FOCARIS Netherlands & Scotland 2026

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We are thrilled to share some incredibly exciting news: our artists from Colombia are crossing the Atlantic this fall to join forces with the Dutch cast, and perform in Scotland and the Netherlands

Photo: Oswaldo Gamboa

Uitnodiging in Nederlandse Gebarentaal:

FOCARIS in the Netherlands

We are very happy to premiere our work in the Netherlands with this performance. 

Date: Friday, September 11th, 2026

Time:

19:15 – 19:40 | Meet & Touch: to meet the artist and explore the stage, costumes, and music

20:00 – 21:30 | Performance

Location: KORZO Theatre. Prinsestraat 42, 2513 CE Den Haag

Accessibility Info:

  • NGT (Dutch Sign Language): Interpreters present all evening
  • Wheelchair Access: Dedicated spaces available. 
  • Audio Description: Integrated creative audio description in English (with Spanish sprinkles)

  • For people over 12 years old

Tickets

Workshops with Holland Dance Festival

Holland Dance Festival has invited ConCuerpos to offer 2 workshops on the 10th of September in Korzo. One for dancers +55 and another one for all ages. Please find all the info in the links bellow:

DanceAble Special: Water Body
Speciale editie Good [old] Times: Powerful Bodies

Get a Glimpse of the Work

Promo video:

More info about FOCARIS

Documentary:

In 2025, ConCuerpos, Colombia’s pioneering inclusive dance company, joined forces with its new cast from the Netherlands to create FOCARIS International—an evocative work exploring fire as a symbol of inner strength, gathering, and transformation.

Focaris is crafted as a dialogue between the collective and the personal. Each performer—whether with or without a disability—reveals their own “inner fire” through movement, sound, and visual storytelling.

Developed under the principle of Universal Accessibility, the project integrates sign language and creative audio description directly into its dramaturgy. This allows people with visual and hearing disabilities to experience the performance autonomously, while creating an enriched aesthetic experience for the audience as a whole.

After premiering in Bogotá in October 2025 to massive acclaim, this deeply human production is now coming to Europe.

Artistic Team:

Choreographers: Laisvie Ochoa and Diana León

Dancers: David Bernal, Andrea Atuesta, Kamee Frieling, Lorena Lozano, Dennis Massar, Fabián Mariano, Jose Mejía, María José Rodriguez, Laura Toro, Anneloes van Schuppen

Live Original Music: René Moreno

Live Voice: Flora Kryger-Hansen

Lighting Design: Rafael Arévalo (COL) & Marco van der Velde (NL)

Costume Design: Lorena Cala

Video: Camila Malaver

More in our Tour:

Double Sence | Amsterdam Fringe Festival 

Dennis Massar and Isam Zeumouri have invited ConCuerpos international to collaborate in their performance of DOUBLE SENSE at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival 

Dates:

09-09-2026  | 19:30
10-09-2026  | 17:00
10-09-2026  | 20:00

Location: Podium Mozaïek, Theaterzaal, Amsterdam

Tickets

Gathered Together Festival

We are honoured to announce that we have been invited to perform at the prestigious Gathered Together Festival in Scotland in September 2026, with our piece FOCARIS which unites the Colombian and Dutch artists of ConCuerpos.

Dates of the Festival: Wednesday 2nd – Saturday 5th September 2026

Venue: Tramway in Glasgow 

Organised by: Indepen-dance

https://www.indepen-dance.org.uk/gathered-together-2026/

https://www.instagram.com/gatheredtogetherfestival/

Photo: Camila Malaver

We Need Your Support!

While our long-distance flights are taken care of, we need your help! Your contributions will directly cover fair pay for the artists and production crew, accessibility needs, as well as local production costs.

By contributing, you are helping build a more inclusive future for the arts—one where accessibility is not an adaptation, but an artistic language in itself.

Please support our tour today by clicking the ‘Donate‘ button and sharing our campaign with your friends, family, and network. Thank you for being a part of this movement!

Contact:

Laisvie Ochoa, Director.

company@concuerpos.com

(+31)0648907261 

Performance and workshop at the Inclusive Dance Event of ReDiscover Me – June 2025

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Performance

The Inclusive Dance Event consists of two days at CC Amstel with various performances, workshops and much more. On June 7th we kick off with the performance ‘Elk Verhaal Telt’. On June 8th we will play this performance again and guest performances including the duet What You Left Me of Laisvie Ochoa and Dennis Massar, from ConCuerpos NL.

