Programme // Tanznacht-Forum / Part 1: 3 dialogues on contemporary aesthetics in dance

DESCRIPTION
In the recent history in Berlin, in Europe – starting from the mid-90ies - questioning the
body’s appearance in society and reflecting the perception of the body on stage guided a
changing understanding of contemporary dance. In the so called absence of dance – as it
was received at that time – choreography functioned as an instrument of critical thinking on
perception as well as on the theater apparatus.
Looking at the unsettled landscape of dance nowadays, the question raised is what is
happening, which kind of changes take place with which kind of references? Is there still an
understanding of dance as an critical art practice?
The desire to talk explicitly about aesthetics highlights the interest on talking about what’s
happening on stage resp. which kind of questions are at work in dance pieces today. What
kind of relation towards the audiences is catered or explored in a dance work? What kind of
idea of perception of the body is reflected? And if or in which way all these questions and
consequential which tools are informend by the society we are living in?
How could one define contemporary dance today? In contrast to performance for example?
Or is it not at all interesting anymore to distinguish between disciplines?
Six players from the field are invited to give an insight, starting from their perspective, and
entering a dialogue with a colleague.
SILVIA FANTI & ANNE JUREN
SILVIA FANTI
I prefer to speak of live arts while framing the current scenario of international production
and its ongoing changes.
We move in a trans- or post-disciplinary system that crosses visual arts, movement-image,
performing arts, sound and theory, blending dance, theatre and music into indefinable
configurations; artists reflect on the fragmentation, confusion, discontinuity and liquidity of
an unstable cultural situation; audience behaves the same way. It is this productive
sensibility, this audience, this working modality that interest me.
After the Spectacular and the Non-Spectacular or the Zero Degree, I have the impression to
be now in the age of The Aquarium Transformers.
It's a matter of building habitats, places where certain forms can exist and evolve, starting
from expressive emergencies.
Forms and practices: camps, camping, environments, durational events, diffused and
extended occasions, happenings, activities, private situations: it's a scenery in which
bodies are part of a landscape, where presence negates the self, time (if not alienated)
unfolds out of any major narrative, and differences coexist. Cohabitation could be a key?
Where disjunction/conjunction is at work and contiguity allows ambiguity. Positioning.
"Place is the horizon of bodies".
Neither presenting nor representing, but meta-presenting. Always in touch with the reality,
and in this sense expanding the distance in a shared insufficiency. Is this kind of theatre a
mirror of social situations? Is it itself a social situation?
Which are the specific activation modes? The attempt is to make evident the existence of a
cultural world, of practices and approaches which do not fit the dance-dance coordinates
anymore.
Last time me and Anne met, we were queuing at Tino Sehgal's living exhibition, that had as
main material the human in a metamorphic Palais de Tokyo. The conversation and
exchange on what's going on around us continues in Berlin.
ANNE JUREN
My artistic practice focuses on the integration of my private and my professional life.
It is characterised by a variety of different socio-historical backgrounds and countries with
their specific working conditions. These conditions are in a constant change and demand a
permanent adaption of my actions and projects. Amongst other questions I am asking
myself how far the topic of being political interferes with my personal life and its impact on
the artistic work. Live arts are in general signified by my individual presence and I cannot
appear at the same time at two different places. Even though the Internet creates an
omnipresence we stay in our body in one place. I would like to speak about this issue of
multiple presences in the field of arts and what it means for the “life-work balance”. I would
introduce you to my way of dealing with this matter.

KIRSTEN MAAR & PETER PLEYER
KIRSTEN MAAR
Form and formats. At first sight this might perhaps seem to frame a very formalist
approach. I would like to discuss how form as a dynamic factor in the production of artwork
creates ambivalent constellations between performers, things, settings, institutions and
spaces, which on the one hand touches questions about how choreographic work is
structured on a compositional level and on the other hand brings up the question to what
extent these procedures and techniques influence our decisions about how we want to
work.
• How do the compositional decisions form our relationships in work – how do we work
collectively – or: how does form re-assemble our bodies in the unsettled landscapes?
• Which techniques and practices help us within these situations?
• Which ecologies emerge from these constellations?
• Which formats allow for open, unpredictable and sometimes intimidating processes?
• If we define our doing as a constant shifting between different practices and
techniques as a process of translating between knowledge and not knowing – why is
it important to extend this in-between situation – and how can we keep the gap open?
• How could we deal with the emotional and affective potential of this demanding
insecurity?
• Which tools in improvisation help us to further develop ensemble thinking and
individuation within?
• How are not only our somatic levels linked to forms of attunement with our
environment?
• How do rhythm, repetition, inversion, dis/continuity, layering etc. form our
relationscapes?
