Wat blijft (What remains)

Once past the midpoint of life, it is natural to look back more often than forward, be it with nostalgia or perhaps regret. In this festival, we reflect on that looking back. Sergei Rachmaninoff, for instance, wrote his Third Symphony in exile, for a Russia now gone. Dancer Álvaro Murillo pauses to reflect on the flamenco tradition of the past, from which he seeks to write a new future. In Tears into Light, Sofie Vanden Eynde muses to the strains of Dowland’s melancholy. Nostalgia for youth connects Sonata Reminiscenza by Nikolai Medtner with the Kinderszenen by Schumann at the keyboard of Mathieu Idmtal. Johan Terryn and guest thinker for the season Paul Verhaeghe evaluate what it means to be present in life.