Queering Folk Dance
A panel talk on dancing together in public spaces
As part of the programme series Dancing in Public, Clara Reiner, René Alejandro Huari Mateus, Jacob Bussmann and Frédéric De Carlo shared invented circle dances with their guests in various editions of their project local dancing (June 2024). The dances provided an opportunity to come together in non-binary and unpaired constellations and to be held by the routine of a circular choreography. With Erste Schritte zu den Schwellen (September 2024), Zwoisy Mears-Clarke proposed a new folk dance and brought it to the public space of the Jägerhofallee in the Hofgarten in Düsseldorf. The choreography draws on research into two German mask traditions and stages a procession of masked figures who move rhythmically, tell stories in multiple languages, and describe their gestures aloud. This dance invites performers and audience alike to journey together toward thresholds beyond which other forms of living and worldmaking become imaginable.
In conversation with Sascha Förster, director of the TMD Theatermuseum Hofgartenhaus Düsseldorf, artists from both projects discuss their methods and practices between the inscription in and invention of traditions. Why do we need (new) folk dances? To what do we feel we belong when we dance? Who takes over the city squares, dances and celebrates in urban space?
Dance researcher Sevi Bayraktar (ZZT Cologne) brings another perspective to the discussion. Her research focuses on the use of folk dance in contemporary protests in Turkey. Here, activists use folk dance strategically to fight peacefully and united physically for the free, pluralistic use of public spaces and opportunities for assembly, which are threatened by increasing conservative authoritarianism and police violence.
Click here for the interview with Clara Reiner and René Alejandro Hauri Mateus of local dancing as well as Bülbül Club’s Omar Mohamad and Mohamad Tamem. Both formats at tanzhaus nrw are dedicated to circle dances, albeit in different ways, as they each – and for fun – create specific spaces of community and for sharing dance.
This panel discussion was held via Zoom on October 5, 2024. A separate conversation with Fabian Lilian Korner took place on November 8, 2024, also via Zoom.
In English and German, with English subtitles.
Part of the Dancing in Public series at tanzhaus nrw (2023/2024), supported by the Kunststiftung NRW and in cooperation with the TMD Theatermuseum Hofgartenhaus Düsseldorf.
Speakers
Sevi Bayraktar holds a PhD in Dance Studies from UCLA and is currently Professor of Dance, Music and Performance in Global Contexts at the Centre for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. Her research combines dance and performance studies with sociology and political theory, using choreographic and ethnographic methods. She is co-editor of ‘Tanzen/Teilen - /Sharing’ (Yearbook TanzForschung 2021). Her research on the use of folk dances in protests in Turkey Dissenting through Dance: Folk dance, Gender and Political Protest in Turkey is currently in preparation as a book.
In her choreographic work, René Alejandro Huari Mateus is interested in practices, working methods and performance formats that reject any reproduction of structures of violence, even when it comes to criticising them. The overlapping forms of discrimination that characterise the institutions in which choreography, dance and performance are developed and shown in Germany, and which are hidden behind inclusion programmes without changing anything essential, have shaped René's identity and her approach to artistic creation.
Fabian Lilian Korner is interested in the transformation of forms of perception into forms of knowledge in order to focus explicitly on the sense of touch. In art and cultural education with an inclusive focus, Fabian Lilian Korner works out the multidimensional sensuality of everyday and art objects. Questioning the omnipotent everyday presence of sight has led to various projects. Fabian Lilian Korner also works as a dramaturge at Mousonturm Frankfurt, develops creative and integrated audio descriptions and is involved in setting up a competence centre for audio description in dance.
Zwoisy Mears-Clarke is a choreographer of the encounter. Zwoisy uses the expanded potentiality of dance, audio description, poetry and storytelling to confront forms of oppression such as (neo-)colonialism, racism, queerphobia and ableism and to facilitate encounters that would otherwise be impossible. Since the beginning of their career, Zwoisy has developed dance pieces with an intersectional approach for an audience of low vision, blind and sighted people. Together with Fia/Sophia Neises, Zwoisy co-directs the laboratory for creative audio description at tanzhaus nrw.
Clara Reiner performs, choreographs and builds objects for the stage and lives in Offenbach am Main. She studied choreography and performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and sculpture at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten (KASK) in Ghent (Belgium).
Moderation
Sascha Förster has been working as the director of the TMD Theatermuseum Hofgartenhaus Düsseldorf (Theatre Museum & Dumont-Lindemann Archive of the state capital Düsseldorf) since 2021. Sascha Förster is also spokesperson for the Düsseldorf Council of the Arts, a board member of Frauenkulturbüro NRW e.V. and a member of the City of Cologne's Theatre Advisory Board. He received his doctorate from the University of Cologne with the thesis ‘Zeitgeist and the Scenes of Imagination’. His research focusses on: Theatre and media culture of the Weimar Republic, stage spaces of modernism, theatre architecture, fundus and theatre work.
Editing
Lucie Ortmann is a dramaturge at tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf since 2022. She has previously worked for the Ruhrtriennale and was part of the artistic management teams at Schauspielhaus Wien and Theater Oberhausen. She also acts as a freelance dramaturge and mediator and works in research and teaching. She is a member of the editorial board of the online journal MAP - Media | Archive | Performance.
