Mobility Dance Project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Rail2Dance Conference, scheduled to take place on October 7th and 8th, 2023 in Chemnitz and online

Day 1. October 7th, 2023

https://youtube.com/live/gE71MwJqRJo?feature=share

10:00	10:15	Opening/ Welcome
10:15	10:30	Presentation of the Rail2Dance Journey (Movie)
10:30	11:15	Chances and Challenges of Slow Touring within Rail2Dance
		Panel discussion with the Core Team
11:15	11:30	Coffee Break
11:30	12:30	The Future for Creations in Dance – Sustainability, Slow Touring, Discovering New Spaces for Dance
		Panel discussion including best practices: Slow Producing & Working with Civil Society

Day 2. October 8th, 2023

Please use this Link for Rail2Dance live Conference :

https://youtube.com/live/8GMjrLvpJg8?feature=share

10:00	10:45	Landschaft als Theater
		Dance in Open Spaces as Protest & Regaining Spaces
		Presentation & Panel Discussion
10:45	11:30	VR & AI – Future of Greener Touring?
		Chances and Challenges of Digital Performing Art
11:30	11:45	Coffee Break
11:45	12:15	Audience Development – Dance in Public Spaces and Transportation
		Bewegung im Stadtraum – Kulturstiftung des Bundes
		Movement in Urban space – Federal Culture Foundation Germany
12:15	13:30	Final Discussion – Learnings & future questions on the example of the Rail2Dance Toolboox

Join us for an inspiring two days of knowledge sharing, networking, and envisioning the future of creations in dance.We look forward to your participation in the Rail2Dance Conference and to welcoming you to Chemnitz in October 2023.

Anna Kozonina:

Anna is an artist with an MA in Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art from Aalto University. She has worked internationally with performing arts and contemporary dance, supporting choreographers and multidisciplinary projects. Anna is interested in new learning practices, embodied knowledge, and educational design. She is available as a researcher, educator, coordinator, writer, dramaturg, or consultant.

Dr. Katarina Christl:

Katharina Christl, a Dresden-born dancer, studied at Palucca University and has worked with renowned choreographers like Richard Siegal, Emanuel Gat, and Frédéric Flamand. She has choreographed works for Ballet National de Marseille and Compagnie Grenade, and has received a pedagogical diploma for contemporary dance from France’s Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Fabrice Guillot:

Fabrice Guillot, a choreographer and director of Retouramont, utilizes high-level climbing to create diverse movements. His choreographic writing explores various spaces, from public spaces to natural spaces, contemporary forms, and architectural patrimony.

Tove Berglund:

Tove Berglund, a costume designer and artist, graduated from Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2013 and has worked at various venues, exploring interaction, epic themes, and taste.

Olga Tsvetkova:

Olga, born in Ekaterinburg, studied modern and jazz dance at Yekaterinburg Contemporary Art Centre and later obtained a Psychology degree from Moscow Pedagogical University and a BA in dance from Amsterdam School of Arts. She performed in international festivals and taught dance in Russia.

Robin Jonsson:

Robin has extensive knowledge of incorporating digital technologies into the choregraphic context. Especial with Robotics and VR but also with AI.

Serena Tabacchi:

Serena, co-founder and director of MoCDA, is an independent digital art curator and has curated international NFT exhibitions and events. She has curated digital art exhibitions for Italian museums and foundations, including MAXXI L’Aquila and Cambi Auction House. Tabacchi is part of the SuperRare DAO Council and works as a partnership manager with Sandbox Metaverse and Cinello’s DAW® technology.

Arnd Wesemann:

Arnd, editor of „tanz“ magazine since 1997, is a freelance author and founder of Tanz.dance, a platform for quality journalism in dance.

Helena Waldmann:

Helena, a renowned choreographer, has gained international recognition since 1993 for her political-driven choreographies. Her works have been exhibited in various countries, including Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine, Kenia, South America, Korea, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh. Waldmann’s mastery lies in tightening the dramaturgical screw, delivering subtle messages that resonate with audiences. Her works have won prizes and travelled to various countries, inspiring her to create new works. Her works include „Headhunters – cutting the edges“ (2004), „Legations from Tentland“ (2005), „Emotional Rescue“ (2005), and „Feierabend! – the antidote“ (2008). Waldmann has also directed short films, a pop-up performance, and researched Uzbek ancient dance Lazgi and landscape theatre. She is a juror for the German Dance Prize and was a Bertolt Brecht Visiting Professor at the University of Leipzig’s Department of Theatre Studies in winter 2018/19.

The international project Rail2Dance, which includes theater partners from Germany Die Theater Chemnitz, Slovenia PTL – Plesni Teater Ljubljana / Dance Theatre Ljubljana, Sweden Norrlandsoperan and Finland Tanssiteatteri MD, takes public space and the codes of behavior that define these spaces as its central theme. With the help of dance movements, collective choreographies, dance pictures and games, the dancers of the project change and transform the codified rules of behavior determined for a certain space. The creators of the project are interested in places of passage and movement, such as railway stations, city squares and streets, and public transport. With dance interventions in public space, they not only reflect everyday practices in public spaces, but also question the meaning of community, which is increasingly disappearing in the modern world. The dance step sheds light on the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life and pre-set rules, which require specific movement and behavior for each space, and sheds light on our alienated environment, in which we still too often just walk past each other. With collective pop-up dance choreographies that suddenly emerge in public places, we can connect, at least for a moment, in a potentially different world, where we can dismantle social codes of behavior and create new rules. By spreading dance from theater to public space, the wall that can often be created by closed-in artistic creation is also broken down. Movements that merely transform spaces and the bodies in them are capable of bridging social differences, even if it’s just a moment of holding hands together, singing at the train station or lying down in the main square. In this way, the project seeks and educates a new audience for contemporary dance, which in the future might also enter theater halls.

The ideas, which were developed in Ljubljana with the help of mentors, will later branch out and be upgraded into individual and space-bound choreographic projects of all participants. The project will end in May 2023, when a group of dancers will dance their way from Tampere (Finland), and will pass Vaasa (Finland), Umea and Malmö (Sweden), go via Chemnitz (Germany), and will end the journey in Slovenia, first in Maribor and then in Ljubljana.

About Artists

MENTOR

CORE ARTISTS

EXPERTS

TOURLEADER

Kick Off Residency in Ljubljana 2022

The kick off meeting of the international dance project Rail2Dance began on September 4 in Plesni Teater Ljubljana, where the dancers, under the mentorship of Anthony Missen, began to get to know each other, collaborate and create. First, the creators considered what public space means to them, how to interfere with it with the body and how the everyday, routine movement changes, if our path crosses a dancing body.

The mix of conceptual design and fun interventions in the public space created an extraordinary atmosphere both among the group and among random individuals passing by. Dancers joined their bodies with public architectural plastic, played basketball with corks, lay on the floor of Prešeren Square, stood and held hands on Čopova Street. Later, they also danced on the train from Ljubljana to Kamnik and back, they got on the bus and created dance pictures at the train station. They were interested in spaces of passage and movement, they explored the public space of Ljubljana, began to change it and illuminate its invisible corners. In addition to practical dance interventions in urban architecture, each of them simultaneously developed their own dance method, reflected on their city and compared it to the creation in Ljubljana.