Mika Kühn is 18 years old and travels around the Berlin dance scene as a dance ambassador on behalf of PURPLE and Offensive Tanz. In October, she visited the Dance Meeting of Youth 2022 at the Berliner Festspiele. She wrote down her impressions for our blog.

If you would like to become a dance ambassador yourself, please have a look at our call for applications.

In October 2022, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele became a meeting place for young dancers from all over Germany. For eight days, young ensembles met here to move together, exchange ideas and make contacts - always in the context of their collective passion for dance.

During the day, the varied workshop program filled the hours, while the evenings ended with the participants' own dance pieces on the house's stages. Thus, I perceived each day of the dance meeting as a celebration of sharing. An animated give and take, which, in addition to private conversations, takes on a verbal form in the follow-up discussions that are part of the framework program. These rounds open up a space for exchange, for expressing and sharing impressions and questions, but also feelings about the piece seen the night before. A framework that I learned to appreciate very much during these days.

But even more enriching was the encounter with all the dancers, a colorful bunch of young people, who otherwise, I allow myself to speculate, would not necessarily have met. Despite our differences, I was able to find a lot of overlaps in the themes of our dance pieces.

For example, many ensembles have dedicated themselves to the theme of identity. Identity as an individual, the individual within a society, but also the identity of a society and the associated scope for action. Topics and also questions that probably occupy our generation. And find expression in dance.

I saw the dance meeting as a gift to let my life revolve around dance for a full week. I made new friends with whom new projects are being planned. And let's see, maybe it will become an application for next year.

By Mika Kühn / Dance Ambassador

The Dance Meeting of the Youth is a meeting format, promoted by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. The meeting is part of a series of national competitions that also exist in the fields of theater, literature and music. Participation is based on a two-stage application process in which an independent jury selects the prize-winning ensembles, which then meet for eight days at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. According to the organizers, the dance meeting is intended to increase the visibility and networking of the young dance scene.

Applications for 2023 are to be submitted from October 2022 to March 2023.

The dance pieces from the Tanztreffen 2022 are available free of charge in the Berliner Festspiele's media library until December 2022.