Courtney May Robertson (Scotland, 1992) is a Rotterdam-based performer and interdisciplinary maker. Since 2013, she has collaborated with artists including Jan Martens, Florentina Holzinger, Maxime Dreesen, and soon Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe. Her own choreographic voice emerged in Rotterdam’s DIY performance scene, and has since evolved into a small but distinctive body of solo works - HUNTER (VSCD Mime/Performance Prize 2024), the pleasure of stepping off a horse when it’s moving at full speed (Aerowaves Twenty22), and THE WOMAN DESTROYED (De Troffel Prize 2020).
Defined by raw physicality, conceptual precision, and emotional intensity, Courtney explores sociopolitical themes through personal, uncanny, and often grotesque lenses. Navigating the spaces between dance, performance art, coding, puppetry, and visual design, she builds haunting and immersive encounters that oscillate between control and collapse, rigor and rebellion, chaos and structure.
Public Sharing - different location
The Sharing will take place at Van Diemenstraat location (Veemtheater), not at BAU Entrepotdok (!!) Claim your free ticket via Ticket link.
Research
BANSHEE (working title) marks the research phase of Courtney May Robertson’s first group performance, premiering in March 2027. Drawing on romanticized and eroticized depictions of corpses in art, BANSHEE explores grief, gendered violence, and cultural portrayals of womxn’s bodies as passive and consumable. Prompted by the loss of her mother over a decade ago, Courtney rejects the sanitized narratives of death encountered in her research, turning instead to her Celtic ancestry and the undercurrents of transgenerational trauma as sites of reckoning and reclamation. During this residency, she will develop a contemporary movement language informed by the deconstruction of folk dance traditions she practiced in childhood. In addition, working in collaboration with sound artists Genevieve Murphy and Acidic Male, Courtney will research a hybrid soundscape where the ancient lament of Scottish bagpipes collides with the raw energy of Noise music.
BANSHEE Research team
Concept & Direction: Courtney May Robertson
Sound: Puck Schot / Acidic Male, Genevieve Murphy
Performance: Courtney May Robertson, Olympia Kotopoulos, İnci Gül Civelekoğlu, Yoko Haveman
Scenography: Jesus Canuto Iglesias
Dramaturgy: Lara van Lookeren
Co-produced by: Grand Theater Groningen
Supported by: De Grote Post Oostende, Bau Amsterdam
Financially supported by: Gemeente Rotterdam, Bau Amsterdam
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