• In which way do forms and formats challenge the institutional plan?
• How could we build a sustainable, yet malleable institution?
• How can the big form re-assemble within different situations – different audiences as
well as different institutional and working conditions?
• How are they rooted in dance history and which are the shifts important to our actual
situation? And in which way do these ideas about form and format challenge our way
of thinking about the relationship between choreography and dance, and about the
situation of performance?
PETER PLEYER
Obsessed with history and knowing that the memory concerning contemporary dance is
very slow, bad, fractured and incomplete, in this talk I will focus on my personal history of
my Berlin dance life.
With the timing of a late bloomer I am claiming my slot in that confusing terrain of
production, teaching, local and international market and venues.
From the diy „Ponderosa Solo“ work, that was picked up by <strong>Tanznacht</strong> Berlin 2016 and
made it to international success at ImPulsTanz Wien 2017, to the HKF funded production
„cranky bodies dance reset“ focusing on the big form of choreography that has been
coming up in the independent scene as a wish to depart from the constant solo duo trio
form, which is so prevalent in the contemporary dance scene, where everybody is an
artist…
LIGIA LEWIS & ANA VUJANOVIĆ
The main topic of our dialogue, which is also a common point of departure, a concern we
share, is the intertwining of aesthetics and politics in art. That concern disputes with the
idea of the social autonomy of art, but it doesn’t necessarily advocate 'artivism'. Our
imaginaries in regards to where to go starting from that concern are also not identical and
the dialogue is thus envisaged as our common journey through the following questions:
• For whom do we make contemporary art? (Do we make it for our colleagues,
specialists? Is there a community, public or little publics? How does this shape what we
do?
• How do we attend to the issues of the body, its social inscriptions as well as its
historical, critical and material meanings? How are we in service to either reaffirming or
reimagining identities? Can entanglements of difference still hold a commons? How do
we incorporate this on stage?
• What can choreography be responsible for, as long as we think of choreography as a
space of "worlding" or "world building"? Can we approach such questions through an
ethics and therefore politics in action?

BIOGRAPHIES
Silvia Fanti, italian curator and program director in the field of performing arts. Since 1992
she has founded and co-directed a number of independent cultural organizations in
Bologna devoted to trans-disciplinary research (among them: the art centre Link Project,
the cultural network Xing, the cultural space Raum). She has been artistic director of
F.I.S.Co. Festival Internazionale sullo Spettacolo Contemporaneo, and co-director of
Netmage International Live Media Festival, in Bologna (2000>2011). In 2012 she started a
new project: Live Arts Week, an international event dedicated to live arts, which hosts a
blend of new productions that revolve around the presence, performance and perceptual
experience of sounds and visions. www.xing.it www.liveartsweek.it
Kirsten Maar works as a dance scholar and ’dramaturge’. Currently she is visiting
professor at the Dance Department at the FU Berlin. From 2007-2014 she was a member of
the DFG-Collaborative Research Centre „Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of
Artistic Limits“ in the project „Topographies of the Ephemeral“. Her research fields are the
intersections between visuals arts, architecture and choreography, spatial conceptions and
kinesthetic experience, scoring practices and composition. Among many other publications
she is co-editor of Assign and Arrange. Methodologies of Presentation in Art and Dance
(Sternberg 2014).
Anne Juren born in Grenoble/ France is a choreographer, dancer and performer based in
Vienna. In 2003, she co-founded together with the visual artist Roland Rauschmeier the
association Wiener Tanz- und Kunstbewegung in Vienna. Her choreographic works and
artistic researches have been extensively presented in international theatres, festivals, and
different art spaces and venues. In her work and through her practice Juren emphasizes
sexuality, matter, desires, and actions in engaging the body in different states of physical,
sensorial, kinaesthesic and mental experiences, questioning the boundaries and limits
between the public and the private body. Since 2013, Anne Juren is a Feldenkrais®
practitioner. She is currently a member of the artistic committee for the Master in
Choreography at DOCH and is a PhD candidat at UNIARTS Stockholm University of the
Arts. www.wtkb.org
Peter Pleyer studied at the European Dance Development Centre (EDDC) in Arnhem before
working with Yoshiko Chuma and Mark Tompkins as a dancer and choreographic
assistant. He has lived in Berlin since 2000. From 2007 to 2014, he was Artistic Director of
the Tanztage Berlin and from 2012 to 2014, a member of the Sophiensæle team. His
interest as a choreographer and performer, dramaturge and coach, lies in finding new
methods of integrating dance training, composition and improvisation into choreographic
processes, such as, e.g., in the lecture-performance “Choreographing Books“ or in “Visible
Undercurrent“ (2014). He teaches at various colleges and festivals in Europe and
contributed to establishing a university course in Contemporary Dance in Berlin. With
the field-research to "moving the mirror“ (Warschau 2016) and his solo „Ponderosa Trilogy“
(Tanzhaus NRW 2014) he is a guest artist at ImPulsTanz Wien 2017.
