R.E.D.

Free’Em Wedding: Consent, Coalition & Embodied Liberation

As an artist grounded in Black queer and trans liberation, I propose a community-centered movement research project that brings my methods called Free’Em Trainique and Consent Improv into dialogue with the vibrant, diasporic communities of Berlin-Wedding. I aim to collaborate with EOTO (Each One Teach One), whose work centers Black empowerment through education and cultural programs, to reach intergenerational Black and Afro-diasporic residents.
 My research investigates the body as a political site of transformation, fun, and resistance. Through a series of open workshops, I will explore how collective movement—grounded in consent, ancestral anatomical knowledge, and care-based improvisation—can serve as a choreographic language for social change. We will engage practices such as pelvic floor activation, spatial redistribution, and coalition-building choreographies accessible across gender expressions, access needs, and movement histories.
 This work builds on methodologies rooted in Martha Graham, Contact Improvisation, Fannie Sosa’s Pleasure as Power, Play Parties, and Vogue Ballroom. It seeks to transform studio space into communal space, where movement is a healing, political, and celebratory act. The final sharing will offer an invitation to witness and participate in these emergent choreographies of freedom.
 Through this residency, I hope to deepen my praxis of radical embodiment and nurture lasting bridges between Tanzfabrik and Wedding’s Black communities.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Navild Acosta

BANHADA EM DENDÊ – BATHED IN DENDÊ

Dendê, or palm oil, is not just a reddish-yellow oil derived from palm fruit; it embodies identity, ancestry, and tradition within Afro-Brazilian culture. Its integral role in religious and culinary practices highlights the importance of preserving and celebrating African heritage in Brazil. "Banhada em Dendê" is a research project that uses capoeira, contemporary dance and vogue as tools to delve into themes of ancestral reconnection and cultural resistance.
 This research confronts issues of memory, identity, and belonging, offering survival strategies within communities navigating a political climate rife with extreme conservatism. The residency will bridge tradition and modernity through Afrodiasporic exploration, encompassing studies in capoeira and the queer/ballroom scene. It will involve collective artistic creation, as well as musical, vocal, and bodily preparation—fostering moments of exchange and experimentation that acknowledge the significance of voice, body, and instruments.
 The objective of this research is the first step to a solo performance that tells the story of a body and existence that is politicized, serving as both a site of violence and a source of power. Inspired by Afrodiasporic rituals and symbols, "Banhada em Dendê" aims to weave ancestral wisdom into contemporary expressions, celebrating the resilience of Afro-Brazilian culture and a trans woman.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Dianna Jacksan Manzamussa

Continually inspired by Lois Weaver's Public Address Systems, I would use the time and support of this residency to create a new platform for skill sharing and healing work. Inspired by the Barefoot Doctors of the Cultural Revolution, the direly important text, "Where There Is No Doctor," the community health clinics of the Black Panthers, as well as my own family history with rural medicine in Turkey, I want to carefully consider how to share the skills I've learned in a way that disrupts the hierarchy of medicine. How can the practitioner, whether Doctor or Heilpraktiker*in, connect with and empower the patient to take an active role in their health? To answer this question, I will invite into the studio performers and artists who manage their wellbeing daily through chronic illness and disabilities, as well as performers and artists who are bodyworkers and healthcare workers, to gather resources and find ways to share knowledge from all sides of these corporeal exchanges. We will share an authentic movement practice and take turns witnessing and sharing, and use this as a starting point for our dialogues. I know there is no expectation of outcome for this research grant, but i would ultimately like to be able to create zines to give away about different self-treatment or between-treatment techniques, translated into multiple languages. I currently have one zine, titled "transformations i: menopause" in english, and i would like to translate this as well and make it more widely available.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Elliott Cennetoglu

Days of Joy: Kinetic Spatial Dialogues

 
This is a research based project that explores the intersection of body, movement, architecture, spatiality and community. Rooted in movement research and choreographic experimentation, this project examines how urban spaces condition movement and how movement, in turn, redefines public space. By engaging with community participants and performers, the research intends to highlight choreographic vocabulary that bridges the everyday urban movement, performance and the dynamics of communal public spaces.
 This project builds on the immersive methodology of DAYS of JOY I, a performative and interactive fashion odyssey that took place in Berlin in October 2024 through the streets of Kreuzberg, inside train stations U Hallesches Tor & S+U Wedding and then ended with performance and video installation at Savvy Contemporary in Wedding. DAYS of JOY, I. celebrated Black joy through movement, storytelling, and spatial intervention, guiding audiences through the city as part of a larger narrative. This research extends this exploration by investigating how different bodies engage with Berlin’s spatial structures and how movement itself becomes a mode of urban critique, space reimagination and community engagement.
 The project is framed by key theories from dance studies, performance studies, and urban theory, providing a conceptual structure. Ato Quayson frames cities as sites of bodily negotiation, while Lefebvre and De Certeau inform our view of space as socially produced and movement as meaning-making. Bibi Bakare-Yusuf’s work on embodied memory and Lepecki’s choreopolitics guide our understanding of movement as resistance. Felwine Sarr and Anna Halprin inspire participatory, community-rooted spatial and choreographic practices.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Jere Ikongio

Asian Wellness Centre

How can Asian bodies imagine new rhythms beyond the flattened notion of “Asianess” in Europe? This question drives our collaborative research as Berlin-based artists—each shaped by distinct movement traditions yet often grouped under a single identity. We draw on cooking methodologies—like the hot pot, which brings diverse ingredients into a shared, simmering broth—to bring together different elements and stories. For us, Wedding’s Asian markets become living archives: human and nonhuman bodies meeting across migration, labor, and lineage. The kitchen becomes the oldest laboratory—a site of wild gestures, pain, pleasure, and communal improvisation.
 This research informs Asian Wellness Centre, an immersive performance that masquerades as a wellness retreat, unraveling into a playful, critical exploration of Asian identity, migration, and healing. Using the language of New Age self-care, it reveals how wellness practices are entangled with colonial histories, bodily memories, and global flows of labor and spices. We approach wellness as a site of negotiation—where humor and healing meet exploitation and displacement, inviting audiences into a layered arrangement of stories.
 Our practice spans Korean National Gymnastics and the relation between pain and spicy flavor, politics of rice from regional to global, Pakistani Sufi shrines, ancestral memories, family stories, and faith as a mode of resistance. We work with an interdisciplinary approach, honoring the in-between nature of our practice and the fluidity of Asian identity. Together, we weave diverse voices into a living pot of ideas—always simmering, never static.

↪ BIOGRAPHIY: Chōri Collective

↪ Archive
Artists in Residence 2021–2024 

↪ Team & Contacts
The R.E.D. residency program 2025 is curated by: Nara Virgens, Vincenz Kokot, Jacopo Lanteri.
Project coordination: Rodrigo Zorzanelli

For more information: red@tanzfabrik-berlin.de

Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion in the frame of the program "Residenzförderung Tanz 2025–2027".