 

the Homeless

In ‘The Machine Stops’ some people live outside the system, i.e., not in one of the small underground cells that are connected to the Machine. This world is governed by a Central Committee, which punishes inhabitants for disobedience – tampering with the Machine is of the most serious crimes – with homelessness being the most severe punishment. Rebels are banished to the earth’s surface and referred to as the Homeless. Vashti is content to live in confinement in her underground cell and she considers homelessness a frightening prospect. However, for her son, someone who longs for human contact and direct experience outside, the Homeless have acquired an almost mythical status. 

windows

I rarely clean my windows. Last summer, I gave it a try and I was so pleased with the result that I sat down on a chair by the windows to look outside. When I open the windows, branches of a tree often gently brush against my head, because I live on the second floor. 

I thought of Alice Neel’s quote: “I really live out my front room windows … It’s like having a street in your living room . . . Since I’ve always been claustrophobic, it is a great escape for me not to feel shut up in a room.” I thought about what could happen on the street below, and how far away from everything I would feel. As Ashley and Domenik write on the Brievenbus webpage: A disaster can be intimately beautiful when far-removed. I was waiting for something to happen.  

Soon after, a young man walked down the path beneath my apartment, next to the construction site, which is hidden from my view by the trees’ greenery in summer. He was dragging a couch along with him. He put the couch down under my window and lay down to sleep. A few days and nights later, he left again. Throughout this time, I wondered if I should have helped him. I felt somewhat guilty about my earlier thoughts, the easy assumption that what happened in the narrow pathway below my windows was somehow far removed from my life. It isn’t. There is always a choice to act.  

homemade apple juice

Since watching Last Portrait, I’ve become a silent supporter of homemade apple juice during performances. In the corner of the makeshift garden on stage there was a machine of some kind (I don’t know what it’s called) that miraculously produced warm apple juice. 

The smell was delicious, and so was the taste afterwards. 

I think most art disciplines rely on sight and sound for impact, and I wonder why smell, touch and taste are often excluded. In February, I visited the Museum De Pont, where I walked through a crack in a white wall in one of the rooms. Suddenly, I found myself in a dark corridor reminiscent of the adventure movies I watched as a child. The walls were covered in sheets coated in beeswax⁵. The smell was intense, and for a moment, I was transported back to Ashley and Domenik’s performance. Smell is always an important trigger for memories. 

she started to write

Rather than writing this story and these notes, I longed to go outside more often and dance. I had signed up for a vogueing workshop in the park, but I didn’t attend. I would still like to participate in one of Dansateliers’ Monday night dance workshops to experience and feel my body in new ways. 

Last summer, travelling on a slow train to Luxembourg, I read an essay by Astrid Haerens. She writes about the importance of cultivating a sense of community in the arts. Haerens believes that gardening is also a part of her work as a writer. Just like listening, speaking, walking, and eating together⁶.

Perhaps these things also apply to dancing. There are so many ways to dance.

1. E.M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’, in: Selected Stories (London: Penguin Books, 2001).  ↩︎
2. David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell, “Introduction”, in: Selected Stories by E.M. Forster (London: Penguin Books, 2001). ↩︎
3. Louis van den Hengel, ‘Affect als strijdtoneel: Marina Abramović en de politiek van de emotie’, in: Handboek Genderstudies edited by Rosemarie Buikema and Liedeke Plateke, (Bussum: Coutinho, 2015).  ↩︎
4. Pascal Gielen and Thijs Lijster, ‘Between Criticism and Critique: Towards an “Espacement” of Criticism, in: Spaces for Criticism: Shifts in Contemporary Art Discourse edited by Thijs Lijster, Suzana Milevska, Pascal Gielen and Ruth Sonderegger (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015).  ↩︎
5. The installation Wachsraum by Wolfgang Laib.  ↩︎
6. Astrid Haerens, ‘Over touwfiguren’, in: De Internet Gids, 1 September 2024.  ↩︎