What you left me

From the intersection between Sign Language and dance, choreographer Laisvie Ochoa, is exploring the feeling of loss. In a duet with Dennis Massar, and using material developed with Anneloes van Schuppen, the work presents a visual expression of movent that seeks to honor what her mother left her.

Date: 8th of June 2025

Time: 12h

Place: CC Amstel, Cullinanplein 1, 1074 JN Amsterdam

Tickets

Workshop:

The Inclusive Dance Event continues beyond the performance! On Saturday, June 14 and Saturday, June 21, you are warmly invited to the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam for inspiring workshops, sharings, performances, and conversations with dance makers and participants.

Description of the workshop Eloquent hands on the 21st of June at 13h

In this workshop, we—Laisvie and Dennis—invite you to explore the deep connection between dance and Sign Language. Drawing from our ongoing research, we’ll dive into how movement can be guided entirely by the hands—fast, soft, precise, and always expressive. Through embodied practice, we’ll investigate how hands can shape, lead, and transform the entire body in motion. We’ll explore gestures not just as decorative elements, but as eloquent tools of communication—where dance becomes language, and language becomes dance.

Open to dancers of all levels who are curious about expression, communication, and the poetic potential of the body.

This workshop is based on the performance “What you left me” on the 8th of June at the IDE by RDM.

Date: 21st of June 2025

Place: Academy of Theatre and Dance, Jodenbreestraat 3, Amsterdam

Time: 11:00 AM – 3:30 PM

Lunch: 12:15 – 1:00 PM. A simple lunch will be provided. If you’d like a more substantial meal, feel free to bring something extra for yourself.

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International collaboration 2025

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Premiere Performances

October 24th and 25th, 2025

8:00 p.m.

Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo (Teatro Estudio)
Avenida Calle 170 No. 67-51 – Bogotá, Colombia

Tickets

ConCuerpos Presents FOCARIS: Inclusive and Accessible Dance from Fire

An international co-production with the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Theater, and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia

The pioneering inclusive dance company ConCuerpos proudly announces the premiere of FOCARIS, an ambitious and visually striking dance production exploring fire as a symbol of gathering, protection, and transformation. This international co-production with Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo, and winner of a 2025 Grant from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, brings together world-class artists from Colombia and the Netherlands in a powerful celebration of diversity, artistry, and accessibility.

Taking inspiration from the Latin origin of the word home (focus, meaning “fire”), FOCARIS International is crafted as a dialogue between the collective and the personal. Each performer—whether with or without a disability—reveals their own “inner fire” through movement, sound, and visual storytelling, resulting in a deeply human and emotionally resonant experience.

As ConCuerpos expands its artistic presence to the Netherlands, this production unites an exceptional team: professional dancers from both countries, a composer, an art director, and a lighting designer. The choreographic vision is led by Laisvie Ochoa (Colombia/Lithuania/Netherlands) and Diana León Guerrero(Colombia), whose complementary perspectives ignite a dynamic, multidimensional exploration of fire on stage.

Accessibility is at the heart of FOCARIS International. Sign language and creative audio description are not merely added for accommodation—they are fully integrated into the dramaturgy as expressive artistic languages. This groundbreaking approach ensures that audiences who are deaf or blind can experience the work on equal terms, challenging traditional notions of “adapted” performances and redefining accessibility in the performing arts.

Building on the company’s acclaimed productions—David (2017), ⅔ and a Bathroom (2020), IRA (2021), and Songbook for Absence (2023)—FOCARIS International consolidates ConCuerpos’ unique, accessible choreographic language: one that is expressive, inclusive, and profoundly transformative.

More info about the piece

Documentation of the creation process

Process

Residency at Telocvicna in Bratislava

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2024-ConCuerposNL-Bratislava-Oleksandra Sherina97

During the summer of 2024, we took a beautiful step with ConCuerpos NL during a residency at @telocvicna_rezidencne.centrum in Bratislava, where I deepened the exploration of the intersection between Sign Language and choreography, collaboration with the incredible dancers.

Every day in the studio was filled with hard work and creativity, while every night brought laughter and joy. The highlight? A work-in-progress presentation, where we received valuable feedback from the local deaf community.

