Afra returned to her birth country Indonesia after eighteen years. The country she left at the age of six together with her mother. But one question kept gnawing at her all those years in the Netherlands: why had they ever left? During her journey she discovered that it had not been a choice, but a necessity. A past that does not let go so easily.

Mijn Wayang en ik shows how memories embed themselves in the body. How tension, exclusion and the feeling of not being accepted work through in movement. At the same time space emerges for imagination and the desire to break free from what once was.

Dance, poetry and Indonesian visual language come together in this performance about inner struggle and the shadowed past. Afra Ernst works together with dancers Mauri Kierindoongo and Christiaan Hendriksen and poetry artist Moze Naél.

Mijn Wayang en ik teaches you that shadows always travel with you – but that you can also look them in the eye.

• choreography Afra Ernst dance Christiaan Hendriksen & Mauri Kierindoongo