What Isabel Lewis calls an “occasion” is not quite a performance. It is a way of shaping an atmosphere in which gestures of attention and hospitality make intimacy possible. For more than a decade, Lewis—an artist, choreographer, and lecturer of Dominican origin—has gathered people in this way, subtly rearranging the roles of host and guest, artist and audience.
This idea of hosting offers a fitting entry point into the vision Lewis now develops together with Rio Rutzinger, an Austrian curator for the performing arts known for his long-standing artistic leadership within ImPulsTanz, the International Dance Festival of Vienna. Together they lead Tanzquartier Wien, one of the international key institutions dedicated to contemporary dance and performance. Located in Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier, the house is at once a theatre, a studio complex, a workshop hub, and a discursive platform—a place where dance circulates between rehearsal, research, and public life.
Their collaboration, as they describe here, began as a kind of occasion in itself. What followed was less the invention of a new story than the continuation of an existing one, learning how to host a house that already carries many histories—and many possible futures.
MI: How far back shall we go?
IL: Let’s go back to our first collaboration for the Impulstanz festival. Rio developed the research and workshops area there for 30 years. In 2011 he invited me for the first time and he immediately understood that my way of working with workshops was performative and artistic. He supported that approach by finding spaces that were neither typical art studios nor dance studios but architecturally interesting places. That’s how our working relationship began, and from there a friendship grew.
RR: It actually started as a midnight idea. After a full day of workshops and two performances, on a summer night in Vienna, we were saying goodbye and I jokingly said: “Let’s apply for Tanzquartier.” The next day we actually sat down together, looked at the call, and asked ourselves whether we had something meaningful to say in response to it.
Through that process we realized that one of the things we share most strongly is the pleasure of hosting. In Isabel’s case it appears more artistically, and in my case perhaps more socially, but both of us are driven by a strong hunger for contact—with artists, with society, with exchange. We are less interested in producing polished bubbles of thought than in bursting them. Isabel’s format already contains this mixture: artistry, contact with artists, and also a certain capacity to pierce through conventions.
Simone Aughterlony, Collapse in Five Acts. Photo by Simon Courchel. Courtesy of TQW
MI: If that midnight idea culminated in hosting, how did you define that role together?
IL: Through my experience collaborating with institutions, it has always been clear to me that the host is also hosted by the institution itself. Producing what I call “occasions” always begins with relationships: meeting the different people who make the institution function—not only the curators, but also the technicians, caretakers, and those responsible for maintaining the building.
Over time I developed a practice of relating to institutions in this way. It gave me a sense of empowerment, because the institution stops being an abstract “they”. It becomes a collection of individuals, each with their own responsibilities and perspectives. When you meet them and understand how they see their work, collaboration becomes possible.
That was also how I encountered Rio—as the host of the workshop area at Impulstanz. Over decades he built that program in a way that expanded the canon of contemporary dance. There is a lot of gatekeeping in this field around what is considered “high art” on the concert stage. But through the workshops, year after year, Rio brought new people into the conversation and slowly created a more complex network.
Working with him, I also noticed something about his communication style: it was always personal, never institutional. It was never “Rio Rutzinger is speaking from the institution of Impulstanz.” Instead it was a one-to-one exchange where I felt taken seriously as a thinker and artist. For me that is an essential quality of hosting: responding, enabling, and making artistic visions possible.
When we came together for Tanzquartier, we wanted to combine these layers—the artistic vision with the very pragmatic understanding of what it actually takes to produce a program and bring it to the public.
Billy Morgan, Hotelle. Photo by Gergely Ofner. Courtesy of TQW
MI: What changes when this way of working moves from a temporary artistic context into a new institutional chapter?
IL: It might be a new chapter, but it is not a new book. The house already has a history and momentum. It has been shaped by previous directors—Sigrid Gareis, Walter Heun, Bettina Kogler— and their teams, and that accumulated history, become material you work with every day.
Leading an institution feels less like starting something new and more like steering a massive ship that is already moving in a particular direction. You can introduce change, but it takes time. Institutions have a certain inertia—not only physical but also psychological and social.
Rio and I decided from the beginning that we wanted to work with the existing team. Some people left, but many stayed. That continuity was important.
RR: We were also new as a collaborative pair ourselves. We knew each other well, but we had never worked together in such an intense and long-term context. Keeping the experienced staff felt important. Some people here have worked in the house for more than 20 years. That can sometimes be seen as a problem, but we chose to treat it as an advantage.
