Amsterdam Fringe Festival: Slug - Xiao Chuyue

Snail on the toilet — she sings you along in her slimy, haunted dreams. This performance can be seen at Plein Theater. Slug

What if the snail you were afraid of is actually your spirit animal? A snail crawls out of the bathroom drain, familiar in a strange way—a reminder of the forest floor with countless glistening bodies beneath your feet. The revulsion is close enough to become a fascination.

Slug is a soft-concert that combines movement and spoken word in the theater. On a slime-covered stage that shifts between a damp forest and an intimate bathroom, performers follow the story and lead you through dreams of something viscous that the female body produces. Sit close to the floor, and witness an intimate ritual that slowly transforms disgust into a celebration.

Xiao Chuyue

Xiao Chuyue is an Amsterdam-based performer and dance maker from Hubei, China, and is graduating this year from the SNDO (choreography) in Amsterdam. Her artistic journey began in Shanghai, where she joined the performance company ao_ao_ing (老妖精) and developed an interdisciplinary practice that connects performance with her background in communication and media.

Her work moves between image, fiction, and the body, and explores the blurred boundaries between the virtual and the physical, the domestic and the public.

For this performance, Xiao collaborates with artist and musician Ping-En Hung to reclaim the female body from shame and transform it into a ritual celebration.

Amsterdam Fringe Festival

Every year in September, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival presents an 11-day mixmash of theater, performance, and dance by new, emerging, and untamed talent.

We present a multidisciplinary program featuring over 55 makers/groups with diverse backgrounds, origins, and futures. Our showcase festival is a haven for experimentation and offers a stage to new makers and stories. Amsterdam Fringe Festival is an ode to theatrical madness, the independent spirit, and a plea for artistic freedom. A big, heartfelt embrace of experimentation in the truest sense of the word: one whose outcome can still truly surprise you.

The entire city is our playground; from garden to bar to theater, from North to South, you will find us for 11 days at around 23 locations spread throughout Amsterdam.