This edition of Urban Dansdagen, we’re welcoming a performance that hits differently. BUSHIDŌ, choreographed by Nina Dumoulin, is part of our Holy Funk programme (May 23) and starts around 21:20. And it’s not just a dance show. It’s a question posed at full volume. What does it take to show up as exactly who you are, with nothing to hide behind?
BUSHIDŌ at Holy Funk
Armor off. Still standing.
Existential courage. That’s the starting point of BUSHIDŌ. Not the kind of courage that comes with a cape or a crowd cheering you on, but the quiet, uncomfortable kind. The courage to be fully visible while the world watches and forms opinions.
The performance explores what happens at that intersection of vulnerability and strength. Four dancers take the floor without armor, and what you get is not fragility. What you get is power of a different kind.
To hold that place, something has to anchor you. In BUSHIDŌ, that anchor is the Bushidō code: discipline, precision, inner calm, and self-control. Not as rules imposed from the outside, but as an internal compass. A way of standing in the world when uncertainty, discomfort, or fear comes with the territory.
Where Waacking meets the dojo
The movement language of BUSHIDŌ pulls from two worlds that are further apart than they look and closer than you’d expect.
Waacking has its roots in the 1970s underground club scene of Los Angeles, born in the Latino and African American LGBTQ community. It was always about freedom, self-expression, and visibility, which makes it a fitting vehicle for this story. The style draws from an eclectic range of inspirations: Bruce Lee’s nunchaku, the elegance of Marilyn Monroe, the physicality of martial arts, the playfulness of Charlie Chaplin. Those influences aren’t decorative. They’re structural. Certain arm movements trace back directly to the nunchaku or Zorro’s cape. The connection to martial arts runs deep enough to be foundational.
BUSHIDŌ makes that connection explicit. Alongside Waacking, the performance incorporates movements from nunchaku and karate, bringing together two traditions that both demand the same things: precision, control, and a kind of presence that can’t be faked.
Nunchaku sensei Joris van den Berg and Shotokan Karate Utrecht worked directly with the company in developing the movement material. The result is something that feels both grounded in history and entirely alive right now.
About Nina Dumoulin
Nina Dumoulin (1992) started her dance career in the hip-hop scene of Maastricht and developed into one of the Netherlands’ most distinctive urban choreographers. Since 2019, her work has been shown nationally and internationally.
For Nina, choreography is a language and Waacking is her sharpest accent. Her work pushes at edges: conceptually, visually, and in terms of what dance can hold. BUSHIDŌ is a continuation of that. Abstract and highly visual, emotional and explosive, rooted in imagination.
Come see it at Holy Funk. Leave the armor at the door.
