Tanzpakt Dresden

After a warm welcome by TANZPAKT Dresden, VILLA WIGMAN and HELLERAU, Rosalind will offer a gentle warm-up to open up the body and attune the senses. Beginning with breath work to create space in the body/mind before moving on to gentle stretches and movements influenced by her practice of Qi Gong, this 30 minute session will leave you refreshed and ready to dive into the TANZPAKT Dresden Academy. Please wear comfortable clothes, a yoga mat/and or blanket is recommended but not necessary, and enough space to lie on the floor. Please notify Rosalind if there are any special physical needs.

"Opening Thoughts on Art, Work, Money and Other Stuff"

Between networks, funding, (art) market (constraints), applications, public relations, festivals and venue confirmations, but also, for example, voluntarism and political commitment, artists move and produce nowadays. Under the pressure of time for the next deadline, there is usually no time for reflecting on one's own modes of production, for wishing for and imagining new structuring possibilities and working strategies.

On the other hand, the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic highlights many weaknesses of the system. Other solutions are more than necessary. Only, how can new solutions be designed that distance themselves from the primacy of technocracy, corporate ideology, quantity ideology, and neoliberal structures of leadership and organization? Is that even possible? And desired?

Regina Rossi was born and raised in Brazil. She studied theater, choreography and performance studies in Porto Alegre, Amsterdam and Hamburg. She is currently doing her PhD with Prof. Bojana Kunst (Applied Theater Studies, JLU Giessen) on the topic of "Artistic Ways of Working and Strategies as the Art of Instituted." Rossi has been living in Hamburg since 2009 and produces her own work mainly at Kampnagel, which is shown throughout Germany.

Irina Pauls (Artist in Residence of TANZPAKT Dresden) and Matthias Zielfeld present the first results of their research residency and work on their new production CORPORA.

"TonTanz - Practice and Theory"

What’s useful about the voice for dance-makers? Whats dance about the voice?

Alternating exercise, exchange and lecture, this workshop will explore the gap between image and sound of bodies. Jule Flierl introduces the genre TonTanz, which was conceptualized by Valeska Gert in the 1920’s; talks about her research on the history of the dancers’ voice in stage dance and raises questions around the authenticity of vocality.

Jule Flierl is a dance and voice artist from Berlin/Germany. She develops practices that conceive of the voice as a dancer, translating dance into the auditory realm. Her practice lives between experimental choreography and somatic singing methods, in which she develops scores to unsettle the relationship between seeing and hearing. She revives and continues the legacy of Valeska Gert, avant-garde dancer from 1920's Berlin, who first conceptualized the term SoundDance: to dance with one's voice. She hosts the voice performance series FROM BREATH TO MATTER in Berlin.

Jule Flierl's work was featured at Tanzplattform Munich 2020, Steirischer Herbst Graz 2019, Legs/La Raffinerie Brussels and Rencontres Chorégraphiques Paris 2018, La Panacée Montpellier 2016 amongst others.

Currently she collaborates in different formats with fine artist Anna Zett, performance artist Antonia Baehr and SoundDance artist Irena Z. Tomazin.

In the frame of the TANZPAKT Dresden Academy, we invited the artists Claire Cunningham, Jule Flierl, River Lin & Joana Tischkau to share their research and artistic working methods with dance professionals from our regional independent scene. These workshops will be taking place throughout the year 2021.

In this online conversation with curator and dramaturge Sandra Noeth, the artists will give a glimpse into their working methods with a focus on body politics that might emerge in and influence their artistic processes on various levels.

Katja Erfurth (Artist in Residence of TANZPAKT Dresden) gives an insight into her work in the context of her research on sign language. The results of her residency will flow into her new production Kassandra | Zunge: reißen.

"One thumbed bandit – Participatory Art Based Research on TikTok"

TikTok is a rapidly growing community of immense size that uses dance and other performative practices as its medium. To understand some of the transformations that occur within the receptions of dance, I would like to propose a workshop that shortly inquires on the social media app using Participatory Art Based Research (PABR) methods. Through using the formats of PABR, I try to present our Hamburg approach to artistic research and at the same time investigate how the app formats the user’s perception through its design. Starting from the key element of scrolling, we collectively try to find artistic approaches to react to the proposed designs on TikTok. Scrolling on TikTok shows interesting similarities to the design of old-fashioned gambling machines that are sometimes called “one armed bandits”. How does the “one thumbed bandit” work? How can its function be revealed through choreographic means?

