Performance Projects

In this performance workshop, we aim as a group to create a common language and at the same time to form each one’s own dance into different movement vocabulary. In the first level ,we will work with improvisation tasks technically in order to learn how to coordinate the whole body into small and big movement pathways. To actually train physically the body's totality and be able to activate the muscles and each body part by keeping them connected with the center and the spine. We will work with different intensities of muscles and we will learn to create musicality in the body by choosing short or long movement pathways, internal and external physical expressions and forms. We will challenge our speed and our stamina because in those places we will be forced to activate these technique tools in order to keep our dance creative and alive. After forming a group understanding , as a next level, we will challenge and work on our ability to choose and create stories inside group composition and creative conditions. We will work on the intension of our own dance and focus on understanding how physical forms can change color, meaning ,feeling and esthetic when the intension of the dancer is changing. Dance improvisation is an expression on real time and it is a space with endless possibilities! It is like automat writing. In order to transform this automatism into creativity, we need technical tools, body awareness and the intention to talk with our whole being. This is where the movement instinct becomes dance. Fee: 180 € / red: 160 € / professional dancers: 140 € | Application for the project: mueller@tanzfabrik-berlin.de Additionally you can join the contemporary class “Inside Extremity” The class focuses on creating a sense of physical power, energy and musicality while exploring our individuality and being available to the group energy and the entire space. It consists of two parts. We start and insist on a physical improvisation in order to explore deep our movement awareness ,to work the articulation of the body and to develop ones own movement, musicality and imagination. The improvisation plays in between physical availability and limitation. We aim to the transformation of the body in any kind of situation through diving into our extreme and unpredictable side. The participants are led to extreme positions, different qualities of movement and high speed of physicality. The class continues with short floor exercises and complex standing combinations with acrobatic elements. We finish with creating a long sequence that combines the tools of the class, in where the participants are encouraged to play with dynamics and express themselves & their souls individually as performers. Mon & Wed 18:15-19:45 | Fee: For people joining the performance project: 110 € for the training period during the project / For everybody else: 10x card: 100 € / red.: 90 € / prof.: 75 €

This performance project invites you to join an interactive group experience through movement, sound, and space. “For physics, the sound is an oscillation (a movement in space) made by particles (atoms and molecules) and generated by a music source“; we are constantly surrounded by a multitude of different sounds that generates a never-ending vibration-movement of particles that we are not able to see. Together with the live electronic music by the composer Giacomo Mattogno (Junction to Humanity), we investigate a possible representation of the sound’s physics and its propagation in air, through a movement performance. A grid on the floor, associated with different sound parameters, suggest information for the movement orientation in space, the intensity, the speed, dynamics, and qualities. Taking actively-physically part of the artistic research and the creation process, from the abstract to the practical you get the chance to approach your own body language in an experimental approach, working with sounds, images, drawings, individual-group exercises. Movement and musical tasks are used as a common vocabulary; we explore themes such as dancing in a group, dancing as a couple, listening to sounds in the dark, generating sounds through dancing, questioning the emotional impact-influence of sound on movement. The live music, besides improving the individual musical skills, becomes a fundamental element for the analysis of the sound’s physics. Three are the keywords in this project: movement, sound, playground. Live Music: Giacomo Mattogno Fee: 180 € / red: 160 € / professional dancers: 140 € | Application for the project: mueller@tanzfabrik-berlin.de Additionally you can join the contemporary class Mon & Wed 18:15-19:45 | Fee: For people joining the performance project: 110 € for the training period during the project / For everybody else: 10x card: 100 € / red.: 90 € / prof.: 75 €

The performance project ‘Oyster Spiel’ commits to dance & speech. When dance allows the sensual, imaginative and affective powers of speech, then the aesthetic value of language can be witnessed and experienced through the body moving. Here the specificity of each movement aligns with words being abstracted from their natural context. This way words redeem their primal meaning, their energetic force, and the body can be seen afresh. Namely from the perspective of this most vital human component: our capacity to speak. This leads to refined choreography, detailed phrasing and precise compositional work. Here dance is given a rare dimension and depth, which requires the core of the body to strengthen so its contours can soften and be newly defined in space and time.  On a practical level, initially, time will be invested to individual technical work and exploration. This means going into anatomic imagery and through simple exercises bringing speech into one’s dancing vocabulary. Clear instruction and guidance creates a safe framework to do so. Individual work is followed by compositional work, which gives room to placing one’s material beside that of others. We watch and do, watch and do and this way the dynamics of dance-speech-space work will become clear and weave the fabric of a piece that can be presented.  Fee: 180 € / red: 160 € / professional dancers: 140 € | Application for the project: mueller@tanzfabrik-berlin.de Additionally you can join the contemporary class Mon & Wed 18:15-19:45 "The Complex Phrase" deals with constructing and deconstructing a phrase. Here movements individuate and each action is allowed to be crude, pertinent and natural. The moves are rich in themselves and various. Combined they work effectively when they align body with space. Speed, texture, depth, power, sensuality, opening and strengthening, spatial intuition and dynamics are examples of elements that can come into focus. This class is for people with movement experience wanting to further their experience. Fee: For people joining the performance project: 110 € for the training period during the project / For everybody else: 10x card: 100 € / red.: 90 € / prof.: 75 €

