Aïda Gabriëls is Younger than Jesus 2024

5 Aida Gabriels Joselito Verschaeve

During MA Festival 2024, Aïda Gabriëls takes on the role of cura­tor of Younger than Jesus’. You will soon find out what she has planned for this sum­mer via our channels

Get to know Aïda

Soldering togeth­er con­tem­po­rary and clas­si­cal music, dance, visu­al art and fash­ion, Aïda Gabriëls wends her way through the per­form­ing arts. In 2017 she made her debut with the sound­scape opera Medeamaterial, in which a sopra­no and dou­ble bassist latch on to Heiner Müller’s stub­born dilem­ma in the form of a poem. Later she had two dancers, live video and a per­cus­sion­ist address the ques­tion of guilt in I am the ene­my you killed, my friend, (2018) which took Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem as its start­ing point. With Vacuum (2020) the night­club is put for­ward as an immer­sive play­ground. Electronica, post-rock, dance and light art dis­sect the con­cept of Chaoskampf. With a sim­i­lar­ly inter­dis­ci­pli­nary intent, her reflec­tion on the his­tor­i­cal­ly fatal Salomé fig­ure in Dance of the Seven Veils (2021) aims to sub­vert vest­ed male gazed assump­tions and exist­ing ideas. Loosely inspired by the motif of the dream city Mahagonny from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s opera, The Wild Stage (2022) dives into the need to escape: from our con­fus­ing times, from the need to under­stand every­thing when chaos reigns. Singers and musi­cians become dancers, and vice ver­sa, with the per­form­ers con­stant­ly meet­ing the oth­er again and search­ing for com­mon­al­i­ty. Together, they cre­ate a stream of sound­scapes and imagery invit­ing you into a uni­verse oscil­lat­ing between pop, baroque and elec­tron­i­ca, between con­tem­po­rary and clas­si­cal. In 2023 – 2024 the the­atre will be left behind for Styx, a poly­phon­ic dia­logue between dif­fer­ences. The sta­t­ic museum/​gallery envi­ron­ment con­trasts with light and shad­ow in move­ment, shift­ing sounds, live per­for­mance and audi­ence. Lately she’s been involved in Music Theatre Now, an inter­na­tion­al net­work for new opera and music theatre.