GHOSTS
Zero Dance Theatre x Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra
Welcome to GHOSTS.
We’re glad you’re here. Explore this digital programme to discover more about the performance, the creators, and the people behind the scenes.
Let yourself be drawn in, and enjoy the show.
About
Ghosts is a multidisciplinary dance and music performance that explores what happens when rituals lose their meaning, yet we continue to repeat them. In an interplay of dance and live music, a movement is followed from origin, to form, to unmasking. What becomes visible in this is not the ritual itself, but what it has left behind in us: in memory and in the way we continue to pass on meaning.
The performance follows how repetition develops when the original meaning has vanished, and how ritual forms persist in new contexts. In collaboration between Zero Dance Theatre and the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra (AAO), a shared line of research emerges in which movement and music function as two parallel layers. Zero Dance Theatre presents a fluid, physically driven dance practice in which diverse styles and techniques flow into one another, while the AAO operates at the intersection of tradition and innovation, placing centuries-old musical styles from Al-Andalus, North Africa, and the Middle East, among others, in a contemporary context. Together they make visible how meaning shifts, distorts, and is reshaped in repetition.
Ghosts is not a reconstruction of rituals, but an investigation into their residual traces. An invitation to look at what continues to move, even when meaning has detached itself from form.
Meet The Team
Sophia Mason
Sophia Mason is a dancer and choreographer, a graduate of Fontys Contemporary Urban, and one of Zero Dance Theatre’s original dancers. Her work combines musicality, storytelling, and fluid movement, with collaborations including Keone and Mari Madrid, Isabelle Beernaert, and DOX, as well as assisting Denden Karadeniz with choreography for So You Think You Can Dance. Having contributed to both the cast and creative team of Oasis and Loud Whispers, she returns to the stage with Zero Dance Theatre for GHOSTS.
Hamza Amrani
Hamza Amrani is a Moroccan musician based in Amsterdam, specialising in the oud and rabab, which he discovered through his father’s involvement in Arab-Andalusian music. A member of the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra since 2022, he has performed in theatre and dance productions with Orkater and ICK Dans Amsterdam. His work also extends to composition and recording, including music for the film My Mother No Longer Wants to Live.
Lola van Rumpt
Lola van Rumpt is a freelance dancer and choreographer, and a graduate of the Lucia Marthas Institute for Performing Arts, whose work centres on improvisation, fluid movement, and sensory exploration. A close collaborator of Zero Dance Theatre, she has performed in Oasis, Loud Whispers, and Les Noces, alongside projects with SALLY Dance Company Maastricht and IID Company. Her choreographic work includes Busting Clouds and The Weight of Becoming, created for Dutch National Ballet, and she now returns to Zero Dance Theatre for GHOSTS.
Mohamed El Tayeb
Mohamed Al Tayeb is a Sudanese singer, songwriter, and composer based in the Netherlands, whose music draws on Sudanese traditions, Sufi poetry, and pentatonic melodies. His debut album Kalam (2021) brought together more than 35 artists from around the world, connecting his musical heritage with acoustic, classical, and experimental influences. Through orchestral and interdisciplinary projects, he explores memory, identity, spirituality, and social change.
Aurora Casatori
Aurora is an Italian dancer and choreographer based in London, whose movement combines ballet, contemporary dance, and acrobatics. A graduate of Rambert School, she has worked with Motionhouse, Corey Baker Dance, and Kim Brandstrup, performing on international stages including the Edinburgh International Festival. She joins GHOSTS with a physical approach that explores control and unpredictability through risk-taking, falling, and unexpected ways of moving.
Remy Dielemans
Remy Dielemans is a Dutch bassist and double bassist with a background spanning jazz, pop, classical music, and free improvisation. During his master’s at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, he specialised in Arab music, exploring how its melodies and rhythms could enrich his double bass playing and jazz practice. Alongside the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra, he performs with projects including the modern jazz quintet Singularity Point and BOSCO jazz & pop orchestra with Johnny Rosenberg.
Lars de Vos
Lars de Vos is a dancer and choreographer, a graduate of Codarts Rotterdam, and one of Zero Dance Theatre’s original dancers, blending street and club styles with contemporary dance. A longstanding performer with ISH Dance Collective, he also created the duet Burden, presented at Dutch National Opera & Ballet and the Royal Opera House in London. His choreography includes work for So You Think You Can Dance, Project Dans, and his own production Still in Motion, and he returns to Zero Dance Theatre for GHOSTS.
Khalil Khoury
Khalil Khoury is a Palestinian qanun player, composer, and arranger, and a member of the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra. His playing combines the Arab maqam tradition with improvisation, technical mastery, and contemporary influences. He performs internationally with artists across Arab music, jazz, and world music, including singer Nai Barghouti. As a composer and arranger, he explores new musical possibilities rooted in the Arabic classical music he grew up with.
Liza Kanellaki
Liza is a Greek dancer based in Paris whose movement blends breaking, contemporary dance, and hip hop, shaped by her background as a national champion in rhythmic gymnastics. She performs with dance and theatre companies across France and remains active on the battle scene, reaching the Top 16 of the Red Bull BC One Cypher France in 2023. She now brings her distinctive movement style to Zero Dance Theatre as part of the cast of GHOSTS.
Modar Salama
Modar Salama is a Syrian percussionist and drummer based in Amsterdam, whose playing combines classical and Middle Eastern traditions with jazz, Latin, and contemporary influences. He studied percussion in Damascus and performed with the Syrian National Orchestra and Syrian Big Band before continuing his career in the Netherlands. Alongside his role in the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra, he collaborates with artists and ensembles including Slagwerk Den Haag, the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, and Ellen ten Damme.
Mel Beck
Mel Beck joins Zero Dance Theatre as an intern for GHOSTS, while completing her dual Bachelor’s degree in dance performance and teaching at the Lucia Marthas Institute for Performing Arts. Her training spans contemporary dance, ballet, jazz, and tap, with performance experience ranging from television to live productions at the Ziggo Dome and DeLaMar Theatre. Having trained with Denden Karadeniz for the past five years, she now makes her debut with the company.
Bas Gaakeer
Bas Gaakeer is a Dutch guitarist, musical director, and educator based in Amsterdam, and a longstanding member of the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra. His musical focus on North Africa, the Sahara, and the Arab world has led to international collaborations across music and theatre, including productions commissioned by Dutch National Opera. Alongside performing, he teaches at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Aslan Music Centre.
Denden Karadeniz
Choreographer
Denden Karadeniz began breakdancing at a young age and went on to develop his practice nationally and
internationally across a variety of styles, including through experiences in Australia and Los Angeles. Over the course of his career, he has grown into a versatile choreographer and creator working across a wide range of performing arts disciplines. His work moves fluidly between theatre, television, concert productions, and large-scale international events, bringing together different worlds through a distinctive movement language in which hip hop and contemporary dance converge.
In 2018, Denden founded the Netherlands’ first urban contemporary dance company: Zero Dance Theatre. His debut production with the company, The Divine Comedy (2018–2019), was followed by Past Present Zero (2021–2022), Oasis (2024), and Loud Whispers (2025). Zero Dance Theatre brings together dancers from diverse backgrounds and creates work in which physical intensity, technical precision, and theatrical imagination take centre stage. Denden is known for his exceptional floorwork technique and views dancers not only as artists, but also as athletes who push their bodies to the limit in order to tell stories. From this perspective, he continues to develop a distinctive movement vocabulary with Zero Dance Theatre, driven by research, collaboration, and artistic curiosity.
Alongside his work for Zero Dance Theatre, Denden has created choreography for a variety of national and
international productions. His work has been presented at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and Paris, for television
programmes such as So You Think You Can Dance and Project Dans (NPO), and in multidisciplinary collaborations
including Les Noces with Cappella Amsterdam, set to the music of Igor Stravinsky. For Denden, new contexts,
disciplines, and collaborations remain a continuous source of artistic growth and development.
In 2022, Denden received the YAA Award for his work, followed by a nomination for the Innovation Award at the Dutch Dance Days in Maastricht in 2023. In 2024, he was honored with the Victoriefonds Culture Prize in the Performing Arts category, and in 2026 he received the Charlotte Köhler Talent Award from the Cultuurfonds in the discipline of Theatre.
