Gerben Vaillant

Gerben Vaillant (1994, NL) is an interdisciplinary maker, graduated from theatre and education studies at ArtEZ in 2017 and from the mime department of Amsterdam University of the Arts in 2021. Gerben has a strong interest in mime, dance and dance dramaturgy and makes performances about the distance between human and reality, explored in a mix of disciplines such as text, dance, image and philosophy. Gerben wants to contribute to a vision of the world in which there is room for those who break the established norms: a way to feel at home in queerness.

"In each work, I put at the centre a crack between human beings and the world they live in, whether that is the social context in which we move or a worldview that has been constructed and is slowly falling apart because it no longer suits us or we no longer fit into that worldview. My fascination is with where humans no longer effortlessly manage to be a part of one / the whole and a distance arises; a dislocation, a hole, a rupture, a crack that has many different shapes and sizes and can occur in different places. A crack that can be embodied, imagined, told or thought about."


Photo: Gaby Jongenelen