Education and Training

The course aims to integrate the specific information to the preparatory technique for contemporary dance ( Pilates/Yoga/body awareness) in the individual postural and anatomical scheme, and the use of detail and accuracy in the physical, biological, and sensory aspects of movement.

During the course, we start with basic exercises from the above techniques and use their movement principles to change the perception of the „normal” body position. We use the kinetic principles of these techniques and focus on alignment, posture, and joint opening that each of the proposed exercises implies. We develop, over time, the ability to choose variations of movements suitable for our own body, based on personal physical needs. This responsible anatomical approach helps the body progress systematically and consistently towards the technical qualities of a dancer.

The course is structured based on two essential principles in contemporary dance: static balance (the state of equilibrium of a body, which is restored after being slightly disturbed) and dynamic balance (equilibrium determined by two opposing processes that occur simultaneously, with the same intensity). Starting from the theory of equilibrium and preparatory techniques, the course provides theoretical and practical support for a clear and efficient method of preparation for contemporary dance. 

Andreea Belu is currently focusing on movement research. Her interest in educating body awareness drives her work, and developing the intelligence of the body by preparing it for the great diversity of movement patterns. 

She completed her bachelor’s and master’s studies at the choreography department of the Theater Faculty of U.N.A.T.C. “I. L. Caragiale” in Bucharest and the undergraduate program at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, also in Bucharest.  Presently, she researches within the Doctoral School of the University of Theatrical Arts in Târgu Mureș (Romania).

She has consistently taught contemporary dance, Contact Improvisation, Pilates, and Yoga for over 10 years. 

In the last 13 years, she has collaborated as performer, teacher, and student with the National Dance Center Bucharest, Gabriela Tudor Foundation, 4Culture Association, Fabrica de Pensule, The Workshop Foundation (Hungary), North Karelia College (Finland), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Germany), University of Arts of Târgu Mureș, CiNETic – International Center for Education and Research in Innovative Creative Technologies, Tangaj Dance Collective, German State Theater of Timișoara, Matei Vișniec Theater Suceava, and Museum of Recent Art Bucharest. 

She was co-coordinator of the project +2017 [about body, love, and contemporary dance] and of the DanceCloud platform, curator and moderator of the public dialog series Istorii Presente in Spații Incomode and co-founding member of the choreographic research space AREAL. 

She has created stage movement for plays, collaborating with institutions such as Szigligeti Theater Oradea, National Theater Bucharest, National Theater Târgu Mureș, Comedy Theater Bucharest, Metropolis Theater, Matei Vișniec Theater Suceava, Țăndărică Theater.  

From 2019 until now, she has been giving workshops in the series What the Body Am I Thinking?, which discuss the connection between somatics, proprioception, and communication in artistic creation and amateur movement groups.  She is currently a teacher in the educational programs of the National Dance Center Bucharest (Dance and Performance Academy and Performance School for Children) and at the Film School, an educational project conducted by internationally awarded film director Florin Șerban.

For her, movement is a direct and sincere way to reach people.

For five days, we will analyze discourses, tactics and corporeal emotionalities wich are unsettling. . We will interrogate radical emotions specific to performances that have marked the history of hijackings and destructions of decent fields of performativity.

The course aims to address working processes and performative strategies employed in performances that have marked significant historical ruptures.

We will reflect, we will produce critical analysis, we will unsettle each other.

Mihaela Michailov is a playwright, performing arts critic, coordinator of the Master’s Program in Dramatic Writing at UNATC I.L.Caragiale, co-founder of the Replika Educational Theatre Center.

She was the curator of the National Theater Festival, 2022-2024. She curated the section dedicated to the theatrical creations of choreographer Miriam Răducanu, in the exhibition “MIRIAM RĂDUCANU: an exhibition – archive with senZ”, initiated by the National Dance Center Bucharest.

She has written over 30 plays and dramatizations on political and social themes.

Her plays have been translated into Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese.

She is the author of “Radical Bodies in Contemporary Performances”, published in 2022 by Vellant Publishing House and CNDB.

