Leo
Kees
TEACHING
After almost two decades of working as a guest teacher at universities and cultural institutions, I'm focused on open-ended labs, often with participants from mixed backgrounds. In these labs, I explore alternative approaches to self-learning. Rather than transmitting established knowledge, I invite participants to develop their own ways of exploring, deciding, questioning, and creating.
I believe that future artistic, cultural, and scientific transformations depend on our ability to move beyond paradigms we may not yet be able to identify. The Labs therefore create environments in which participants can engage with the unknown: intellectually, emotionally, physically, and socially.
They invite participants to unlearn, relearn, and perceive the interplay between intuition — how something feels; rationalisation — how and when something makes sense to us; and values — when and why something matters to us.
Through these formats, I aim to foster creative processes and communication skills that I consider fundamental to innovation, collaboration, and creative processes.
SEROTONIN LAB
What happens when clubbing becomes a space for artistic research?
Serotonin Lab explores the relationship between movement, music, presence, and pleasure. Drawing on House Music and the search for an individual beat, participants investigate their own movement vocabularies and develop personal approaches to improvisation and performance.
Clubbing is removed from its familiar context: without the night, alcohol, or established social codes, the body becomes the starting point. Through progressive improvisations, participants explore how movement can create connection — to themselves, to others, and to the present moment.
The lab is not a technique class, but a space for experimentation and self-learning. It asks how comfort, physical awareness, and relational presence can become tools for artistic practice and shared experience.
CREATIVE PROCESS LAB
How can creative processes become less methodical but more exploratory and collaborative?
Creative Process Lab investigates different approaches to creativity, artistic research, and the development of new work. Drawing on experience in devised theatre, choreography, directing, and movement teaching, participants explore practical ways of generating, questioning, transforming, and developing ideas.
The Lab moves between individual and collective processes, intuition and structure, experimentation and reflection. Rather than following a fixed method, participants are encouraged to test different approaches and discover which conditions support THEIR own creative thinking.
The Lab is informed by current research into creativity and innovation: What enables us to move beyond familiar patterns? How can uncertainty become productive? And what conditions allow an emerging idea to develop into a meaningful creative project?
SOCIALIZING LAB
How quickly can we create trust and a sense of community among new people?
In most creative group processes, the first few days are dedicated to building a team before the actual work begins. This Lab asks how some of these practices can be adapted to festivals, social gatherings, conferences, educational settings, public spaces, and mediation processes.
Socializing Lab explores practices for creating connection, trust, and communication between people who do not yet know each other — or who need to move beyond everyday interaction to foster synergy, empathy, and mutual understanding.
Drawing on approaches developed through two decades of working with constantly changing groups, the lab uses a wide range of exercises to facilitate breaking the ice, approaching new communication partners, and creating connections beyond habitual forms of social interaction.
