It is the third day of the Holland Festival, and I make my way to what feels like the edge of Amsterdam Noord to visit Welcome to Asbestos Hall at the Likeminds stage. It is the work of this year’s associate artist of the festival, choreographer Trajal Harrell. Today is a warm day, probably one of the warmest so far, and people are waiting outside with their drinks for the visit to start. A visit, because this is not a performance or show in the traditional sense.
Upon entering the hall, a woman sits on stage, in the center, surrounded by a large white circle drawn in chalk on the floor. She barely reacts as we file in and take our seats in a circle around her. The conventional theatre benches, where the audience would usually sit, are unused; only chairs placed onstage surround the woman. It further underlines the fact that this is not a conventional performance. I wonder if it can even be called a stage anymore.
After sitting in silence for a short while, looking at the woman, at each other, taking in the room, choreographer Trajal Harrell gives a welcome. This visit, he tells us, was only rehearsed for two days before opening to an audience at the Holland Festival, before they had shown this project in Belgium. This makes us part of the process because, though it is being performed, it is still being created. We are welcomed into the space, welcomed to experience it, and welcomed not to clap once the visit ends. The applause will be saved for after the final visit. An ongoing performance in a sense, perhaps even never truly ending.
After the welcome, the woman on stage springs into action. She begins to run around in what seems like a random order but with controlled movements, making eye contact with various audience members, saluting us one by one. Her clothes, a corset and skirt, are too big for her, and the corset slips down, revealing her breasts. Eventually, another woman joins her, wearing a long-sleeved, see-through shirt and a long skirt. She greets us in a similar manner.
Meanwhile, a small piece of paper is passed around the audience. It explains that this visit is loosely based on In the Solitude of Cotton Fields (Dans la solitude des champs de coton), a play written by Bernard-Marie Koltès in 1985. This clue sits quietly in my hand, but it will only begin to resonate later.
There is a lot to unpack, and the visit begins slowly. Some may simply enjoy the movement, the way music flows from one track to another, how movement follows movement, sometimes with stark shifts, sometimes seamlessly. I find myself searching for meaning in the story, in the gestures, especially since I am unfamiliar with the play it draws from. But I am intrigued. It gives a feeling of fluidity but also unease of not understanding what I am meant to take away from it.
Harrell refers to this project as “process art” because it is not a finished performance. Rather, it is a piece of a whole, snapshots experimenting with Butoh, a Japanese dance movement from the 1950s. This project explores the capacities of the body, fitting with this year’s festival theme of dance, movement, and the vulnerable body. Within this framework, Harrell experiments with Butoh, which emphasizes bodily expression and the uncovering of deeper layers in both performers and audiences.
As the visit unfolds, the two women shift between greeting us, changing clothes, and inspecting the chalk circle, smudging its edges with their feet, blurring the line between performer and observer. Their movements are at times unstable, almost drunken; eyes rolling back, bodies sagging, faces long with effort or exhaustion. They flirt with the circle’s boundary but rarely enter its center, unless to cross through. Sometimes they connect with each other, sometimes they remain alone. They tease, mimic, attack, and mock each other. At other moments, they strike poses like models on a runway. Yet they always return - to each other, and to us - seeking connection.
The movement is at once controlled and chaotic, precise yet seemingly random. It recalls Trisha Brown and her postmodern choreography, where the body speaks in place of narrative. Not a single word is spoken. No sound is uttered. And yet everything is communicated through motion and sharply exaggerated facial expressions, often drawing laughter from the audience. Still, what lingers is not the humor, but the performers’ deep, almost aching longing for attention, for recognition, for contact.
Later, at home, while digesting the experience, I looked up In the Solitude of Cotton Fields. Then it all began to make sense. The play, which the visit is loosely based on, stages an encounter between two strangers: the Client and the Dealer. They must negotiate an exchange, navigating power, vulnerability, and language. Their interaction is based not just on need, but on desire.
In Harrell’s version, the performers seem less concerned with obtaining something from each other than with expressing the conditions of wanting itself. They stay close to the audience, often seeking eye contact, but barely touch and frequently appear unaware of each other. Unlike in the play I imagine, identities are fluid, and it is never clear who is who, or whether they are characters at all. This ambiguity feels deliberate, as if the refusal to fix meaning becomes the point. Like the music, like the chalk circle, everything remains in motion.
Desire here is not aimed at possession. It is not about getting but about reaching; about the space between bodies and the charge that passes through it. It is felt more than fulfilled, suspended rather than resolved. The performers, bodies stretched to their limits, never seem to rest. They mirror and exaggerate one another, sometimes playfully, sometimes as if trying to become each other. They appear unable to give or receive what is wanted, but through this intense interplay, something passes between them, a gesture, a fragment, a flicker of recognition.
In this context, the body becomes a site of projection and resistance. It is fetishized, collapsed, and expanded. Whatever story might be present doesn’t end when the performance does. It lingers in the body, in memory, in the act of watching. Harrell offers no conclusion, only an invitation to keep visiting, again and again, for another fragmented piece of the whole.
Fin.