Ligia Lewis is a choreographer and dancer. She creates affective choreographies while
interrogating the metaphors and social inscriptions of the body. Described by Art Agenda
as “deeply elegant and subtly orchestrated”, Lewis’s work continues to provoke the
nuances of embodiment. Her choreographies include: Sensation 1, $$$, Sorrow
Swag, Melancholy: A White Mellow Drama. minor matter for the theatre is Lewis’s most
recent stage work, completing the second part of her trilogy, that began with Sorrow Swag
in blue. Lewis was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe for Sorrow Swag and nominated for a
Bessie Award for minor matter.
Her work has been presented in performing arts and visuals contexts in Europe and the US.
She has collaborated with artists such as: Chino Amobi, NON WORDLWIDE, Twin Shadow
and Wu Tsang. As a dancer she has performed for the following: Ariel Efraim Ashbel, Eszter
Salamon, Mette Ingvartsen, and Kat Valastur among others. http://ligialewis.com
Ana Vujanović (Berlin / Belgrade) is a freelance cultural worker – researcher, writer,
dramaturge, activist – in the fields of contemporary performing arts and culture. She holds
Ph.D. in Theatre Studies. She is a member of the editorial collective of TkH
[Walking Theory], a Belgrade-based theoretical-artistic platform, and editor-in-chief
of the TkH Journal for Performing Arts Theory. A particular commitment of hers has been to
empower independent scenes in Belgrade and former Yugoslavia. She has lectured at
various universities and educational programs throughout Europe, was a visiting professor
at the Performance Studies Dpt. of the University Hamburg, and teaches at HZT Berlin.
Since 2016 she is an associate team member and mentor of fourth year students at SNDO
– School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. She participates in art projects in the
fields of performance, theatre, dance, and video/film, as a dramaturge and co- author. She
has published a number of articles in journals and collections and authored four books,
most recently Public Sphere by Performance, with B. Cvejić (Berlin: b_books, 2012 / 2015).
Currently she is working on an independent research project Performing the Self in the 21st
Century, with B. Cvejic and M. Popivoda of TkH. www.anavujanovic.net

Silke Bake lives in Berlin and works as a dramaturge, curator and mentor. Together with
colleagues, artists and institutions, she develops thematic programmes, discourse and
research formats in the field of contemporary performing arts. She focuses on the social,
structural and geographic conditions of contemporary art production. She is currently
responsible for the biennial program <strong>Tanznacht</strong> Berlin (2016 & 2018). Recent publication:
„How to collaborate? Questioning Togetherness in the Performing Arts“, edited together with
Peter Stamer and Christel Weiler, Passagen Verlag Vienna 2016.
Jacopo Lanteri works as artistic coordinator for the European project apap and as curator
and dramaturge in Berlin. He graduated in Dance and Theatre Studies in Bologna and Event
and Museum Curatorship in Rome. He collaborated with many different institutions such as
Santarcangelo dei Teatri, XING, Centrale Fies and Tanzfabrik Berlin. From 2015 to 2017, he
worked as dramaturge and curator at brut, Vienna. He edited several books such as
Iperscene 2 (2009), Cantieri Extralarge – Quindici anni di danza d'autore in Italia 1995-2010
(with Fabio Acca, 2011), Audiences or community? Between policies, marketing and true
desires (with Silke Bake, 2013).
CREDITS
TANZNACHT-FORUM 2017_unsettled landscape is curated by Silke Bake, Jacopo Lanteri,
Julian Weber | With the support of apap - Performing Europe 2020 | Co-founded by the
Creative Europe <strong>Programme</strong> of the European Union and the Berlin Senatsverwaltung Kultur
und Europa. In cooperation with Étape Danse.
Tanzfabrik Berlin-Team:
Artistic management: Ludger Orlok | Production management: Juan Gabriel Harcha |
Organisation: Vincenz Kokot | Communication: Ann-Christin Schwalm | Production
assistance: Jonas Wentritt | Design & photo: AnnA Stein | Technical management: Martin
Pilz.
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TANZNACHT-FORUM takes place for the second time in the interim year of the biennial
TANZNACHT BERLIN in order to discuss current issues of contemporary dance. In August
2018, TANZNACHT BERLIN will happen again, celebrating its 20th birthday around the
working theme of ecology. Artists living in Berlin will be invited to interrogate the
interdependencies and influences between dance/choreography and other artistic disciplines
(especially music/composition), various working practices and dance historical narratives as
well as the environment.