How do we construct, reflect on, and embody history? What does historiography mean for dance practice—and what kind of practice is it in itself? This workshop offers a critical approach to European Dance Histories in translocal contexts by tracing key themes, developments, and ruptures.

Structured as a combination of lecture, discussion, and embodied inquiry, we will explore dance not only as an artistic form but also in relation to aesthetic, social, and political contexts. We will examine how artistic and institutional practices are entangled, and how narratives of dance history are shaped. What counts as a legitimate historical source? Whose bodies and practices are remembered—or forgotten?

In addition to examples from 20th and 21st century dance and performance histories, we will engage with questions of knowledge production and memory. Special attention will be given to decolonial and queer perspectives: How can we challenge dominant archival structures and historical canons? What does it mean to think about history beyond textual documentation and linear time? Within this framework, the body as archive—a site of embodied memory, transmission, and resistance—emerges as a key method and concept.

As a basis for shared exploration, we will work with oral history interviews I conducted in 2016 with dancer-choreographers from contemporary dance and performance contexts in Southeast Europe. These firsthand accounts offer insight into artistic trajectories and institutional conditions. By working with the interview transcripts as scores, we will collectively explore these memories and experiences, initiating a speculative search for embodied dance knowledge and alternative genealogies of movement.

Through this, we will develop and experiment with (P)Re-Enactments—imaginative, movement-based responses that engage with and re-inhabit the stories told. These enactments do not aim to reconstruct a fixed past but rather to open up space for negotiation, critique, and embodied remembrance. They invite us to reflect on how history lives on in the body, how it can be reactivated, and how we might begin to tell it otherwise.

Dr. Miriam Althammer is a dance scholar and postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Art, Music, and Dance Studies at the University of Salzburg. 

She studied Theatre Studies, Art History, and Modern German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, followed by Dance Studies at the University of Bern and the postgraduate program “Curating in the Performing Arts” at the University of Salzburg and Free University of Berlin. Her research interests center on practice-based and interdisciplinary dance and movement research with a particular focus on historical dimensions, memory cultures, and the intersections of art and archive. 

She earned her PhD with a dissertation on contemporary dance in Southeast Europe, examining the intersections of archival practices, oral history, artistic research, and institutional frameworks (Szenarien des Übergangs, Scenae, Rombach Wissenschaft, 2024). Her current research explores the artistic practices of dancers such as Floria Capsali, Friderica Derra de Moroda, Louise Langgaard, Maga Magazinović, and Vera Proca Ciortea, with a focus on transnational circulation and entangled histories of modern dance in Central and Southeast Europe—particularly within the contexts of gymnastics, folk dance cultures, performance of gender and national movements.

She was a lecturer at the Bytom Dance Theatre Institute of the Theatre Academy in Krakow and a research associate at the Chair for Theatre Studies at the University of Bayreuth as well as at the Center for Contemporary Dance (CCD) at the University for Music and Dance Cologne.

She is co-editor of the Tanz&Archiv publication series, whose latest volume (Female Warriors, epodium, 2025) is dedicated to representations of the female warrior in the arts. Miriam Althammer is also co-coordinator of the CEEPUS network Arts in Motion and was recently co-organiser of the Gesellschaft für Tanzforschung (gtf) symposium “(In-)Visibilities – Modern Dance Re-Visited” (2024, Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen). She also writes as an author for newspapers, theaters, journals, and blogs, serves as editor for the online magazine tanznetz.de, and is active as a jury member for contemporary dance initiatives.

What forms of motion escape definition? How do bodies avoid taxonomies of power?

Unauthorized Bodies and Movements is a workshop that focuses on the potential of movement and dance to open a liberating space for bodies, images and ideas that refuse to be contained. By interrogating the structures that seek to define, regulate and recognize movement: from geopolitical boundaries to algorithmic tracking, from intelligent tracking and measuring devices to choreographic traditions and social norms, we will question the body’s relationship to control and discipline and foster unpredictability and a language of movement that destabilizes expectations.

