Arno Schuitemaker's If You Could See Me Now's deceptively simple rhythms build to momentous change
At the Dance Centre, a Dutch choreographer who trained in aeronautical engineering creates a transformative experience
Arno Schuitemaker’s If You Could See Me Now. Photo by Sjoerd Derine
The Dance Centre presents If You Could See Me Now at the Scotiabank Dance Centre from March 14 to 16
WATCHING DUTCH DANCE artist Arno Schuitemaker’s If You Could See Me Now, you might at first feel mesmerized by three dancers in street clothes caught up in the repetitious rhythms of club beats and flashing lights.
But then, just as the looping groove starts to lull you, something magical happens that has helped make this show a hit across Europe.
“It seems to be repetitive, but what we do is we slowly transform each movement,” Schuitemaker explains over Zoom from his home in Amsterdam. “And it is that idea of constant transformation that actually makes this experience happen, because you’re taken very slowly somewhere else, and somewhere else, and somewhere else. And then there are moments when you realize, like, ‘How did we end up here?’ You’re taken to another place.”
If You Could See Me Now ends up speaking to human endurance, change, and constant evolution. Unassuming but deceptively complex, it grapples with deep questions about how we all keep going and move forward—and builds to something close to ecstatic, communal release.
Schuitemaker’s novel approach to dance-making traces back to his not-so-traditional way into dance. The artist first trained in aviation technology—he holds a Masters in aeronautical engineering. Then, around the time he was 22, he saw his first-ever dance performance with a group of friends.
“I was completely overwhelmed by that experience,” he recalls. “I didn’t understand what was happening to me. But it felt as if everything came together. But I even didn’t know what came together! It felt like everything was right all of a sudden, and for me, that was a completely new feeling. I didn’t understand what it was. But I wanted to feel that again.”
By 25, after graduating from engineering, he was taking dance classes and worked up the guts to audition for dance school. He was accepted, and embarked on a new career.
“I called my mother and she almost got a heart attack,” he says with a laugh, “and I didn’t know what to do. It took me almost nine or 10 months to decide to give it a try.”
There must be something about coming to dance later in life, after training in highly complex technology, that allows Schuitemaker to approach his art form with fresh eyes and intricate analytical skills.
“I think there is a desire to understand, to grasp something, to dig deeper,” he offers of his aeronautical background. “I think those kinds of things are partly part of my personality, but also they were trained at university, obviously. It’s work that wants to go someplace.”
With that in mind, the artist says nothing about the choreography—hair flailing, torsos swinging—is intentionally drawn from club dancing. But he can understand why you might make those associations.
“There is something about the casualness of it—it’s not virtuosic in, say, how high you can lift your leg—and it’s very grounded,” he says. “The trunk of the body is the main source for all the movement, and that’s a way of moving that I think people relate to with dancing in a club.”
Similarly, the rhythms of the lighting might remind you of that atmosphere, but there’s something more sophisticated at work. “It’s influencing the perception of how we see the dancers because the rhythm of the light is also constantly changing,” the choreographer says. “So we see their movements constantly different. And that’s when it becomes artistically more interesting: it’s not just a representation of club dancing, because it starts to evoke a different way of perceiving as an audience.”
For the three dancers—Stein Fluijt, Ivan Ugrin, Mark Christoph Klee—the hour of nonstop movement is also a physical feat. But Schuitemaker says instead of pushing past exhaustion or entering a kind of transcendental state, he finds they get more energized as the piece moves along.
“Because of the way we move, we regenerate the energy that we provoke with each movement,” he explains. “So it is tiring, but it doesn’t exhaust you. And in that sense the nonstop movement is actually uplifting also for the audience.”
Listen to Schuitemaker describe the effect of If You Could See Me Now—which he and others prefer to describe as an “experience”—and it sounds a bit like he’s still interested in sparking the effect he felt at that first dance show he saw when he was 22.
“It’s us sitting in the audience and realizing that we’re taken by something that we’re not even able to articulate in words—and I think that’s where the word ‘experience’ comes in. And even the next day, you’re still like, ‘I don't know what it was, but something happened.’” 
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