Tanznacht Forum 2026

 “I am tired” is heard among the colleagues, friends and collaborators as often as the polite “I’m fine”. Many of us working in the arts are tired. This exhaustion stems from years of operating under the pressures of late capitalist, extractivist principles; from health conditions and precarity; from political upheavals and the horrors of ongoing wars around the world. The list is endless, and never complete. 

 

Many art institutions also seem depleted, navigating constant pressures to adapt, react and (over)produce, while often remaining underfunded. As resources dwindle, so does the space to imagine how we might work and be otherwise. 

 

What can we learn from the tired bodies of art workers and art institutions? Can we meet in that depletion? One of the main perils of ceaseless exhaustion is that it leaves us with neither the space nor the strength to imagine more regenerative, nourishing ways of working. What conditions might allow that imagination to thrive? 

 

These questions resonate with Pause as Resistance, an initiative by Tanzfabrik Berlin BÜHNE in May 2022. Driven by a need for rest and deceleration, the BÜHNE team attempted to suspend its regular work for one month, choosing instead to spend time together in the studio, alongside artists, to reflect, to pause, and to explore what might happen when we step back from our usual routines.  

 

Against this backdrop, this year’s Tanznacht Forum asks how we ended up here, and what paths might lead us out. Together with invited artists and researchers, we will explore ways of looking together at what nourishes artistic and institutional practices. We will ask what we need to let go of in order to sustain that nourishment, how can we embrace the sleepless, anxious nights, and look together at cases of withdrawal as active gestures of resistance. If we cannot go on like this, what conditions would allow us to carry on otherwise? 

 

We will ask what we need to let go of in order to sustain that nourishment, how can we embrace the sleepless, anxious nights, and look together at cases of withdrawal as active gestures of resistance. If we cannot go on like this, what conditions would allow us to carry on otherwise? 

 

Tanznacht Forum in 2026 is co-curated by Felicitas Zeeden and Marta Keil.  

It is part of Marta’s research “Dramaturgies of Withdrawal: On Gestures of Refusal in Search of More Nourishing Artistic and Institutional Practices”, carried out at AP School of Arts, Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp.