HAPPENING 4 NOV & 11 DEC '26 | Choreographer Cheroney Pelupessy brings her new dance production Draagkracht to Rotterdam twice this autumn, with performances at Theater Zuidplein on 4 November and Theater Rotterdam on 11 December. Seven women take the stage to explore the stories of women from Indonesia, the Moluccas and the former Dutch East Indies whose roles in war, colonialism, resistance and family life have often remained outside written history.
Seven women carry untold histories
Draagkracht begins with a question: what happens to a history when nobody writes down your name?
Pelupessy looks at women from Indonesia, the Moluccas and the former Dutch East Indies who cared for families, endured upheaval, resisted, organised and took risks during periods of war and colonial rule. Their individual names and experiences may rarely appear in official histories, but the production asks whether something of those lives can still be passed between generations.
Seven women with Indonesian, Moluccan and/or Indo backgrounds perform the work: Cheroney Pelupessy, Romee van de Meent, Moya Wenno, Noenoni Loasana, Yasmin Diktas, Babette Schouten and Nona Embsen.
Their bodies are not used simply to illustrate events from the past. Instead, Pelupessy treats the body itself as a carrier of memory, asking what later generations inherit through ways of caring, enduring, moving and responding, even when the original stories were never formally recorded.
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Memory moves through the body
Pelupessy’s movement language combines contemporary physical dance with influences from traditional Indonesian and Moluccan movement forms. In Draagkracht, that vocabulary becomes a way of approaching histories that written sources cannot fully recover.
The title itself carries that idea. The Dutch word draagkracht can refer to the ability to bear or carry something. Here, it becomes both physical and generational: what can a body carry, and how much of another generation remains present in the people who come after?
At Theater Rotterdam, the production is described as an ode to women who were indispensable during periods of war, colonisation and resistance but were rarely publicly recognised. The theatre describes the choreography as drawing on both contemporary dance and traditional Indonesian movement forms.
“We often don’t know their names. But we do carry them,” Pelupessy says of the women who came before her. Her aim is to make visible what may have survived through bodies and families even when words were absent.
From Mama'ku to Draagkracht
Pelupessy is a choreographer, dancer and artistic director of Stichting KETURUNAN. Her work repeatedly returns to bodily memory, cultural inheritance and the question of how experiences move between generations.
Her earlier multidisciplinary project Mama'ku grew from her own family history and the relationship with her mother. That work later formed the basis of the documentary Mama'ku – Van Jakarta tot de Molukken, which received the Gouden Kalf van het Publiek for the most-visited Dutch documentary in 2026.
Draagkracht broadens the perspective. Rather than beginning with one family story, it creates space around a larger group of women whose lives intersect with Indonesian, Moluccan and Dutch colonial histories.
Pelupessy was also nominated in 2026 for both the Nederlandse Dansdagen Innovation Prize and the Gieskes-Strijbis Podium Prize. Theater Rotterdam is among the organisations supporting her and creative producer Gi Au-Yeung through the Fonds Podiumkunsten Nieuwe Makers programme.
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Two Rotterdam performances
Rotterdam gets two opportunities to see Draagkracht during its 2026 theatre run.
The first is at Theater Zuidplein on Wednesday 4 November at 20:30 in the Kleine Zaal. Standard tickets currently cost €19.
The production then returns to the city on Friday 11 December at 20:15, this time at Theater Rotterdam, TR25 Schouwburg. Tickets there currently range from €10 to €20, with reduced rates available for visitors aged 30 and under and Rotterdam Pass holders.
That second Rotterdam performance also brings the production into one of the organisations involved in Pelupessy’s development as a maker, adding another local connection to a work concerned with what gets remembered, what disappears from view and what later generations continue to carry.
How to get there
The 4 November performance takes place at Theater Zuidplein, Gooilandsingel 95, 3083 DP Rotterdam, next to Zuidplein metro and bus station. Tickets and current information are available through Theater Zuidplein.
The 11 December performance takes place at Theater Rotterdam, TR25 Schouwburg, Schouwburgplein 25, 3012 CL Rotterdam, in the city centre. Tickets are available through Theater Rotterdam.
