The Waack Off is a festival dedicated to the urban waacking dance style. It gathers its international community at one place to foster encounter, exchange, and advancement. The three-day festival programme includes battles, a jam session, a panel discussion, an after party, as well as workshops.
Yeliz Pazar aka Yeliz Manuka is a dancer and choreographer from Düsseldorf and co-founder in dance collective nutrospektif (2020-2022 tanzhaus nrw Factory Artists). Her work encompasses the task of giving visibility to urban dance cultures such as, for example, waacking within a stage context, and promoting those cultures within the dance scene. Among her choreographic works are Dschinns at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Get Together at Cologne Opera and NUTRO 10 - Eine nutrospektive at tanzhaus nrw. Additionally, she has been among Germany’s first-generation waacking dancers since 2008. In 2018, she set up Manuka Waacking Flowers, a waacking crew from North Rhine-Westphalia. During the same year, she organised the genre’s first ever international event in Germany, THE WAACK OFF, at tanzhaus nrw. For POINT OF NO RETURN, she collaborated with waacking dancers Enting Zhang, Kristina Kunn, and Kevin Claudio Ponge Kassoma.
