Slug

Xiao Chuyue received a grant for the development of new work. Slug is a multidisciplinary performance that explores the transformation of fear into attachment, using the presence of slugs in a bathroom as a metaphor for the stigmatized aspects of the female body. Through music, movement, and sensory textures, it reframes the taboo as something celebratory and empowering. Through a "soft concert" format, the performance features a live musician/singer in a staged bathroom, alongside two performers: a slug figure and a forest ranger, whose narratives and choreography intertwine. Slug will premiere with four showings at the Fringe Festival 2026 in Amsterdam.

Xiao Chuyue is an Amsterdam-based performer and dancer from Hubei, China, currently studying choreography at SNDO. Her artistic path began in Shanghai, where she joined a performance ensemble, developing an interdisciplinary practice that connects performance with her background in communication and media. Her work moves across image, fiction, and the body, exploring the blurred boundaries between the virtual and the physical, the domestic and the public. Recently, her research has turned inward, drawing on cross-cultural frameworks to question perception and inherited narratives, constructing a personal cosmology that bridges distant times, spaces, and cultural landscapes.