Rail2Dance

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

ABOUT

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.

ARTISTS AND EXPERTS

MENTORS

ANTHONY MISSEN

Anthony Missen is a Clore Fellow, Without Walls Board Director, member of the Greater Manchester Culture Steering Group, Executive Member of Dance Consortia North-West, member of The UK Dance network, and part of the Manchester Cultural Leaders group. He is co-founder and co-Artistic Director of Company Chameleon.
He is a Choreographer, Movement Director, Accredited Coach, facilitator, and teacher.
His work tours all over the world and in many contexts- outdoors, stages, libraries, cruise ships and television amongst others. He has taught, choreographed, lectured and led residencies in countries including South Africa, Ethiopia, Israel, Trinidad, Morocco, Sweden, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Austria.

CORE ARTISTS

ALJA LACKOVIĆ

My name is Alja. I am 27 years old and I have been dancing for quite a long time. Recently I am also dealing with what dance is, what is performance, how can I use my body not just as a moving tool but also with voice. And I am also interested in how to get a new audience that would watch contemporary dance.

ANNA PEHRSSON

Anna Pehrsson, born in Boliden, Sweden, is a dancer and choreographer active in the intersection between dance, choreography and visual arts. She has danced with Alias Compagnie, Corpus / Royal Danish Ballet, and Cullberg Ballet, for choreographers such as Edouard Lock, Guilherme Botelho, Jefta van Dinther, Eszter Salamon, Deborah Hay, Rachel Tess, Alexandra Waierstall, Cristian Duarte, among others and has since debut as a choreographer 2016, created a wide range of works for the gallery space, the stage and outdoors as well as commissioned works and research projects. Pehrsson is an associate artist of Weld, Stockholm and holds an MFA in Choreography from DOCH and a postmaster accreditation from KKH. In 2021, she made her debut as a visual artist at Tjörnedala Art Gallery Simrishamn, in a shared exhibition and continues to exhibit regularly. Since 2021, she organizes and curates Dances for the Forge, a site specific project that explores movements and transformations as matter in relation to the historical sites formerly housing the early Swedish iron industry.

LAURA CHAMBERS

My name is Laura Chambers, I am from Finland. I’ve danced for my whole life, as an amateur I was involved in many different types of projects, all kinds of performance, whether in theater or in public. As a professional I feel like I am still kind at the beginning of my career.

PATRIK RIIPINEN

I am from Finland, I’ve been dancing for around 19 years. It changes a lot about what I am interested in, depending on the year. Now I am interested in the musicality and personality of the movement. I do quite physical stuff myself, like physical attributes and physical movements as a dancer. I am interested in how people can use their body skillfully and physically and what is possible as a human physic. When you do enough training, what is possible to achieve? I am really busy with this kind of thing to teach and also for my own practice to find a way to advance as a physicality wise and also as a body mind connections.

SASCHA PAAR

My name is Sascha, I am an Austrian dancer, I work currently in a theater and opera house in Chemnitz. Since the beginning of my career, I had the opportunity to work with great choreographers such as Marco Goecke, Alexander Ekman, Ohad Naharin.
In 2022, I founded a dancer collective in Germany called ‚CLUSTER‘, through which a platform is created that give aspiring choreographers the opportunity to develop and show their own work. I am very happy to be one of the core team members of the Creative European Programme of the European Union Rail2dance and I am excited to get new input, meet various people and the opportunity to share my creative vision with a wider audience.

EXPERTS

ANNE LE BATARD

Anne Le Batard founded Ex Nihilo in 1994 after her career as a dancer in Brussels and Marseille. She is particularly concerned with the relationship between dancers and dance to space as well as to the auditorium. By exploring public space, she has developed her very own signature. In cooperation she already developed more than 15 projects for Ex Nihilo. The concern of the group is, on the one hand, to connect the public and art and, on the other hand, to allow new elements of art to flow into dance. The company is particularly dedicated to long-term projects, which it shares with the respective audience through workshops, courses and encounters. Since 2017, Cie. Ex Nihilo a key partner of the LA CITÉ DES ARTS DE LA RUE project, a place of creation and experimentation with 36,000 m² of space dedicated to street arts in Marseille.

BUSH HARTSHORN

I’ve just recently retired from working within institutions. I was artistic director, director of three or four dance and theater institutions since 1990 in England, Belgian and Holland. Throughout all this time between 2010 and 2011, I qualified as a coach. I use a lot of coaching ethnic in the work I do with artists. I was always working with artists along the way but most of my time and energy, effort was into curating the program, managing the stuff, managing the building or that kind of thing. Before 1999 I was a performer and theater maker. Since I retired, I have delivered workshops called giving and receiving feedback. I work as a coach and mentor for individual artists. I came here to give a workshop and some tools that dancers may use while they are doing site-specific tools.

VITA OSOJNIK

TOURLEADER

MARIA NAIDU

My name is Maria Naidu, I am a Swedish dancer and choreographer. I live in the South of Sweden in the city called Malmö. It is the third largest city in Sweden. It is a border city, even though there is water between us and the the neighboring country which is Denmark. It was a working or industrial city but it has changed in the last 20 years. We have university now, and it is interesting to experience how the population and general atmosphere of the city has. Malmö is one of the most culturally diverse city in Sweden. From what I understand, about 85 percent of the world’s languages are spoken here. I speak about this because this is an important part of the reasons why I chose to live here. It is the only city in Swedish that I want to live in because of that cultural diversity. I decided to become a dancer when I was six years old but didn’t start my professional education until I was 16 years old. I lived and worked in New York City for thirteen years and was a company member of Jennifer Muller/THE WORKS for eight of those years. Both of the above have had a profound impact on my life as well as my artistry. I am marking on my 36th year as a professional in the international dance context and …. Dance… is life … for me.

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.

Rail2Dance CONFERENCE– 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.