"In my heart, I'm a choreographer"

Laura Daelemans has successfully completed the bachelor's programme in dance at ArtEZ. After four busy years, it is now time to say goodbye to the course. Luckily, she will not find herself bored in the upcoming months, because she already has some new projects in the works.

Laura did not start dancing until she was thirteen. She comes from a musical family and played the violin for a long time. When she was twelve, she saw a YouTube video of an American dancer and decided she wanted to become a dancer. "After that, I started taking dance classes and after three years of those, I moved on to the Art Humanities for Contemporary Dance Preparatory programme in Antwerp." At age seventeen, she was allowed to begin studying the Bachelor Dance Artist at ArtEZ.

The Dance Artist programme

The Dance programme at ArtEZ, known as the Bachelor Dance Artist, is the only course in the Netherlands where you officially graduate as a choreographer as well as a dancer. "With some projects in your third year, you get the choice to take them as a dancer or as a choreographer. For example, there was a project with Krisztina de Châtel. The dancers had the option to learn Krisztina’s repertoire and the choreographers could create their own work and receive feedback from Krisztina. Laura chose the latter. "In my heart, I'm a choreographer. My first experience with this was in the preparatory programme, where I had to produce a solo when I was fifteen. I loved it!"

Laura found the Bachelor Dance Artist to be a very enjoyable programme. "You can be yourself here," she says. "Everyone has a certain individuality and appreciates each other."

Internship at SALLY

Students design and spend their fourth year completely at their discretion, Laura says. "Our curriculum is blank. You can get credits for different aspects, but how you go about that is up to you." A mentor active in the dance field supervises and guides the students, and part of the fourth year is the internship. For hers, Laura was accepted by the SALLY Dance Company Maastricht. "I was given the unique opportunity by the company to work with their professional dancers, which culminated in the theatrical dance performance "Royal Oak." SALLY is a well-sought-after and well-run company, so I was extremely grateful for this internship." I also created the solo "Total Eclipse" at De Nieuwe Oost production house and created some short works in collaboration with other creators.

A humourous touch

Laura’s work is often about human behaviour and its fragility. "I often create situations where characters make themselves very vulnerable," she says. "Then I like to add a humorous touch, making the subject lighter to deal with." That lightness is nice, Laura says, because the subjects of her work are often intense.

Future plans

In the future Laura would like to start her own dance company, a dream she is currently working towards. "I would then like to develop a signature style and do more with theatre. It has had a great influence on me, so I’d love to get a more complete background and more experience in theatre." But she may just as well become a lecturer, she says. "I have developed my own floorwork teaching materials. Later in the year, I had the opportunity to teach a week of floorwork classes at SALLY with this workshop. It was such a nice experience, so hopefully there will be more opportunities to do some more floorwork classes in the future."

Nijmegen Art Night

Laura's "Total Eclipse" solo can be seen on 18 September 2021 at the De Lindenberg theatre during the Nijmegen Art Night. "There, the audience will see all sorts of performances at different locations, and my solo performance is one of them. It's such a treat being back performing in the theatre."