Malik Nashad Sharpe und eingeladene Kollaborateur*innen , Winin’ & Liming

Dieter Ligueros Korsholm is a Chilean commercial engineer and, these days, a future social worker studying at TH Köln (University of Cologne). In their free time, they are a passionate Modern/Contemporary dancer, a lover of Japanese animation and its culture, and a strong advocate for human rights, social justice, and volunteering.

This last aspect has been present throughout most of their life, but in Germany it began in 2018 at Casa Hogar e.V., a German organisation dedicated to providing education and shelter to women and girls in the Chocó region of Colombia — an area deeply affected by drug, arms, and human trafficking.

These days, this advocacy is most vividly expressed through their ongoing and committed work with SOFRA e.V., a unique self-organised queer organisation in Germany run by and for queer migrants and refugees. Since 2023, they have been part of SOFRA’s mission to build a strong, inclusive, and intersectional queer migrant community in Cologne. Together with other volunteers, they contribute to creating “SAFEr” spaces — such as FLINTA gatherings, open spaces for all, and genuinely intersectional queer events.

Alongside this, they support access to education and a wide range of workshops, including sex education, cultural activities, political discussions, art, and crafting sessions, among others. Last but not least, SOFRA also supports migrants and refugees in need through its case management, addressing the wide variety of challenges that may arise.

Malik Nashad Sharpe is a choreographer and movement director working at the intersection of art, fashion and music. Under the pseudonym Marikiscrycrycry, he creates dance works that explore the formal construction of affect, atmosphere and dramaturgy from marginalised perspectives. His practice examines race, gender and commercialisation through an emotionally charged, radically social lens, using dance as a means of survival and shaping the future. As a Black, queer artist, Sharpe engages with systems of violence and develops alternative possibilities for collective engagement.

In 2019, Malik Nashad Sharpe was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine, and in 2022, he was included in the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 list for his outstanding choreographic achievements. In 2023, he was nominated for the Premio Cunha e Silva award at the Galeria Municipal do Porto (PT). Sharpe is an Associate Artist at The Place, a resident artist at the Somerset House Studios, and guest lecturer in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts.

Maria Mercedes Flores Mujica is a Venezuelan dance artist and researcher based in Cologne, Germany. Her inter(un)disciplinary practice challenges cultural hierarchies and explores corporealities from feminist, decolonial and inclusive perspectives, combining Afro-Caribbean dances, folk traditions and contemporary experiments. Her work examines intersections of time, space and memory through movement, rhythm and performative creation, fostering connections between performers, audiences and space.

Her choreographic works include ON:Joy 2019 in collaboration with Constanza Ruiz; What, Where, When Are We?! 2023 co-produced by Ringlokschuppen Ruhr and supported by Tanzfaktur and PACT Zollverein; and La Vacabose 2025, developed in K3 Choreographic Center, premiered in Kampnagel and co-produced by tanzhaus nrw. In 2025, she was invited to COMMON LAB, an international choreographic exchange from Creative Europe and the choreographic exchange Danza en Construcción in Bogotá, Colombia.

Over the past years, Maria Mercedes has developed her own dance methodology: Somatic Booty Shaking (SBS) — a practice that combines contemporary dance, Afro Caribbean movement traditions and somatic knowledges. Pleasure driven and empowerment directed, SBS allows their practitioners to connect to their own bodies and others, through rhythm, joy, playfulness and sensuality.

Sevi Bayraktar is a dancer, scholar, educator. She works as Professor of Dance, Music and Performance in Global Contexts at the Center for Contemporary Dance of the University of Music and Dance Cologne. She holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research analyzes folk dance as a participatory choreography and a site of cultural memory. She is the author of Dissenting Through Dance: Folk Dance, Gender, and Political Protest in Turkey and co-editor of Tanzen/Teilen – Sharing/Dancing. Her work examines how dance operates as a medium of social critique, collective memory, and political imagination. Sevi currently serves as a board member of the Dance Studies Association. 

Yeliz Pazar, also known as Yeliz Manuka, is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, curator and host. Her roots lie in Locking, Popping, HipHop, House Dance and Waacking, which form the foundation for her dance concepts and movement formats.

She has collaborated with tanzhaus nrw for many years and is a co-founder of the dance collective nutrospektif (2012), which brings urban dance cultures to the stage and fosters exchange formats. Pazar belongs to the first generation of Waacking dancers in Germany and is dedicated to the further development of this dance culture. With THE WAACK OFF, she launched the first Waacking event of its kind in Germany at tanzhaus nrw, bringing together numerous international artists. In 2024, she premiered POINT OF NO RETURN at tanzhaus nrw — a dance stage performance developed out of the Waacking dance culture. In 2025, Yeliz Pazar was awarded the Performing Arts Prize by the City of Düsseldorf.

ZOE is an interdisciplinary performance artist and curator from Düsseldorf. Her work reflects on rehabilitation, transformation and the (re)appropriation of body and space, as well as power relations and marginalisation. ZOE’s practice combines elements of Voguing and Ballroom, Physical Theatre, club and free styles, spoken word and vocal music.

She was a founding member of the first German Ballroom House and has become a key figure in the German Ballroom community. Through the association Shapes&Shades, which she co-founded, she develops formats to strengthen the Ballroom community in NRW. Since 2023, the collective has been in a formal partnership with the Theatre Museum Düsseldorf, organising several Ballroom events together with tanzhaus nrw and Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf.

In 2025, ZOE founded HAUS MAWU, a space to visualise bodies and stories in a post-patriarchal heterotopia. The company operates as a collaborative initiative for diverse artists, focusing on diasporic, queer and intersectional perspectives.