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Summers are growing hotter, wildfires are spreading across Europe, and tensions are rising in the streets. What fuels us, and who is fooling us?
Performance
Apology for Fire, a new solo performance by Giulia Damiani, explores how we respond to a world on fire, and whether fire, while destructive, might also hold the power to transform us.
Damiani's research began by listening to communities across Europe affected by wildfires. Their accounts revealed how moments of crisis can also give rise to new connections and forms of solidarity. From there, her research turned to medieval Europe, where outbreaks of uncontrollable dancing, known as choreomania or the "dancing plague", were sometimes described as bodies consumed by an internal fire. According to historical accounts, some dancers reportedly said:
We dance and we apologise.
Fast-forward to the present, and we seem to be living through a crisis of gesture, in which our actions feel too small, too hollow or inadequate in the face of what is unfolding around us. From the compulsive movements of medieval dancers to the empty gestures of contemporary politicians, what happens when our bodies keep moving but their actions have lost their power? What can we learn from the unrest of the past?
Moving between three figures – a medieval fool, a dancing body and a contemporary politician – Damiani examines, with humour and urgency, the absurdity and helplessness of our responses to crisis, as well as our strange attraction to waste.
Through movement, voice and objects, she transforms the stage into an ever-shifting landscape. Aluminium foil becomes a dance partner, a forest, a crackling cave. A charred tree trunk from the wildfires in Portugal carries the traces of a disappearing world. Her voice raises the alarm, protects, soothes and eventually runs out of breath.
Apology for Fire asks what remains possible when action no longer seems enough. And what happens to us, as spectators, when all we can do is bear witness? Perhaps, confronted with a world on fire, we are already becoming spectres. But haven't we all played with fire at some point?
DURATION
45 minutes
Doors open at 8:00 PM
Performance starts at 8:30 PM
About the artist
Giulia Damiani is a performance maker based in Amsterdam.
Her work begins with sound and vocal experimentation: revisiting old folk songs and calls, a voice echoing through a mountain valley, sirens sounding in the streets. From these starting points, she creates provocative situations that raise urgent questions about violence, vulnerability and language, as well as the mythical and ecological landscapes we inhabit.
Her latest work, Heart Brake, has been presented internationally and at Frascati in December 2025. Her new project, Apology for Fire, began at ImPulsTanz and is being further developed in collaboration with Parasita in Lisbon and STUK in Leuven.
Her first book, Nemesis, will be published by Silver Press, London, in 2027.
Credits
Apology for Fire is developed in collaboration with choreographer and dramaturge Oneka von Schrader, sound designer Leroy Chaar, costume designer and set advisor Publik Universal Frxnd, technical producer Fivos Petropoulos, and creative producer Michael Scerbo.
The project is supported by Mondriaan Fonds, Amarte, Culture Moves Europe, Rozenstraat and COKO Space.
Residency support: Parasita Associação, Lisbon; STUK, Leuven; CAVE, Amsterdam.
Apology for Fire is part of COKO Happenings: Dissident Bodies, a programme supported by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK).