FROM THE PRESS:
"'Dog Days' is a raw, compassionate and musical ode to the rejecting, adoring, loathing, soothing, humiliating, humiliated, dancing, fighting, relieving and ultimately vulnerable dying body. An ode that must be seen by everyone who has a body." (Trouw)

“Almost without dialogue, this awe-inspiring production unfolds in front of our eyes. Impressive, dangerous, unforgettable.” (NRC Handelsblad).

“Even now, immediately after the premiere, 'Dog Days' can be considered a milestone in her oeuvre.” (Volkskrant.nl)

“Hart rendering scenes and portrayals: the consistency with which this spectacle – in all its dark imagery – is captured; reveals a great artistic prowess.” (CPB)

DESCRIPTION
Humiliation is the central theme in Dog Days [Hondsdagen]; a production that director Alize Zandwijk is making with five actors from the Ro Theater, together with three dancers and two musicians. It will be a production of few words, drawing on the eloquence of music and movement.

For Alize Zandwijk, the apex of humiliation is when, in your declining years, you have to be cared for by someone who adds insult to injury by speaking to you as if you are an idiot. Every aspect of humiliation is implicit in this nightmare image: the loss of autonomy and neither seen nor recognised as an individual. Even if you were a theatre director in a previous life, your history does not count for anything when you body begins to decline and you are just an old bag, a hostage of ‘care’.
Everyone can try this exercise for his or herself: what, for you, would be the worst form of humiliation? I bet that we can all imagine ways of being humiliated. In one way or another, those experiences mark our identity, as if we gain satisfaction from remembering being slapped in the face. Whilst the humiliation we dealt out to others seems to recede into a dark corner somewhere.
The basic assumption might seem depressing, but Alize Zandwijk and the team are earnestly in search of the restoration of human dignity. She is not interested in showing just gloom and doom. Just as in her previous production Scorched [Branden], in which love breaks the endless cycle of hate and revenge, she has chosen to go beyond a mere record of crisis and impending failure, offering the possibility of a new covenant with one another.