Mihai Mihalcea graduated from the High School of Choreography and the National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Arts “I.L.Caragiale”, Choreography Department, Bucharest. In the 1990s he was a dancer at the Komische Oper Berlin and a collaborator of the Christian Trouillas Company in Paris. He was a scholarship holder in the “Six Week School” program at the American Dance Festival. 

As an artist, he contributed to the international recognition of Romanian contemporary dance and, at the same time, he played an essential role in the steps that led to the establishment or activity of structures and institutions that have become landmarks of this art: Marginalii Group (the first independent contemporary dance group established after ’89), the Inter/National Center for Contemporary Dance, Multi Art Dance Center, IndepenDans Festival, and was co-founder of the first public institution dedicated to contemporary dance – the National Dance Center Bucharest (CNDB), of which he was director from 2006-2013. Mihai Mihalcea also initiated the creation of the Solitude Project Cultural Association, which continues to produce a number of his artistic projects, and initiated and curated the contemporary art space subRahova and later curated the Cultural Home, together with Manuel Pelmuș and Brynjar Bandlien.

For the projects developed within the CNDB he was nominated for the prize “Paris – Europe 2006” by the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient in Paris. In 2013-1014 he was a fellow of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and in 2014 he co-curated with the HAU team the festival “Good Guys Only Win in Movies” in Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.

Over the years he has created performances and choreographic works presented by institutions and festivals such as Tanzquartier Wien, Centre National de la Danse Pantin, Tanz im August Berlin, Paris Quartier d’Été, Springdance Utrecht, Rencontres Choreographiques de Seine-Saint-Denis, Fabrica de Pensule Cluj-Napoca, Black Box Theater Oslo, Silesian Dance Theatre, Bytom, Theatre – Alfred Ve Dvore/Motus, Prague, Antistatic Festival Sofia, Dance House Limassol and many others. 

In recent years he has performed under the name Farid Fairuz in works by Alexandra Pirici presented at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Art Basel, New Museum NY, Theatre de la Ville, Paris, National Gallery Prague, NTU CCA, Singapore, Kunsthalle Wien and others.

His pedagogical activity includes courses and workshops held at: “Floria Capsali” High School of Choreography Choreography, National Dance Center Bucharest, Faculty of Theatre at the University “Babeș Bolyai” in Cluj-Napoca, , Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comte in Belfort, La Manufacture CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Atelier du Rhin – Centre dramatique regional – Colmar, National Opera of Chisinau, Inter/National Center for Contemporary Dance, Bucharest, High School of Choreography and Dramatic Art “Octavian Stroia”, Cluj Napoca, Academy of Theatre of Iasi, Tanzquartier Wien, Theatre Internationale de la Cite Universitaire, Paris, Kunsthalle Bega, Dramatic Theatre “Fani Tardini”, Galati. 

The departure point for exploring and practicing Visual Dramaturgy is the belief that light design (as well as dramaturgy in general) is neither an independent aspect of the work, nor something artificially applied to a work in the last moment. 

Light is always there with us even whether we consider it or not. Even more: light conditions our seeing. And if “to see” (especially in English) depicts both the ability to perceive as well as to understand, then maybe reflecting on it is worth embracing / considering already at the beginning stages of the creation process? But the real first step on the way to (and not only to) Visual Dramaturgy is in fact learning to see further, expanding our ability to look and to become aware of our own perception as well as recognizing the agency of the visual layer(s) of our performances.

Joanna Leśnierowska is a performer, independent choreographic curator and visual dramaturg.

Her practice lies on the border between visual and performing arts, exploring their intersection. In her creations, Joanna exercises possibilities of transmitting and translating the creative strategies and tools of contemporary painting and (post)photography into choreography and performance.

Site: lesnierowska.com

An artistic work tends to be a fiction, but a fiction rooted in personal experience and in a desire to affirm our individuality, our identity. However, self-affirmation does not appease a desire to belong, to form a group, or to take part in something that transcends our isolation.

We will develop a model of work that explores this tension, between individual and collective forces, not to solve it, but to make it functional and productive. An endless source of inspiration and energy, in which individual actions, even if intuitive and not premeditated, are the product of collective processes, and collective movements filter individual input. The participants will be invited to engage in their personal creativity, learn to distinguish it from the techniques they have acquired as students, and to clarify it in the context of collective work.

Rui Catalão is a dramatist and director. He makes scenic documentaries that are intensely choreographed and where he crosses chronicles of everyday life or memory and generational identity. He wrote several plays and screenplays. He is the author of monographies on the work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Tiago Rodrigues, Ana Borralho and João Galante.

Following a career as journalist, he started his artistic work with choreographer João Fiadeiro (1999-2003). He lived and worked in Romania, where he was a part of the local upcoming contemporary dance scene (2005-2009) and where he started a long sequence of autobiographical solo performances. In the last decade, he engaged in a different approach with self-referential material, by directing a new generation of both African-born and African-descendant performers, addressing their diaspora stories in highly formalized choreographic stage pieces.

As a journalist, he writes for the Portuguese edition of GQ magazine.

His most recent work is the libretto for an opera, composed by the Cape Verdean musician Dino d’Santiago, premiering in September, 2025.

The workshop workshop is designed in two parts, a technical one focusing on Klein Technique™, and a more creative one focusing on a proprietary method I call Gagets.

Klein Technique™ is a process through which the body is analyzed and understood to improve and develop movement potential. It is intellectual in that it utilizes anatomical realities. It is corporeal in that we strive for an internal knowing, an understanding that is integrated into the body. It is an education and re-education of movement that can underlie all movement styles, improvisation, athleticism, and overall body health in everyday movement. It is a technique that honors the individual. Klein Technique™ works at the level of the bones to align the bones using the deep postural support muscles: psoas, hamstrings, external rotators and pelvic floor. We do not work to exercise these muscles, but rather to awaken them, to become aware of their role in supporting and moving the body. We work to make the body elastic, responsive and open to choice and expression. Although the Klein Technique™ was developed by a dancer for dancers, it is a technique that works for everyone, from the virtuoso dancer to the non-dancer. When bones are aligned, we become connected, we become strong and powerful. The body becomes efficient and alive.

Gadget is a method of exploring the body through movement, a conceptual tool used to understand and generate new perspectives on the choreographic process. Gadget is a way to explore how the body can think beyond words, using movement and improvisation as the main medium. It is an approach where the body is seen as a tool for reflection, a place of exploration, where ideas take shape through movement.

The concept combines free exploration with predetermined structures, similar to the principles of real-time composition. This methodology, guides a creative process, and creates a framework for dancers to construct their own bodily thinking.

Eduard Gabia (b. 1979) is a performer, facilitator and contextualizer, active in contemporary dance, film and music. He has collaborated with choreographers such as Mihai Mihalcea, Thomas Lehmen, Charles Linehan, Michikazu Matsune and others. He has presented his own works – such as Fine tuning between me and the universe in a black box, 5 minutes of my life or My presence proof of time – at major international festivals: Tanzquartier Wien, ImpulsTanz Vienna, Tanz im August Berlin, DTW New York or Kaaitheater Brussels.

Together with Maria Baroncea, he initiated “Light Wednesdays”, a format of real-time performative encounters in which elaboration and presetting are suspended in favor of an active and exposed present. 

Eduard has also been invited to participate in projects curated by Boris Charmatz and has created performances for festivals such as Jardin d’Europe and Festival d’Avignon, constantly exploring the boundaries between presence, reality and fiction in dance

The workshop will focus on the exploration of deep listening and embodied resonance:of the self, the other, the group and to the environment. These are the choreographic foundations of my solo piece, the body symphonic.

Through proposals that awaken the body’s energetic landscape, we will bring to question the notions of physical experience, porosity and sharing in order to create meeting points between virtuosity and somatic attention, renewing the infinite pleasure and power of dancing.