Another interesting aspect is that institutional critique has existed for much longer in the visual arts than in dance. Every year, through the DanceWeb program—which I founded nearly 30 years ago—a new generation of young artists arrives ready to challenge the institution. At first they might see the festival as a “big tanker” they must oppose. But over time I realized that this critique is something valuable. It shows us our limits and gives us the chance to learn.
Ultimately an institution is both a structure of power and the sum of the people who run it. For us it was important to emphasize the role of hosting: welcoming artists, supporting them, and being there for them—even if that means helping them at two in the morning!
MI: If a new chapter usually implies claiming a narrative, what lessons have shaped your direction since the pitch?
IL: There have been many lessons, and the process is still ongoing. Even though I had spent many years coming to Vienna as a guest, entering its institutional fabric is very different. I underestimated that shift. As an artist working internationally for a long time, I am used to moving between contexts, but directing an institution involves another level of embeddedness.
In my previous projects I usually collaborated with artists, scientists, or people from other disciplines who shared a strong motivation to create something together. Here I work with highly professional colleagues whose expertise lies in very different areas.
That required me to rethink how resonance happens. In the past resonance often emerged through shared artistic or intellectual interests. Now it sometimes emerges through very ordinary interactions. Trust develops slowly, through doing things together. At the same time, one still tries to guide the institution with an artistic vision, which can be challenging.
RR: Here is a narrative now emerging over the next five years.
Chloe Chignell, Sun Cut. Photo by Stine Sampers. Courtesy of TQW
MI: Can you describe that narrative concretely?
RR: Isabel structured the seasons around a series of “lenses” through which we look at programming. The first season is “Theater”, the coming one is “Village”, followed by “School”, then “Carnival”, and finally “Compost”. These lenses are not literal themes but perspectives that shape how we think about the work.
For example, when we speak about School, we don’t necessarily mean a building or a curriculum. It could also refer to an artist who has developed a particular method or community of practice. Nora Chipaumire, for instance, has shaped a way of working that can be understood as a kind of school.
This framework helps us when we talk to artists about programming. Sometimes we can say: “Your work would really blossom within this particular lens.” It also allows us to postpone things: not this year, but perhaps next year.
Externally, many visitors say they feel a strong sense of change in the house and respond very positively to it. Internally, the reactions are more mixed, which is normal. Some colleagues are very enthusiastic—some even say they have never been more excited to come to work after decades here—while others need more time. But overall we have found a great deal of competence and commitment in the team.
MI: It’s another kind of human vibration. I want to come back to the anecdote I mentioned earlier. When I arrived at the Tanzquartier Studios last November for a symposium on infrastructural critique at Die Angewandte, honoring the legacy of the late Marina Vishmidt, I thought I would take a break and maybe watch a performance. But there was no performance—only workshops. So I joined one.
I was late, I tried to pay in a rush, and the kind person at the counter simply said, “Just go in, we’ll sort it out later.” There was already a kind of coziness—more than in any yoga studio. Inside, a trainer who normally works with professional dancers was leading a group of random participants. We were all moving through the space together, trying to understand what we were doing. Is this dance? Why are dancers doing something like this?
For me it felt like the perfect introduction to what you’re doing here. I had just left the Museumsquartier and suddenly this was a completely different experience of what an institution can hold. On the Tanzquartier website the first thing you encounter is not the calendar but a layer that introduces workshops, practices, gatherings, and research. It already feels like a shift—almost a gesture of humility toward the process. What is the larger change that you feel, physically and virtually?
IL: It’s wonderful to hear that this resonates, because we are so immersed in day-to-day operations that it’s hard to step back and see it from the outside. When Rio and I wrote our vision for the house, we recognized that Tanzquartier already has a particular mission as a public institution of the city of Vienna: it supports theory, discourse, training, and performances.
We want to emphasize the house as a research center for contemporary dance and performance practices. For us, Vermittlung [mediation] is not a secondary activity but the core of the institution.
Vermittlung can mean many things: accessibility, opening dance and performance to audiences beyond specialists, inviting people without training or academic knowledge to engage with the field as a form of discourse and a way of being in the world. From my own artistic practice I know that inviting people into the process can be transformative. For many years I experimented with formats that troubled the conventions of theatre and were open to varying degrees of participation. I’ve witnessed first hand how much desire there was for this kind of direct address.
When I first came to this house in 2007 I was living in New York, and there was nothing comparable there. Even in Europe it’s rare. Here we have a library, an archive, media technology, training studios, co-productions, and a theatre—an extraordinary resource located in the middle of the city, next to major museums.
For me Tanzquartier carries enormous symbolic weight for dance and performance. It is not only a venue that opens for shows every weekend—it is a public research center, a place people can enter and use. It belongs to the city of Vienna. Ideally it should function almost like a living room.
