Dance Ambassadors Etchi, Mira, Nele and Valeria
Impressions of the PURPLE Festival 2025
An experience report
PURPLE - International Dance Festival for Young Audiences 2025
As dance ambassadors, we collected our impressions of this year's PURPLE dance festival and recorded them in writing. Since we are students ourselves, we unfortunately could not see the pieces that ran in the morning. In our article we report about the dance productions Hush, STUCK, Schön Anders, Nowhere is a place, The Experiment.
Hush – De Dansers from the Netherlands
Mira: Just impressive. Performance, perseverance, everything. The piece seemed to vary between wild improvisation and perfidious rehearsed movements. Dance, always accompanied by music. of instruments. Of singing. Of melody and of words. The audience was frightened and was partly involved. Once one of the dancers put another on the lap of a person in the audience, then again they seemed to be just busy with each other. How they managed to play a wind instrument or sing into the microphone after all the race and jumping was a mystery to me. And it's a great and special experience to watch the dance piece.
Club Oval - Dance Battle
Mira: The Club Oval was like every time a very special experience. Impressive dancers from different dance styles, a large audience and the perfect mix of dancing and competing with each other. Colorful light. A fog machine and the possibility to dance yourself, even if you had not registered in advance for the battle. In addition, once again the audience was able to decide on the final winner of the solo battle. It was voted by a clear majority. The winner had been noticed in each of her performances that evening with tremendous lightness, elegance and dancing agility.
After the teams and duets had also been awarded, all those present were able to end the evening on the dance floor.
Krumping (dance workshop for young people)
Mira: The dance workshop was a great experience. The relaxed and attentive way in which the workshop was led made sure that you immediately felt comfortable and could quickly get involved in the new dance style. It was very interesting to get to know a new way of movement and a whole new side of your own body. Connect to the ground. With the beat.
For lunch there was a break with a delicious buffet and at the end of the workshop we were allowed to internalize what we had learned again and if we wanted to dance in front. I had a lot of fun.
Nowhere is a place – According to Van Van Dance Company from France
Etchi: It was interesting and also educational because the dancer spoke and showed how she discovered her dance style ‘Krump’ by trying out other dance styles and visiting different countries.
Waacking (dance workshop for young people)
Nele: Many have travelled from somewhere in Berlin or even from Wroclaw to participate in the Waacking Dance Workshop for young people today. After a short naming round, our workshop leader Mounia Nassanger told us about the background and origins of the dance style of waacking or whacking. Mounia turned the music on and whenever it stopped, we should pose. Gradually everyone dared to go into the poses with more expression and then we all learned these together. It was much harder than I thought to memorize them all and play them at an ever faster pace.
We learned the famous rotating arm movements and this too we practiced faster and faster until everyone needed a break. After the lunch break, we dedicated ourselves to individual small choreographies. For the fast Mounia still had further steps in stock, so we got to see a real small performance in the end. In the end, the music was turned up again, the light was darkened and everyone danced to the music with the newly learned dance steps. I, who had never heard of Whacking before, learned so much and found it very interesting to get an insight into this special dance direction.
Nicely different – Ceren Oran & Moving Borders from Germany
Valeria: The performance ‘Schön anders’ presented the group feeling and being different in such a beautiful and comprehensible way. The dancers conveyed all these feelings of belonging so well and they also showed the process of finding oneself, as one's own individual, without telling a single plot or story. The piece was designed to be fun and especially attractive for children.
STUCK - Mounia Nassangar from France
Valeria: The piece ‘Stuck’ caught my eye. It had so much expression and power that you could feel right away. My attention was on every single movement and every single person dancing on stage brought their own kind and story. The mood was tense, loaded and at the same time brought fun while watching, and the desire to move yourself, into the audience.
The Experiment – Company The Farm & Tanzkomplizen from Berlin
Valeria: It was designed like a real experiment and we, the audience, were the witnesses of what happened. The space in which we were located became interactive and we could observe how the dancers developed as artificial intelligence and yet as a human being. Everyone was curious and excited, there was an inner excitement, because everything seemed so real fake.