We will then be working with compositional tools and fluid systems that integrate movement, spatial and rhythmic awareness which will help us focus on the relationships between precision, organicity and awareness of space.

We will move through continual transformations of tactile and instinctive identities that are triggered by the expanding and trans-forming energetic glow that ‘in-forms us’: opening up dialogue between internal and external functions of physicality.



Special attention will be placed on the dialogue between sound and movement, where the choreographic body becomes an extension of the musical gesture.

A dancer, performance artist, and musician from Lebanon, Charlie Khalil Prince is interested in the intersection of the body poetic and the body politic.

His transdisciplinary choreographic work has been presented in major festivals and theatres such as FTA – Festival TransAmériques, ImPulsTanz, Dansmakers Amsterdam, the Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, the Vancouver International Dance Festival, and the Beirut International Platform of Dance.

In 2023, he was artist-in-residence at the Villa Empain in Brussels, within the program run by the Boghossian Foundation. In 2025, he was selected as an Aerowaves artist with his solo work the body symphonic.

Website: charlie-prince.info 

In this workshop we will engage in the dynamic interplay between language and movement.

Using automatic writing as a starting point, participants will generate personal movement material and transform it into shared choreographic structures. These personal explorations will gradually evolve into an intimate collective choreographic score. 

Beniamin Boar is a dancer, performing artist and photographer born in Romania and based in Brussels, Belgium. His dance education began in Bucharest at Floria Capsali followed by a scholarship at Hamburg Ballet School-John Neumeier. 

In 2001 has joined Rosas dance company of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and has been dancing and contributed in Rosas creations between 2001-2005. He had numerous collaborations with Charleroi-Danses, Thierry De Mey, Johanne Saunier, Les Ballets C. de la B, Ultima Vez. Since 2013 has been working together with artists Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus in ongoing actions in different museums and venues. He has graduated the photography program at Brussels Rhok Academy and is part of Brussels KunstenFestivalDesArts photographers’ team.

Welcome to a workshop that’s less about rules (we will have some) and more about imagination. Think of it as a DIY lab for your weirdest, wildest, most wired version of yourself. We’ll dive into cyborg character building through autobiographical work, theoretical sparks (hello, Donna Haraway!), and movement research that ranges from hectic to heartfelt. I propose performance as sci-fi storytelling—where your lived experience meets speculative fiction on the dance floor.

Together, we’ll explore the domestic space, housework (hi, Silvia Federici, you’re the best!), labor, and identity – yours, mine, ours – through the lens of movement, collage, and subtle revolt. Your gestures hold your history. Let’s exaggerate them, transform them, glitch them in stop-motion. Maybe even with some horses. (Yes, you got it, I’m a horse girl.)

We’ll gather: texts, images, old family photos, maybe some dusty VHS footage – whatever builds your personal cyborg mythos. There might be some singing. Definitely dancing. No need to explain yourself in words – unless you want to. Writing will be another form of movement.

Creativity isn’t taught, but it is discovered within a collective. It’s uncovered, provoked, teased out with humor, curiosity, and definitely a game or two. There will be breaks. There will be laughing. There will be characters who look suspiciously like you, only shinier, peculiar, and ready for stage.

As I like to say: I don’t teach you Why. But we teach each other How to.

Let’s find our funny, fierce, fragile cyborgs and let them dance.

Special thanks to Simona Deaconescu, Valentina de Piante, Andreea Novac, Kim Ramiandrisoa, Georgia Măciuceanu, Diana Dragu, Sigal Zouk, Laura Aris, Rebecca Journo, and many other artists who have fed my curiosity and helped shape what I do today.

Laura Murariu (2000, Iași) is an emerging Romanian performer and choreographer, currently based in Belgium and Romania.

She studied at the Academy of Dance and Performance (CNDB) from 2019-2020, and between 2020-2022 she performed in various productions with The National Center of Dance Bucharest, as well as internationally, touring with Choreomaniacs by Simona Deaconescu.

She holds a BA in Choreography from the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, and is currently completing the three-year Training Cycle at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels (2022-2025).