This journey is far from over. We’re all deeply committed to continuing this work and ensuring that dance and art remain inclusive and accessible for everyone.

Choreographer: Laisvie Ochoa

Dancers: Anneloes van Schuppen @anneloesvanschuppen and Dennis Massar @dennismassar

PH: Oleksandra Sherina @sherhina.jpg

ConCuerpos in Europe 2022

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ACTIVITIES IN THE NETHERLANDS

PERFORMANCE OF IRA

We will perform our work IRA twice in Utrecht.  We will start each performance with an introductory talk to give context, present a documentary about the creation process and talk about the importance of inclusion in the dance field. 

July 15th 2022

Performance 1 – 18:30 -20:00 h

Performance 2 – 20:30-22:00 h

Domplein 4, Theaterzaal DOMUS, Utrecht

IRA is a 2 parts work that addresses how the feeling of anger arises in the face of injustice and has the potential to generate individual and collective change. In the first part choreographer Diana Leon presents anger as a motor source, as an explosion that allows a rebirth. Where do the different expressions of anger live in the body? What states does it provoke? In the second part choreographer Laisvie Ochoa investigates the place of anger in the sentimental configuration of Colombian identity. She was inspired by the photo and audio registration of the event known as El Bogotazo (April 9, 1948), where collective anger spread throughout the country in search of revolution.

Tickets
More info about IRA

INCLUSIVE DANCE WORKSHOP

We will offer a workshop at DansCentrum Utrecht

July 12th – 19:00 -22:00h / €25

Domplein 4, Torenzaal. Utrecht

In this inclusive dance workshop, the dancers from ConCuerpos will share the creative tools that they developed during the creation process of their dance work IRA. For that creative project, the company started a research on the aesthetics of access, which means to integrate accessibility elements such as subtitles, audio descriptions, and Sign Language within the dramaturgy of the work and not as added tools. In this way, the company is developing a unique artistic language that is both inclusive and accessible. The workshop will start with an encounter with one’s own body, its singularity and its possibilities of movement to establish a broad range of movement qualities. After that, the participants will experiment with different exercises to gain greater freedom and openness to the pleasure of dance in relation to time and space. The next level will be the encounter between diverse people, acknowledging what we share and what makes us unique to enjoy relationships from creativity and respect. The last part will be focused on the relationship between Sign Language and dance, enhancing the kinetic characteristic of this language in choreographic terms.

Tickets

WORKSHOP: Dance, dance, dance with Mateo Mejia Mejia

We will offer a special workshop with the support of ELAP Center. 

July 14th – 19:00 -22:00h / €30

Studio 3, Weg naar Rhijnauwen 3, Utrecht

With this workshop, I invite the participants to deepen the notion of listening. Listening conceived from the dimension of sound and music, but also from its spatial and relational dimensions. Through guided improvisation practices, the participants will investigate how the pulse, the melody, and other constitutive elements of musical architecture can be the triggers for their movement. Therefore, it is a Music workshop applied to Dance and movement, but at the same time a space for developing improvisation tools. It has to do with the pleasure of moving and being moved, the drop of sweat that doesn’t wait, the restless body. The question then has to do with something more nuclear, less formal, inevitably alive. A body that moves, and in that movement invents the language from which it relates to its environment.

Subscribe: concuerpos@gmail.com

SUPPORT US

We are very excited because we have been invited to the Festival Gathered Together in Scotland from the 6th to the 9th of July 2022. After that, we will be visiting the Netherlands from the 10th to the 17th of July 2022 to perform our work IRA and to offer inclusive dance workshops. So we have our first little European tour! Some expenses are covered by the Festival, but we still need to raise more funds to cover the international health insurance, visa to the UK, local travel, accommodation, and food.  We would highly appreciate your support to help us expand our inclusive work internationally. Thanks!

You can donate here:

GoFundMe

GATHERED TOGETHER SCOTLAND

Scotland’s leading inclusive dance company, Indepen-dance, will present Gathered Together 2022 at Tramway (Glasgow) from Wednesday 6 – Saturday 9 July. Over four days, the festival will host performances from some of the world’s leading inclusive dance organisations.

There will also be opportunities for dance artists and people interested in inclusive dance practice to come together and share skills, techniques and knowledge through a program of practical workshops. In addition, the event will include talks by keynote speakers.

All the info