ashleyho+domeniknaue: The Bench (by accident)

Lees in het Nederlands

This interdisciplinary performance entangles dance, sound, poetry, and design, taking you on a long walk. Two people agree to meet, but lose their sense of direction. Between moments of meeting and not meeting, they navigate a landscape of loneliness and longing. The Bench is not about arriving. It is about what can be found when you get lost, completely. 

The world is absurd, and it is time to accept that the only way to meet it honestly is to delve into its absurdity.

This performance follows a to-do list. It is a sequence of directions, a way of getting from A to B, without knowing exactly where we are going. In something like a waiting room, a fish swims around in its own puddle. A clock loses track of time. 

At its core, The Bench exposes disorientation. Characters hover in the paradox of craving withdrawal and yearning for connection; the state of retreat and the state of action; the sudden grasping of something and then losing it almost immediately. Rather than offering solutions, this is a poem on how to stay – with uncertainty, with each other, and with what we are incapable of resolving.

Following their autobiographical performance-installation last portrait (2025), ashleyho+domeniknaue continue their long lasting collaboration with this project. Artistically, this work emerges at the intersection of choreography, writing, sound, graphic, and object design. This is their contemplation on purpose from the perspective of a generation attempting to build a future amidst frightening “progress”, or collapse. They want to point to the reality that more than ever, our futures are deeply entangled.

The bench is where we met and where we will meet again. It is an exploration into humor, and saving ourselves through imagination. 

The Bench is going to be playful, and a little painful.  

A feeling that came over one evening & disappeared. The horizon moving away.
Here, for you, for us, a lonely piece
A yearning piece
A piece for the romantic
A heartaching,
A moment of healing piece
A deep-longing-for-a-response-from-anyone-anywhere-out-there piece