With her graduation piece in Bucharest, Laura emerged into a dystopian world and experimented with themes such as female gender stereotypes, sci-fi and metamorphosis. Later on, at P.A.R.T.S., she has expanded her artistic approach through filmmaking and storytelling, creating her solo mockumentary „Do I look like Laura?”. Her work explores the relations and boundaries between private life and professional development with a touch of comedy.

The Body[Image] Method, continuously reimagined and updated by Romanian choreographer Simona Deaconescu, is a modular framework that translates choreographic research into creative process. Inspired by the concept developed by Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder, who saw the body as a sensory and intersubjective construct, this series of courses integrates feminist and transhumanist perspectives, such as Donna Haraway’s cyborg vision or Astrida Neimanis’ bodies of water.

In dialogue with the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially their concept of the body without organs—a body freed from functional hierarchies, open to becoming, affect, and difference—Simona proposes the exploration of a decentralized corporeality, engaged in continuous exchange with its somatic layers and the environments it moves through.

Working with text and spoken word plays a key role throughout the course—not merely as carriers of meaning, but as corporeal and sonic material. The sessions investigate how words are spoken, how they resonate through the body, and how they are projected into space. The voice becomes a choreographic instrument, and the relationship between sound, movement, and presence opens a space where meaning can be dislocated from the social constructs that fix it, making room for new interpretations filtered through the body.

Each session activates a different logic of perception and movement, working with notions such as virtuality and bodily actualization, the slow unfolding of bodies in space, residual energy, temporal uncertainty, and the permeability between interior and exterior. The workshop combines theoretical input, practical research, and choreographic composition, articulating individual reflection with collective exploration. Participants are encouraged to build their own working tools—corporeal, conceptual, and sonic—while developing short choreographic material where gesture is not merely an action, but a relational state, a way of thinking through movement. The module concludes with a series of short choreographic scores—developed individually or in groups—that synthesize the shared research journey.

Simona Deaconescu (b. 1987) is a choreographer and experimental filmmaker working across performance, installation, and cinema. Her artistic practice explores the crisis of perception in contemporary society and speculates on future scenarios of the body. She works with speed, duration, and temporal ambiguity to create tense physical compositions—often as a critical response to the world we live in. In her recent work, she focuses on the fragile synergy of human desire in relation to nature, history, and technology.

She studied choreography at the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest and film directing at the Media University of Romania. Her projects have been co-produced within international research and innovation networks such as Moving Digits, MODINA, biofriction, and Forecast. She was selected twice as an Aerowaves Artist (2018, 2022) and as a Moving Balkan Artist in 2025. In 2015, she received the CNDB Award for her contribution to contemporary dance in Romania and was appointed Associated Artist of the National Centre for Dance Bucharest in 2022.

In 2014, she founded Tangaj Collective, a non-profit production platform through which she collaborates with researchers and artists from around the world. Her collective creations include performances, installations, films, and video works, presented across Central and Eastern Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Madagascar.

Simona sees pedagogy as a natural extension of her artistic practice. She developed one of the most well-attended contemporary dance programs for non-professionals in Bucharest, with over 4,000 participants over the years. The program offers a space to explore the body through movement, open to all ages and backgrounds. In parallel, Simona leads workshops for dancers and choreographers focused on choreographic composition and interdisciplinary exploration, including dance film. Over time, she has been invited to lead workshops and give lectures in various international contexts, working with institutions and festivals across Europe and North America.

Find out more about her work: https://www.tangajdance.com/   

In this workshop, participants will explore, through technical exercises and improvisation, the kinetic tools useful for developing a three-dimensional and versatile body. We will work with variations in speed, dynamic layering, and fluid transitions between different bodily atmospheres. The focus will be on the body’s ability to organically shift from one state to another, maintaining a continuous flow of movement, as well as on the intentional management of energy—accumulation and release.

