Yoko Haveman (1994, Brazilian/Japanese) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of theater and film as a choreographer, director, and performer. Her practice is marked by a distinctive visual and physical language in which performance, dance, and visual art converge. Moving between stage and screen, Yoko develops work that is both sensorial and conceptually layered, engaging with themes such as eroticism, ancestral trauma, and the macabre. Graduated from the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam, Haveman has consistently built a career within the performing arts field, collaborating with established artists and companies including Rauwkost Film, Dansateliers, De Dansers, and Ann van den Broek. Yoko’s work draws from philosophy, physical theater, and cinematic techniques; she constructs immersive environments where the body becomes a primary carrier of meaning. Her performances are often balancing between rawness and nonlinearity, inviting audiences into states of vulnerability and perception.

She is on an Artistic Exchange Resedency at Uferstudios in Berlin in June 2026.

UNTITLED #637 will be a somatic and visual study on tension as a physical, external force acting upon the body. The idea for this residency is to work with multiple tennis ball machines. I will create a controlled yet unpredictable environment in which balls are launched from all directions, transforming the space into a shifting field of impact. Movement of the performer is continuously interrupted, accelerated, and reshaped by incoming impulses. The body becomes responsive rather than autonomous, negotiating, absorbing, and resisting what it encounters. As the accumulation of matter increases, the dynamic, rhythm, and intension shift. Gradually the performer will be submerged under a growing mass of balls. The work asks, what happens when the body no longer releases tension but must hold and metabolize it? Where does resistance reside in a state of constant exposure and pressure? A sub-layer in this research is ‘shadows.’ It can distort scale, and perception, something I’m fascinated by, to examine this layer of friction between playfulness and threat.