RR: One of the biggest changes we made was actually in communication. The resources were already here—they simply weren’t emphasized or fully appreciated.
IL: Many people don’t even know they—as non-professional dancers—can come here. In my opinion it’s much more fun than going to the gym. We have beautiful studios, dressing rooms, showers—it’s a gem in the center of Vienna still to be discovered by many people.
RR: And even if someone simply wants a non-consumer space to sit on a couch, use the Wi-Fi, and relax—that’s fine too. It’s a centrally located public space.
Dean Moss, Figures on the Field, 2025. Photo by Hannah Fasching. Courtesy of TQW
MI: Performance today has also been absorbed by an affect-driven market—apps that teach you how to optimize or relax your body within an economic system. At the same time many dance institutions still prioritize touring and premieres. Could Tanzquartier function as a bridge? And how are you collaborating with other dance institutions?
IL: I think this process is only beginning. My own work developed in a very different production structure. Most of my pieces were self-produced or commissioned through visual art and music contexts rather than through the typical choreography system of co-producers and public funding structures.
Learning about that system more deeply now, I see how it pushes artists into a particular mode of production. For some artists that works very well. For me it didn’t—I had to invent the conditions that suited my work. Ideally, artists should have more freedom to choose the mode of production that best supports their practice, rather than adapting their work to the structure.
At the same time it is crucial that we remain a reliable co-production partner. In Vienna many artists receive public funding for their projects, and institutions like ours provide the additional support needed to realize the work. One issue we notice is that Viennese artists rarely tour beyond the city. That is a structural problem. Work develops through encounters with different audiences and through time. Especially in live performance, time enriches the work.
For that reason Rio and I attend international platforms and networking events. At first it felt awkward for me, but I now understand how these encounters can create possibilities for productions to travel. These conversations are still beginning, but I see growing interest among colleagues—particularly dramaturgs—in rethinking how institutions support dance and performance and what kinds of practices they should offer to the public.
RR: One concrete step we’ve taken is reintroducing public rehearsals, where audiences can witness processes rather than only finished works.
MI: Can you give an example?
RR: One example was the revival of Dean Moss’ piece Figures on the Field, originally created in dialogue with the paintings of Laylah Ali. We recreated it with local performers—all people of color—because the work addresses both inter-POC violence and the experience of POC bodies in contemporary society.
Many participants didn’t know Moss before. Some were only in their mid-twenties, meaning they were children when the work was first created. During the four-week rehearsal period we held two open rehearsals. What was interesting was that the audience consisted mostly of people who were not artists or regular colleagues from the field. They came from other disciplines or were completely new to Tanzquartier.
That confirmed something Isabel often says: following a process can be exciting. Moss used the audience for feedback, asking careful follow-up questions. At first people opened up a little, and then suddenly they shared very rich reflections. For artists it’s incredibly valuable to hear responses from strangers rather than only from colleagues who already share the same references.
Rita Mazza, The Voice. Photo by Mayra Wallraff, Courtesy of TQW
MI: Can you give more examples of artistic practices that might be currently missing in dance institutions?
RR: Process-sharing itself isn’t something we invented—we simply want to emphasize it more. We feel that artists, and even different art forms, speak with each other too little. In Vienna especially, people often stay inside their own bubbles. Even within the visual arts the field is fragmented, and the same is true in dance.
For instance, ballet and contemporary dance communities rarely intersect here. That’s absurd. In New York I grew up seeing dancers from the American Ballet Theatre training in the same classes as burlesque dancers. They shared a technical foundation and learned from the same teachers.
In European dance something changed in the early 2000s. Influential choreographers who were highly trained dancers began to reject virtuosity on stage. Their decision produced exciting work, but it also led an entire generation to reject ballet and technical training altogether. I always thought that reaction was too extreme.
That’s why I appreciated teachers like Janet Panetta in New York. She always said: technique is simply a base—you can use it however you want. Learn it, and then apply it in whatever wild or experimental way you choose.
Flavourama, Qualifier. Photo by Raphael Mittendorfer
MI: This is a wonderful example of long-term transdisciplinary—or even beyond-disciplinary—relationships. At the same time, Isabel, you hesitated earlier around the word virtuosity. How should we deal with that?
IL: That’s exactly where I wanted to intervene. We’ve mentioned ballet and contemporary dance, but there are so many other dance languages that exist today. It raises the question of what gets called a technique and what gets called a style.