This performance project wants to focus on the presence through the quality of our movement. We will use ideas developed from postmodern dance practice till today through release and improvisation research. In order to reach to an unity of intention and freedom. SKIN as a concept, will be a metaphor for our intuition, a layer of opacity that covers our body, but also a surface that defines volumes. It transmits perceptions, and drives us until the walls of the architectural SPACE/a physical perimeter. We will research the relation between body and structure, transition between different movement, and different ideas. Crossing a space/time, in which reality and abstraction will become our unique way of being here and now, in a condensation of past and future. Fee: 180 € / red: 160 € / professional dancers: 140 € | Application for the project: mueller@tanzfabrik-berlin.de Additionally you can join the contemporary class: It is a class based on Alwin Nikolais post body system, suitable for people in all stages of their dance development. The class includes elements of diverse techniques such as pilates, feldenkrais, body-mind centering, release and improvisation research. We develop a warm up and a mind/body awareness asking ourselves which qualities can we develop between time space and motion. Through dance we like to release and expand our range of tolerance and possibilities.  Mon & Wed 18:15-19:45 | Fee: For people joining the performance project: 110 € for the training period during the project / For everybody else: 10x card: 100 € / red.: 90 € / prof.: 75 €

The concept is simple: we practice beginnings and endings: when and how to enter, when and how to exit a time-space, and - not to underestimate : what to frame through these? What is it that happens in the middle between beginning and end? And in how far do all three causally effect each other? And then, sensed from a larger time-space perspective : what is before the beginning , what comes ( or even just starts) after each end? We are inspired by the music of Franz Schubert, which for us exposes the play of and with time in a most radical manner: endless melodies and repetitions, atmospheres of hopeless sufferings and longings, eternal beauty and sweetness, breathless stillnesses in the midst of the most agitated noises. And - last but not least- endings that seem endless, that fight against themselves, resist their own nature (of being endings); and other endings that let themselves be in service of their function, fully surrendering in the most humble way. So this music - sometimes purely and from beginning until end, sometimes fragmented or twisted in time, sometimes layered, decontextualized and edited with electronic sound material, will provide the acoustical fundament for our research while our bodies swim and negotiate in and with these sounds (and their surrounding silences), unfold numerous facets of sensations and movements, become vessels and channels for and between time and space, between matter and meta-matter. Fee: 190 € / red: 170 € / professional dancers: 150 € | Registration: schule@tanzfabrik-berlin.de 25% discount for a second (or third) performance project special in August.

In this performance project, we will work with specific principals and tools of physicality in order to create a group physical language and gain common awareness on how to (re)/produce movement vocabulary and use solo or group improvisation as a main source of research. Coming from different backgrounds, we gather as a group into a creation process. Focussing on various improvisation tasks, creating, learning and sharing material, as well as decoding and reproducing our own or others physicality. Finding the body’s clarity, acceleration and performative intention by taking a closer look on how to progress our own dance and improve the mechanisms of each body part. The aim is to create physical confidence and overpass the fear of exhaustion and the fear of uncontrollable in order to unlock our personal physical potential while being useful and creative for the group’s intention and creativity. The creation result will be inspired, composed and dedicated to the group’s process. Born by the thematics which will appear from our bodies’ dramaturgy. Fee: 190 € / red: 170 € / professional dancers: 150 € | Registration: schule@tanzfabrik-berlin.de

My aim is to create a piece by offering the framework – a playground of rules and different qualities and ideas, and within this frame to create the space and freedom for personal choices and colors to exist. My interest is finding the fine balance between “losing myself” while dancing and at the same time staying alert and conscious of what is happening around me – of external stimuli. Discovering different movement qualities and dynamics and encouraging my dancers to move without fear and hesitation are also central elements. A strong focus exists on key skills of working with the floor, using improvisation tasks, strengthening exercises and basic acrobatics as well as complex choreographic sequences. Fee: 190 € / red: 170 € / professional dancers: 150 € | Registration: schule@tanzfabrik-berlin.de

