Elisabeth Leopold
New ways of reunion
View of Offensive Dance
With the approaching autumn and the new schedules of the four partner institutions, the offensive dance for young audiences goes into the second round of its existence and gives us, looking back on their mission, a glimpse of what is coming.
Offensive Tanz sees itself as a process-oriented initiative that wants to sustainably strengthen the presence of contemporary dance for a young audience.
This project entails the desire for greater participation of people from different contexts and with different horizons of experience in relation to the art form dance. In order to make this desire a reality, innovative and experimental approaches are necessary, which attract the attention of a diverse audience and reduce fears of contact.
Against this background, Offensive Tanz has set itself the task of creating new places for encounters with dance. Encounters outside the usual theater rooms, in places where people can be confronted with dance in their everyday life and positively surprised. Despite possible fears of contact, these encounters are intended to create moments of belonging. Performances, bouncy castle choreographies, or playground guerrillas – all this will take place in the future under the label ‘Ruaus Gehen’, turning places such as schools, playgrounds, public squares and parks, youth and shopping centres into places of dance. If young spectators are not directly detected there, then multipliers such as families, relatives and/or pedagogues. The dance gets a publicly effective face and moves out of the scene bubble of its art context. Offensive dance activities also include further education and training for teachers.
“We have found that in the current state of emergency brought about by the pandemic, we need to look for new ways beyond on-stage performances, and thus act offensively and live up to our name.” Canan Erek
Due to the pandemic, a lot has changed programmatically for the offensive dance, some productions have been postponed, are digitally transmitted or redesigned in a modified form. This is also the case with the production ‘Can touch this’ by Offensive Tanz Partner Theater Strahl in cooperation with performing : group from Cologne. The group is now working on a new short version of the dance piece, which will eventually be performed in public space. From the original cast, two of the performers will meet with two newcomers via the videoconferencing platform “Zoom” and thus rehearse exclusively digitally. For example, one of the ‘old’ performers and one of the newcomers meet for the first time in real space, even if the audience is there, making the live moment all the more intense.
Participation and inclusion also require the recognition of other perspectives and a respectful approach to diffserencies. By combining the various experiences, expertise and resources of its partners, Offensive Tanz has been embracing this principle since the start of the project at the beginning of this year and makes the network idea the leitmotif of its work.
On the one hand, current events are marked by distance and retreat during the pandemic. On the other hand, we are experiencing increased discrimination and exclusion at the same time, which is strengthening solidarity movements such as BlackLivesMatter around the world. Against this background, a positive attitude towards diversity, which preserves differences and creates encounters at eye level, gets a special urgency.
The Offensive Dance programme therefore deals intensively with the topics of diversity and equality – be it in a conceptual-curatorial, artistic, dance pedagogical or mediating way. Because the creative handling of physicality away from normative requirements, the breaking up of fixed vocabulary or forms, as well as collective working methods characterize contemporary dance, which thus assumes an ideal mediation function for openness and diversity.
In addition, dealing with topics such as racist strategies in the history of dance education is part of the offensive dance program. For example, the autumn programme starts with the follow-up conference ‘Dance and Racism – The Other Body’. The discourse on diversity in dance is also continued in the context of two symposia. The first takes place under the title “Internationality and diversity in dance for young audiences” together with the festival FRATZ International. After the turn of the year, the premiere of ‘A Human Race’ will continue as part of PURPLE, the International Dance Festival for Young Audiences.
These formats serve to build bridges and create a lively platform for exchange between professional audiences, young audiences and artists.
These ideal and quite challenging goals are tackled by the offensive dance for young audiences with courageous and offensive steps. They offer numerous opportunities for participation and networking and for new ways of reunion, be it for the Berlin dance creators, the young audience, for those interested in dance or those who are still enthusiastic.
