From September 21 - October 19, 2024, Emerging Change offers a dynamic curation of performances, workshops, residencies, community conversations, and celebrations with renowned and emerging international and Berlin-based artists.
Directors and curators Nara Virgens and Makisig Akin, in partnership with art and social justice organizations across Berlin, offer a space of QTBIPoC thriving, interconnectivity, and interdependence to counter tokenism and structural racism within the field of dance.
All events are open to the public and are either free or sliding scale.
Emerging Change Tanzfestival nurtures artistic collaboration, provides non-hierarchical artistic mentorship, fosters community exchange, and promotes a care-based working culture for and with Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (QTBIPoC) dance artists and allies. This centers a value system of accessibility and sustainability for everyone involved.
Concretely, Emerging Change Tanzfestival:
- curates and centers excellent local and international QTBIPoC dance artists
- supports strong artist-to-artist connection and mentoring
- offers in-depth exchange between artists and audience to foster community practices
a care-based working culture that values health, accessibility, wellness, and sustainability for everyone involved - develops systems of accountability and care
Designed to invite spaciousness that builds community and sustainability, Emerging Change unfolds progressively over the course of five weeks with performances, workshops, residencies, community conversations, and a celebration. It features international and Berlin-based artists mayfield brooks, femBlack
Performance Collective, vAL, Elvan Tekin, Djibril Sall, ShahrZad, Zem*u Huber, Virginnia Krämer & Isabel Kwarteng, Makisig Akin & Anya Cloud/The Love Makers Company, Isabelle Dikumbi, and more.
Emerging Change Tanzfestival highlights "Whale Fall: abyss," a captivating solo performance by renowned NYC dance artist mayfield brooks with live cello, that was born from the sonic dissidence of Black grief and becomes the decomposed dance, the space of grief and regeneration, the lamentation, the ecstasy, the song and the sonic release. Performances by Berlin-based artists include "another space / Memory" by femBlack Performance Collective, a heart-full work with five dancers, a singer, and a DJ which interrogates memory as a machine-body that dances beyond itself, marking an unterwegs (on the way) where Black queer bodies are able to let go, "XÊR," a cinematic solo performance by Kurdish queer dance artist Elvan Tekin that investigates the role of the voice in language, identity and the body, and "INTERMISSION," a mesmerizing solo work by Black queer dance artist vAL where dreams can spill out, linger and perhaps mend...
In imagining Emerging Change directors and curators Nara Virgens and Makisig Akin recognized the need to diversify the dance scene in Berlin. This was initiated, not to counter what is currently happening, but to cultivate transformative change from the inside. Inspired by adrienne maree brown's book Emergent Strategies, Emerging Change is designed to emulate the structural resilience of mycelium as a model of thriving through QTBIPoC interconnectivity and interdependence. Nara and Makisig shape and imagine a festival format, organizational practice, and value system to center QTBIPoC artists and community in sustainable artistry. Emerging Change is a space of visioning and practicing the future. The festival nurtures artistic collaboration rather than competition and exclusion. By closing the gap between established artists and emerging artists, Emerging Change fosters direct relationships between artists that celebrate wisdom beyond academic skills and knowledge sharing rather than hierarchy. Curating QTBIPoC dance artists activate equity and justice as it invests in a future of diverse excellence and expands the demographics of audiences in Berlin.
Locations:
Events will be held at five partner venues spread throughout Berlin including Radialsystem, Uferstudios GmbH, Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V., Casa Kuà, and GLADT e.V.
To the whole program direct HERE.
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Image Credits: Mayfield Brooks, Workshop Decolonize Somatics, credits Robbie Sweeney