Zero Dance Theatre
About
Zero Dance Theatre is the leading hiphop contemporary dance company in the Netherlands, rooted in the encounter between hiphop and contemporary dance. From this foundation, the company has developed its own movement language, in which styles and techniques are not approached as separate disciplines, but as building blocks of a constantly evolving physical idiom. Through a distinctive combination of exceptional floorwork, technical precision, and fluid movement quality, Zero Dance Theatre transcends traditional boundaries between dance forms. The circle —the “0”— symbolizes this continuous movement and the ongoing search for connection and harmony.
The methodology of Zero Dance Theatre is a carefully curated combination of techniques, drawn from
both self-taught dancers from the urban scene and graduates of renowned dance academies. These
diverse backgrounds create a physical movement quality in which artistic sensitivity merges with strength, coordination, and a deep awareness of the body. Within this approach, the performer is regarded as both an artist and an athlete. Through continuous study, research, and practical experience, the company develops training principles that contribute to sustainable physical development and an ever-evolving standard of human performance.
This approach extends beyond technical execution and reflects the cultural diversity that shapes our world. Traditions, aesthetics, and stories from different parts of the world come together in Zero Dance Theatre’s productions, where dance becomes a dialogue between different perspectives. Each production is part of an ongoing artistic research process, through which the company continues to deepen and expand its movement language. In this way, Zero Dance Theatre creates layered
experiences that both intrigue and connect.
Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra (AAO)
About
Over the past fifteen years, the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra (AAO) has grown into a leading musical platform at the intersection of tradition and innovation. Drawing on the rich heritage of Al-Andalus, the orchestra brings centuries-old musical styles from southern Spain, North Africa and the Middle East to life for a contemporary audience. Inspired by Arabic, Sephardic and Spanish traditions, the AAO creates concerts and musical narratives in which different musical styles, stories and soundscapes come together.
With 22 musicians from the Netherlands and abroad, in varying line-ups for each production, the orchestra collaborates with renowned artists such as Naaz, Nai Barghouti, Estrella Morente, Sami Yusuf,
Aleph Abi Saad and Amal Maher. It also develops productions with young creators and international partners, thereby forging links between diverse cultural traditions. For this contribution to the cultural landscape, the AAO received the Culture Fund Prize at the end of 2024.
The orchestra also serves as a platform for education and talent development. With cultural hub MAQAM in Amsterdam-West as its home base and the biennial UD Festival and UD Concours as its international stage, the orchestra invests in new generations of artists and the further development of
Arabo-Andalusian music. In this way, this tradition remains alive and relevant to today’s society.
Credits
Choreography
Denden Karadeniz, in collaboration with the dancers
Dancers
Sophia Mason
Liza Kanellaki
Aurora Casatori
Lola van Rumpt
Lars de Vos
Mel Beck
Musicians
Khalil Khoury
Mohamed Al Tayeb
Remy Dielemans
Modar Salama
Bas Gaakeer
Hamza Amrani
Light design
Mike den Ottolander
Technical crew
Menno Drost
Jouke Seisfeld
Lorenzo Nonnekens
Costumes
Aida Sans Fin
Music director
Bas Gaakeer
Music organisation
Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra
Financial Directors
Natascha Dejong - ZERO
Eva Hermus - AAO
Production
Corien Feikens
Marketing
Devon Suriya
AIKO agency
Bookings & Management
Theaterbureau De Mannen
Rehearsal Space
Collab Industry
Videography Trailer
Jarah Gartner
Videography Backstage
Peggy Baltes
Photography(Campagne)
Juvat Westendorp / Shots by Juv
Photography(Portrets)
Mijntje Lupgens
Photography(Show)
Altin Kaftira
Partners
Zaantheater
Event Support Drost
AIKO
Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra
Funding
Cultuurfonds
Fonds Podiumkunsten
Fonds 21
Gravin van Bylandt Stichting
Gemeente Zaandam
Zero Dance Foundation
Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra
Thank you for joining us at GHOSTS. Whether the show is still ahead of you or the final curtain has fallen, we hope it stays with you long after you leave.
