We want you

OPEN CALL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE: 
PERFORMATIVE & CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICES OF INTIMATE PHYSICALITY

In October and November 2023, we will form a Community of Practice for dance artists at tanzhaus nrw to explore facets and potentials of intimate physicality in their own artistic practice. To do so we invite five to seven artists, dancers or choreographers who are working in the region of North Rhine-Westphalia with an interest in or focus on practices of intimacy and physicality. 
The Community of Practice initiates a dialogue between local and international artists and experts for different forms of knowledge and facilitates an open exchange of ideas and strategies. The group of selected artists will form a community by having meetings, collectively attending performances at tanzhaus nrw, that approach the field of intimate physicality, and by participating in specific workshops by artists. The group will focus on an engagement with the socio-political potentials and the implications of intimate physicality and the possibilities of change through contemporary dance.

The working language is English. 

Participants should be able to attend at least two of the performances and workshops. Applicants who are available on all dates will be given preference in the selection process.

First session: Dan Daw Creative Projects
Fri, Oct, 13th: 18:00-19:00 meeting + 20:00-21:30 performance THE DAN DAW SHOW
Sat, Oct, 14th: 11:00-13:00 workshop

This workshop will give a sneak peek into the making process of THE DAN DAW SHOW. Participants will be guided through a series of improvised creative tasks and performance techniques connected specifically to the intimacy that is at the core of the work. The workshop will be co-led by Dan Daw and Christopher Owen.
Dan Daw Creative Projects is a disabled-led company that works collaboratively with a growing network of companies and artists to develop and tour new performance work that blurs the divide between theatre and dance. Dan’s work explores what it means for his queer, Crip body to occupy, and be unapologetic in, non-disabled spaces. He is interested in the function access, care, consent and interdependence has in those spaces.

Second session: senzenberger|rieck
Sat, Nov, 4 th: 20:00 performance a dance routine + talk
Mon, Nov, 6th: 11:00-14:00, workshop 

In this workshop, movement material from hybrid choreographies and digitally circulating dance routines will be learned and examined from different perspectives in a playful experiment. Sharing a dance – together we will feel how bodies, like archives, are composed of the accumulated, the incorporated (and the unattained) and how a friction between body and performativity of gender, sexuality and intimacy is constantly revealed. As senzenberger|rieck Katharina Senzenberger and Miriam Rieck work on practices of  interweaving contemporary dance and dance in pop culture or social media, exploring individual-collective moments in the tension between different dance routines. With a fascination for the ambiguous communal foundation of digitally circulating choreographies, senzenberger|rieck devote themselves to learning and appropriation, but also to the inevitable transformation that occurs when movements are passed between bodies and media.

Third session: Tiran Willemse
Sat, Nov, 11th: 20:00-21:15 performance black milk 
Sun, Nov, 12th: 13:00-16:00 workshop + followed by a concluding discussion/exchange (tbc)

The guided movement workshop offers a somatic exercise to explore the contested space between the personal and the political. How can we rethink conversations about bodies to make them more impactful? What possibilities emerge when we allow the body to dictate its own rhythm and politics, enabling it to become its own entity, more queer, more feminine, more Black, and more body-positive? We will examine how our practices can assist individuals in forming a deeper connection with their bodies, fostering a sense of agency and self-awareness.
Tiran Willemse is a dancer and choreographer from South Africa based in Zurich and Berlin. They're work focuses on a careful observation to space, imagination, gesture and sound, exploring how race and gender are performed, communicated and questioned.

How to apply
Interested participants please contact us via email and answer at least one of the following questions/tasks – in written (max. 250 words), audio (max. 3 minutes) and/or visual form (max.  5 MB): 

> What is your motivation to apply? Moreover, which workshop interests you the most and why?
> Give an example of a project in which you have explored intimate physicality in the context of a performance or a choreography.

Deadline: September 20th 
You will receive participation feedback to your application by October, 4th.
Applications and questions to: Lucie Ortmann, dramaturgie@tanzhaus-nrw.de