Biography

Mees Vervuurt (2000) is a composer and director based in Amsterdam. He graduated with a BA in ‘Music & Performance Art’ and ‘Composition’ from Utrecht Conservatory in 2022, and from the Alternative Conservatoire in London in 2024.

Mees creates poetic worlds in which the audience slowly disappears. These worlds are where sound, music, painting-like images, and movement serve almost sacred experiences. Music and movement flow into each other, revealing how inseparably connected they are. The space breathes, and the voice and body become part of the architecture. We sway along with the breath of the space, and the borders of our skin slowly seem to dissolve in the resonating tones. First, we try to understand the elusive, but then we surrender to the unknown. We let go and sail along in this universe of sound.

These performances are always site-sensitive, with Mees researching a combination of (live) music, movement, and space. The location is always one of the starting points for the performances he creates. It immediately questions why we are there and reflects on our being. Every reverb, echo, corner, and history is unique. We have to relate to the rules and laws of the space; we can’t ignore them.

Artistic project

An Elegy is a poetic musical performance about the relationship between humans and their surroundings. An elegy for grief, loss, and hope. A musical poem about the desire to genuinely relate to your environment (and thus to yourself). How the breath finds harmony with the wind, the heartbeat aligns with the rhythm of the waves.
An Elegy consists of multiple parts. As the audience, we move through the dunes, where a number of performers take us on their attempt to become one with the environment: a singer tries to capture the air with her voice, letting it blow through her and then fade away with the wind. A physical performer attempts to become the landscape, digging, becoming still. These performers guide us through the dunes in intimate performances about disappearing, dissolving, becoming one with the surroundings in a time when the relationship between humans and nature has been completely disrupted.

Format: performance

Size of audience: 200 people

Specific location: seaside, the dunes, the beach

Timing / duration: day performance of 60-90 min