SOME WORKS (2023-2025) ↓

RAPUNZEL (PUELLA MAGICA CORPORE ANIME) Performance Installation @ Vleeshal ↡

On November 22, at 3pm Vleeshal will present the work of Daniel(le) Vorthuys in Zeeland as part of Oemoemenoe at hair salon Wolter Vos in Middelburg. For this occasion, Vorthuys is developing a performance centered around the fairytale Rapunzel—a story about good girls, wicked witches, wrong choices, desires, and what happens when you finally let your hair down. In Vorthuys’ version, Rapunzel is not just a fairytale figure, but a contemporary character who reveals how old ideas about chastity and beauty continue to shape us today - and how these persistent notions can be reimagined and transformed. The performance is based on a script written by Vorthuys in a layered mix of Dutch, English, Latin, Gaelic, German, and Japanese. As Rapunzel, she engages in a dialogue with an animation that represents her own subconscious—a muscular, untamed creature that appears whenever it pleases. Through a complete transformation of herself—through clothing, hairstyle, and makeup—Vorthuys brings Rapunzel to life in a new context, using the fairytale as a framework to explore how stories change when they are retold, and how imagination can help us grasp who we are, and who we wish to be.

Description written by Nadine van den Bosch

CORSET DRAMA (2024), Performance Installation ↡

Seated on a carpet, the performers move and speak with movement from the pelvis that are loosely inspired by Martha Graham’s technique for modern dance. Breathing techniques implemented as a medium for expression in modern dance such as hope, despair, and desire, are regulated by the experience of wearing corsets, tight-laced, and asphyxiating. Breathing and vocal exercises for the activation of the singing voice’s head-register bring this quest into higher realms where voices reach a dreamy reappraisal of sex and sexuality. Thoughts across these mediums are spun together in this Anglo-French dialogue/duet with co-creators, Artémise Ploegaerts, who performs and provides choreography, and Faysal Mroueh who composed the score. The corset/leotards are designed by Anouk van Wijk, and the bustier was produced together with Lotte Nijhof. Rijksakademie Open 2024

LA PETITE FADETTE (2024), Film Installation ↡

Rooted in the present, this folk/noise/noire musical brings together a crossdresser, a French country girl, and a fairy. Referencing jealousy, dysphoria, desire, and encaged sexuality/gender, the music conjures up deep repression through its slow but climatic progression. In the deathly, tortuous grip of the corsets exist the ideals and fantasies which morph the body. When the fairy enters the scene, she immediately assumes the role of arbiter of taste and fashion. Ultimately, this film is part of an investigation into the language and daily rituals of fashion and getting dressed, showing how thinking and feeling through all this can help emancipate us from historical or societal scripts.

IF (2023), Musical Theater:A Pre-Raphaelite dream theatre ↡

IF (2023), Publication ↡

Cold in Church

Some Older Works (2020-2022)