I am not a TikTok content producer myself, but invite workshop participants to look at the platform collectively with our different choreographic knowledges and approaches. With this proposal I try to offer a workshop that doesn’t have to digitally mediate my choreographic practices from the studio to a Zoom situation, but works on material that is digitally in its nature.

Sebastian Matthias is a choreographer and dance scholar. Since May 2019 he has been a post-doc researcher in the research project "Participatory Art Based Research" at HafenCity Universität Hamburg in collaboration with K3 | Tanzplan Hamburg. In addition, he momentarily works until 2021 with the support of the German Federal Cultural Foundation with the Bürgerbühne Staatsschauspiel Dresden and with Theater Basel. He studied dance at the Juilliard School in New York and dance studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. As an associated artist at K3, he developed his artistic scientific research practice and received his doctorate degree in 2018 as part of the Graduate Program Assembly and Participation at the HafenCity Universität. His dissertation project was published in 2018 under the title “Gefühlter Groove – Kollektivität zwischen Dancefloor und Bühne”. In his choreographic work he deals with modular improvisation systems that he develops collectively with the dancers.

"Hands On"

Experimenting, associating, tinkering, listening, composing, embodying, describing and staging, that's what the day will be about. Together with you, I will dive into my way of working, in which objects that are just lying around become tools to stage a short performance. My aim is to work spontaneously and intuitively with different materials and media and to encourage the participants to trust in the intelligence that lies in doing. After the doing we will look at the short performances staged for the camera and describe what we have seen.

Eva Meyer-Keller works at the intersection of performing and visual arts from an attitude of constructive disregard for genre boundaries. In addition to human bodies, everyday objects perform in her works - things she finds at home, in the supermarket, or in the hobby cellar. This choreographed tinkering unfolds an obsessive domestic aesthetic.

Meyer-Keller's projects are often created in collaboration with other artists including Uta Eisenreich, Sybille Müller, and Kate McIntosh.

In 2018-2019, she became the first choreographer to receive the Danish research grant RESA - Residency for Exchange and Sustainability in the Arts.

Currently, since 2017, she has been creating a trilogy in engagement with models, processes and concepts from the natural sciences (SOME SIGNIFICANCE, 2017; LIVING MATTERS, 2019). In addition, the unfoldable artist book LM:M-M-A-E with Ilya Noé as co-author will be published in 3 editions and 7 parts. Meyer-Keller's numerous own works include the performances DEATH IS CERTAIN (2002, performed to date at more than 200 venues worldwide), PULLING STRINGS (2013, KunstenFestivaldesArts Brussels), the installations VOLKSBALLONS (2004, Palace of the Republic) and HANDMADE (2009, Palais de Tokyo Paris). She has participated in projects by Baktruppen, Jérôme Bel, Juan Dominguez, Christine De Smedt / les Ballets C de la B.

In the frame of the TANZPAKT Dresden Academy, we invited the artists Willi Dorner, Sebastian Matthias, Kate McIntosh & Eva Meyer-Keller to share their research and artistic working methods with dance professionals from our regional independent scene. These workshops will be taking place throughout the year 2021.

In this online format, we invite the four artists to enter into conversation through self-selected thematic focuses and thereby provide insights into their artistic work. What role do decisions about medium and form play in their respective research and creation processes? Does the respective thematic setting determine the form of their works and to what extent does the medium in turn influence the content?

Rosalind Masson and Florence Freitag, artists in residence of TANZPAKT Dresden, present the results of their research residency at the Botanical Garden of TU Dresden. From the material obtained, they will now develop their new production Occupying Eden.

Rosalind & Florence would like to invite you to take a look at the zine they have created in this context before this meeting and to use headphones/headsets for the event.

Zine Download

Together with the artists in residence of TANZPAKT Dresden we want to talk about the format of research residencies.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the format? What experiences and lessons have we learned from the residencies so far? What else could the format be?

We want to get into conversation with you and ask: What does the Saxon dance scene need?
What research, work or production formats are needed?
What is going well and what is missing?