Leidse Stadtsgehoorzaal
Breestraat 60
Join us in the Stadtsgehoorzal (Leiden) on the 20th of May for two inspiring performances by Reframing HERstory Art Foundation as part of the official closing programme of our annual consortium meeting 2025.
Music- & dance theatre Radiant Shadow consists of three music- and dance theatre performances of approx. 30 – 45 minutes each after which the audience is invited to a short reflection. Two of the three perfromances will feature in this evening programme. It centers around the necessity of delving into the colonial history of the Province of Gelderland and its current reverberations. These productions will each show an underrepresented part of our shared history, the dark side of Dutch prosperity. In all three productions the music and dance are central, the emotions speak, the heart is touched.
Produced by Reframing HERstory Art Foundation
Reframing HERstory Art Foundation, located in Arnhem, is the producer of the performance and workshop programme. With this work the foundation contributes to raising awareness and bringing education about the colonial and slavery past of Gelderland, through music and dance theatre performances, and a programme with a focus on healing from this past. After the 150th commemoration of emancipation, the emphasis is on the urgency to bring the voices that were marginalized to the fore and reflect on this history that is still present today.
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ANNA: The second Radiant Shadow production, about a Black woman who lived in Arnhem in the 18th Century. Little is known about her. What we do know is that she was born in slavery on the Vossenburg plantation in Suriname. The owner was a Dutchman from Arnhem. When he died, Anna accompanied his two daughters, almost her own age, from Suriname to their new home in Arnhem. Her life was spent in obscurity, but she must have been a spectacle being a Black woman. Who was she? How was she treated, and how did she feel? She comes to life in our performance: ANNA.
LOUISE: This concluding part of the Radiant Shadow triptych takes us to the colonial past of Gelderland of 18th Century and the marginalized lives of women in those days. After the 150th Commemoration of emancipation of slavery in the Kingdom of the Netherlands it is time to acknowledge the past and bring the suffered pain and hidden shadows that enabled 18th Century prosperity and wealth to light. To direct us, with heightened awareness, to move towards a new, more inclusive and just, global society.
The performance Louise is based on the embroidery of the 18th Century (white) woman Louise van Ommeren- Hengevelt from Arnhem (1794). Embroidery and needlepoint were often seen as ‘craft’ instead of a work of Art, as it was part of what women produced in the domain of their homes. But this embroidery is, apart from a virtuous and beautiful needlework in striking colours, also a protest against slavery. What made this well-to-do woman in Arnhem stitch such a protest on slavery? What does it say about her and her life as a woman in this Dutch colonial and patriarchic society?