In this project we will deal with the questions: How each one of us functions and creates movements? How do we approach movement and take care of ourselves? The exploration of the deep tissues in the body, the awareness through movement and, the neural reorganization of the body supply an exchange of forces that guide us to relax physical tension. Once the body`s tension is released, a neutral approach to what we do or how we move, emerge and enable us to focus differently on the creative process itself. In this project, we will work with certain improvisation tools and instant composition which will create individual and group processes that can be recalled at any time by concentrating on feelings, clarity of the movement, specific structures or by changing focus. The aim is to persuade the body to manifest itself in ways that a real listening happens. The participants are encouraged to track the initial reason behind their choices and to rethink how one functions and creates.  Rather than following a product-obsessed process, we look forward to deepening the research by doing and/or undoing dance materials as well as reviewing and understanding the structure we are creating.” Dancing is a loving practice of understanding dance as a conversation lead by intuition. Fee: 190 € / red: 170 € / professional dancers: 150 € | Application for the project: mueller@tanzfabrik-berlin.de Additionally you can join the contemporary class: This class is a holistic dance technique where we will focus on the awareness of the technical functionality of the body. We will work with the aspects of three-dimensionality, coordination, suspension and gravity. As well as taking a closer look on the organization and integration of the given information in relation to the personal alignment in order to find natural anatomical connections. Integrating this information into movement material, where body parts are constantly changing in speed, rhythm, spirals, elasticity, direction in the space, the body will find its natural and organic way to be connected and will allow us to move with more ease and efficiency. The dance material composed for the class will help the participants to focus (while training) and to experience dance without using unnecessary tension in the body. The class draws from a wide range of movement techniques that has influenced me: My own teaching and dance experience including Klein technique, Feldenkrais, Aikido, Tai chi, Yoga, Modern/Release Dance techniques & Contact Improvisation. Mon & Wed 18:15-19:45 | Fee: For people joining the performance project: 110 € for the training period during the project / For everybody else: 10x card: 100 € / red.: 90 € / prof.: 75 €

An open performative postcolonial approach to the gender body, the symbolic body and the body-mind mystery. “(…) one is suddenly looked at by one who is strange or … one wishes to look at or commune with another person but suddenly cannot because he is strange, or one expected him to be familiar but he suddenly appears unfamiliar, or one started to smile but found one was smiling a stranger (…).” Silvan Thompkins – Shame and its sisters- 1995.135) Where and what is the other today? Can a non-dualistic bodily awareness of otherness challenge and get away from this arrogant insular European cultural narcissism and mode of thinking? In this performance project we will start investigating politically and bodily the relation between shame and performance, as shame according to the pioneer in queer theory, “(…) generates and legitimates the place of identity – the question of identity – at the origin of the impulse to the performative but does so without giving that identity space the standing of an essence.” (E. Kosofsky Sedgwick). This Project is a claim to openness and not knowing reflecting on topics like gender, death, simulacrum, mystery. It aims at linking and mobilizing instead of isolating and immobilizing the self (and his own) body on the painful knots “Do I really realize?”. Reflections are able to open around to think, to perceive and explore about the many things we all have never done because of being so averse to (among others) just simply physical and mental discomfort. Through different levels of movement research enriched by readings, personal improvisation, a specific work on extroversion aimed to enhance individual qualities and through the fundamental sharing of personal experiences we will build up gradually the structure for a performance showing. Alterity definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alterity “The quality or state of being radically alien to the conscious self or a particular cultural orientation” Fee: 190 € / red: 170 € / professional dancers: 150 € | Application for the project: mueller@tanzfabrik-berlin.de Additionally you can join the Contemporary training for Body and Mind with Alessio Trevisani 28.10.-18.12.2019 The training will start from a specific physical exploration of the fundament links and teachings of the contemporary Body-Mind approach to movement. This somatic work aims to a better balance bet- ween your will and your body, in order to track new kinetic impulses and develop strong performative strategies. The development of a performative identity is like a continuous spiral in which identity is a representation of self-awareness and at the same time of self-confidence. Re-establishing this balance is an absolute pathway to overcome new challenges and find new expressive contexts. The class will be divided into different phases: training and technical analysis, personal and collective research also based on contact and hands-on practice, instant performance and composition. Through these different itineraries, we will build up a structure up to develop our own performance language in a contemporary way, combining a specific work on extroversion and enhancing individual qualities. A class training dedicated to expressive, bodily-compositional research. Where expressive means leaving one's comfort-zone to reach a dynamic, highly physical and at the same time meaningfully significant adventurous space. The class is open to everyone - professionals and non-professionals dancers, actors, students and movers of all kind. Moreover, this class is also open to all ages starting from 16, to every type of Gender and to every different able person, to any kind of cultural and religious background, as they are all precious sources of mutual cultural and social enrichment. Mon & Wed 18:15-19:45 | Fee: For people joining the performance project: 110 € for the training period during the project / For everybody else: 10x card: 100 € / red.: 90 € / prof.: 75 €

Through body, configuration, a vibrant sense of listening and awareness in space and time; this week intensive will be handling choreographies of immediate, present, real - imaginative situations. Gestures, proximity, urge and energy are included themes in the process of understanding how, when and where we act, animate, separate, relate and compose. Dedicating time to bodily wisdom through our sensorial and sensuous capacity and intelligence; guides towards physical trust and fluid motion. In the progressing of the work, we will zoom in-out and associate our dance making with the intimate and universal narratives, stories and poetry we share as performers. Creative writing will be involved in our individual and collective process, as we refine the texture, atmosphere and details of our compositions. The work aims to encourage hunger for images, associative playfulness and the ability to observe, support and empower these elements within the state of performing. It is open for dancers, musicians and actors who are interested in choreography and instant-composition, and can engage with its working-process at a professional level. Fee: 190 € / red: 170 € / professional dancers: 150 € | Application for the project: schule@tanzfabrik-berlin.de