ADE: Belle and The Beats Presents: The Witch's Mark

An evocative chain performance

The Witch’s Mark invites you into a powerful, multi-sensory exploration of what it means to witness the suffering of others. Blending live electronic music, vocals, dance, and visual art, this performance immerses you in the heart of a witch trial.

With authentic costumes by The Nightmare Disorder and intense light design, you are drawn into the first stage of a trial, the inquisition, that questions both the accused and the nature of perception and judgment in an evocative chain performance by Belle and the Beats and Leyla de Muynck.

The Witch’s Mark draws inspiration from the 1486 book The Hammer of Witches (Malleus Maleficarum) by Heinrich Kramer, who blamed women for his desires, presenting his views as the Church's stance. "The Witch’s Mark" refers to the mark that interrogators would search for on a woman's body as a sign of the devil. In an era where we are accustomed to being passive spectators on our phones, The Witch’s Mark challenges the audience to question what they are truly witnessing as they scroll.

The performance, divided into a public trial, ritual humiliation, and the aftermath of an execution, uses fetish imagery to examine power dynamics. The audience is invited to move beyond passivity and reflect on how historical injustices continue to shape the present.

At ADE, Belle and The Beats will present a 30 minute prologue of their new work, The Witch’s Mark. In her work, Belle consistently seeks out exciting new collaborations, always striving to create a unique universe that pushes beyond conventional norms.

For The Witch’s Mark, this has resulted in a collaborative project involving visual artist Deniz Eroglu, choreographer and dramaturg Leyla de Muynck, CUT_ producers Sebastiaan Dutilh and Belle Doron, shibari rigger Papilicious (not present at the ADE show), light and visual designers Jela Nieuwstraten and Emanuel Nijkerk, costume designers The Nightmare Disorder, graphic designer Mike Jurriën and DOOR FOUNDATION (Chafik Benhmidouch & Xander Straat), supported by Stimuleringsfonds.