The workshop proposes an exploration of a body that grows within an expanded temporality, navigating through sequences of physical intensity, relaxation, and sustained mental focus. We will explore the body as a complex network, capable of acting and processing information simultaneously on multiple levels. Through a series of successive tasks, we will construct movement scores that will facilitate the discovery of the participants’ physical and expressive potential.

Simona Dabija is a performer and choreographer whose practice focuses on creating hybrid bodies where mechanical and organic movement coexist. Simona is interested in challenging perceptions of the human form, by deconstructing the movement through a combination of angled shapes and fluid transitions.

As a performer, Simona’s practice is enriched by her collaborations with diverse artists and disciplines. She is a core member of Tangaj Collective, contributing to six dance productions, two performative installations, and a short dance film, reflecting her dedication to exploring movement and storytelling.

In 2018, Simona co-founded the Delazero Association, an NGO uniting young artists in the performing arts. Simona holds a BA and MA degree in Choreography from the National University of Theatre and Cinematography in Bucharest. In 2024, she premiered her first solo piece, BPM – Beats per Millennium, in the frame of the Iridescent Festival. In the same year, she co-created the performative installation Original Spaces / Legalized Gestures, together with Ioana Marchidan, at /SAC Malmaison, addressing themes such as succession, personal inheritance, and the body as an archive.

Her contributions to the Romanian contemporary dance scene were recognized in 2020 with the National Center for Dance Award.

During the sessions, I propose to revisit through a selection of photographic and videographic archival materials fragments of the history of modern dance in Romania, starting with the period of the first modern dance studios and continuing with the recovery of artistic biographies of dancers, choreographers and modern dance companies that were active in Romania in the 20th century. The research projects on the history of modern dance in Romania, initiated by the National Dance Center Bucharest in the last 20 years, have involved different forms of reenactment, which we will analyze under their theoretical and performative aspects. 

 Taking as a model the archival organization and the practices of valorization of documents from the CNDB Archive, through this course I propose an alternative vision of reading and awareness of the potential of dance archives, both for the reactivation of forgotten cultural histories, such as, in particular, the Romanian dance, and for the constitution of personal archives, by offering a kit of methods and artistic practices of archiving dance and performance works. 

𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐂𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐮 has a degree in cultural anthropology and is currently a researcher and coordinator of the Media Library and Archives of the National Dance Center Bucharest.

In recent years she has dedicated her time to the recovery of dance and performance documents, researching in both private and institutional archives, with the aim of reactivating the history of dance and performance through archiving practices that reconfigure their potential for contemporary projects: performative reenactments (Reenacting Lizica Codreanu, Tribute to Iris Barbura, Invisible Bodies and Stories), dance and performance exhibitions (Dance Archives: Open for (Re)Invent(ory)!, Time Dance Connection, Bucharest in Action. 1925- 2015), editorial projects (including coord. Radical Bodies in contemporary performance by Mihaela Michailov; coord translation of the book Exhausting Dance. Performance and the politics of movement by  André Lepecki) and performative readings (Books on the Dancefloor, Performative Research Oracle).

The most recent research was dedicated to the choreographer Miriam Răducanu, whom the CNDB has celebrated through an extensive project that reactivated her choreographic activity. The project included an exhibition at the Residence9 (Miriam Răducanu – an exhibition-archive with senZ, 2024), a film (Miriam Răducanu – Rigoare and senZ, directed by Alexandra Gulea, 2024) and a catalogue which presented the artistic career of the choreographer over a period of half a century and brought together for the first time photographic and videographic documents, which have been recovered from public archives in Romania, as well as from the private archives of those who have collaborated with Miriam Răducanu from the 1960s to the present day, such as Gigi Căciuleanu, Raluca Ianegic, Liana Tugearu or Ioan Tugearu, and from the choreographer’s personal archive.

A recurring practice of composition for me is that of mapping. In addition to the practical role of structuring and documenting my creative or methodological process, maps (in the form of diagrams, timelines, scores – sheet music – forms of notation of performative exercises, drawings, interactive scenography) have the role of giving a form and visibility to relationships, to create a representation of my mind map, to create connection to a larger plan.