Rio has introduced techniques like house dance and hip-hop into the program—forms that had been largely absent from a house dedicated to contemporary dance. Recently we hosted our first hip-hop and house battle, organized by the initiative Flavourama, which two women founded twelve years ago in Salzburg. It’s an international battle format, and we hosted their European qualifier here. It was the first event of this kind in the house in 25 years—and it was incredible.
Sometimes I look at what people are wearing around the table: hip-hop culture is everywhere, almost like the internet. So how could it not appear in a contemporary dance institution? The response from audiences was huge.
And that already changes the outdated conversation about virtuosity. For me, when watching a hip-hop battle, style often trumps power moves. You feel it in the room when someone is completely at home in their form—when the crowd reacts and you witness that powerful intersection between artistic mastery and personal expression.
At the same time we must stay attentive in dance in terms of physical intensity and the development of new techniques, another important aspect of our program is to present artists who approach the body from very different perspectives. For me, dance institutions should reject essentializing discourses of the able and healthy body.
For instance, we presented the artist Rita Mazza, a deaf performer and native speaker of Italian Sign Language. Her work integrates multiple layers of access as artistic tools within the performance itself.
RR: And recently Saïd Gharbi, a blind Moroccan dancer, taught a class called Jump with Me into Darkness.
IL: These are concrete examples of artists that had not been visible in this house before. Other institutions in Europe are also exploring these directions and what it means to acknowledge practices that have too often been overlooked or dismissed as being outside the discourse.
Said Gharbi, 2026. photo by Celine Chalet
MI: You currently have a running event as we speak. Could we talk about Simone Aughterlony’s symposium? Is this also paradigmatic of how you’re working at the intersection of art and academia?
IL: Yes, very much so. When I first encountered Tanzquartier through its founding director, Sigrid Gareis, what impressed me most was its strong discursive and theoretical dimension. As a student I had been fortunate to study in a program where theory and embodied practice were deeply integrated, but outside of that environment it was rare to see institutions doing this.
Later, when I moved to Berlin, I followed Tanzquartier’s discursive program closely. At the time people like Martina Hochmuth and Krassimira Kruschkova were shaping that work. Because I am passionate about this, I decided to take responsibility for the theory and discourse program myself and working together with my colleagues, I acknowledge the earlier tradition that influenced me so strongly.
For me, discourse and research are essential components of the institution. Our research events are free, while other programs require tickets. It’s part of an integrated Vermittlung strategy: some people enter the house through workshops, others through discursive events, and yet others through performances. And my hope is that they will eventually explore the house from other angles too.
Having spent time within academic contexts, I’m aware of both the strengths and the limitations of theory. But I remain fascinated by what dance and performance can do to discourse.
For example, Simone Aughterlony’s new work, Collapse in Five Acts, is accompanied by a symposium. It’s important to make visible that artists spend enormous amounts of time researching—reading, writing, thinking, debating. There’s a common misconception that dance simply happens in the studio.
In recent years in Vienna’s dance culture, theory and performance programs sometimes developed separately, intersecting only occasionally. For me that is a missed opportunity. The division between theory and practice is artificial, yet institutions often reproduce it. I encountered the same issue while teaching in Leipzig—students were surprised when I brought theoretical texts into class because they assumed theory belonged somewhere else. These divisions are largely institutional constructions.
MI: There’s already so much here, but I’d like to end with the current season. If you think about the final moments of this program cycle—within your “lens” framework—what stands out?
IL: One upcoming project is the Future Histories Lab, curated with Jan Groos. It will take place online and it brings together artistic and academic voices for a week of research around the idea of “future histories”. Jan is particularly interested in whether we can generate narratives that do not inevitably end in collapse—how we might imagine other possible futures.
Another project I’m very excited about is the work of Matt McCreary and Charles Auguste. Both come from a background in parkour, which again raises the question: what counts as a contemporary technique? I saw a video of Matt interacting with urban architecture in an incredibly soft, fluid way—almost like skateboarding, but using only the surfaces of the body against concrete. It completely changed my understanding of parkour. It’s not about acrobatic spectacle but about a subtle dialogue between body and city. They’ll be creating a work here on site.
RR: Another highlight is Rakete, a festival for new choreographies that we decided to continue. It’s curated by Lewon Heublein, who is also an editor of PW Magazine and works across performance, visual art, and music. Those influences are reflected in the festival’s program, which brings together both international and local artists.
The festival runs for three weeks in May—right during the Eurovision Song Contest. We even scheduled programming on those days. How dare we.
Yoh Morishita, Dogstar, Foto by Marcella Ruiz Cruz. Rakete Festival Wien 2026
