Ugo Dehaes created dance performances for many years. To do so, he put both children and adults on stage. But some time ago he decided to make dance with objects, and immersed himself in building and programming robots.

With Willy, he created a robot-performance for the very young: children as young as 1.5 years old.

Willy, a bright red iguana, curiously hides in a mysterious black box. There he meets an amazing robot, with no less than eight arms that can move like an octopus. Or is it rather a spider? Or just a flower after all?

At first Willy thinks the robot is just a little strange: its movements are brusque and its sounds peculiar. But when the robot begins to dance, its movements form a beautiful kaleidoscope. Slowly a friendship grows between Willy and the robot, as they become more and more attuned to each other. They melt together into a harmonious whole, with the robot making Willy dance enchantingly through the air. 

With Willy, Ugo Dehaes combines the ancient tradition of puppet theater with the technology of the robots he learned to build in recent years. 

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This wordless performance was made in collaboration with De Spiegel and cc 't Gasthuis in Aarschot. Willy is part of the Prêt-A-Porter project, in which 6 artists develop a performance that fits in a courier bag.

The performance lasts about 25 minutes and is followed by an interactive moment where the children can play with the material from the performance. Willy can be presented alone or in combination with another performance from the Prêt-A-Porter project.