Mădălina Dan is a choreographer and performer, active on international stages, but also very present and involved in the local choreographic context, in which she generously invests time, energy and knowledge. She creates content and methodologies that she shares in contexts that become communication spaces, being an explorer and connector between people, collectives and ideasShe is a graduate of the “Floria Capsali” Choreography High School in Bucharest and the National University of Theater and Cinematography in Bucharest – Choreography section; also at UNATC he also completed a master’s degree in dramatic writing. Between 1998 and 2003, she was a member of the “Oleg Danovski” dance company from Constanta. Between 2014-2016, he studied in Berlin at the HZ (Hochschulübergreifende Zentrum Tanz Berlin) in the master’s program SoDA (Solo/Dance/Authorship). In 2015, she received the CNDB Award, and in 2016 she was an Associate Artist of The National Center for Dance Bucharest.

She is involved in the mentoring program within the Academy of Dance and Performance, an intensive education and training program in contemporary dance, held at The National Center for Dance Bucharest.  Her works have been presented at Springdance Festival Utrecht, Balkan Dance Platform – Novi Sad, eXplore Dance Festival – Bucharest, Temps d’Images – Cluj, SouthBank Center & Chisenhale Dance Space – London, Fabrik Potsdam, Hebbel am Uffer – Berlin, TanzFabrik- Berlin, Tanzquartier Wien, Dance Theater Workshop – New York, Firkin Crane-Cork, Alta Theater – Prague, Art Stations Foundation – Poznan, Sophien Saale – Berlin, FFT Düsseldorf, Impulse Festival- Mulheim, Lyon Dance Biennale, Schauschpiel Leipzig, Hellerau – Dresden, Bozar – Brussels, Sarralves Museum of Contemporary Art – Porto, etc.

Funmi Adewole Elliott’s creative practice explores performance as a space for investigation, based on her background in African dance-drama and physical theatre, genres that fuse dance and movement with narrative.  

In this workshop we will look into movement, embodied creativity, interaction, and verbal and non-verbal storytelling begin with the exploration of core movement principles found in many African dance styles: a low centre of gravity, dynamic spine engagement, generation of vibrations, rotations, and undulations throughout the body and the exploration of our everyday experiences of social dancing and storytelling. 

Funmi Adewole Elliott is a performer, dramaturg, and researcher. She began her career as a media practitioner in Nigeria before relocating to England in 1994, where she transitioned into the world of performance. Over the course of a decade, she toured with companies specializing in African dance-drama, physical theatre, and visual theatre.

Her performance credits include work with Ritual Arts, Horse and Bamboo Mask and Puppetry Company, Artistes-in-Exile, Adzido Pan-African Dance Ensemble, Mushango African Dance and Music Company, and The Cholmondeleys, a contemporary dance company.

She taught for eight years in the Dance programme at De Montfort University, England. Her research interests include dance as a profession and Black choreographers in Britain. As a dramaturg, she works primarily with artists whose practices are interdisciplinary or cross-cultural. Funmi creates movement-based theatre and is currently presenting her solo work, The Blind Side (2022). She is also the founder of FAE Studios.

Site: funmiadewoleelliott.com

Performing arts, and dance in particular, like life itself, is durably ephemeral. The continual appearance and disappearance of movements, gestures, breaths, looks… contribute to the “immaterial” or “dematerialized” quality of this art form, otherwise deeply rooted in the sensory and in physical presence. The experience of a performance is always unique and cannot be repeated. It is there, then it disappears, and those who witnessed it can eventually tell stories about it. These specific quality conditions determines its fragility and give it a great strength.

With a particular interest in the processes in which a thought, a gesture, a body appears and disappears (in the context of a theatrical performance, in particular) and how this experience works on collective and personal memory, we will explore the relationship between the body and the imagination/imaginary. We will observe the processes in which specific “states” of the body and mind influence the imagination and create narratives and stories. We will also observe the role of the spectator in these processes.

During the workshop, which will be organized as a laboratory, through physical practices and a specific use of language and text, we will seek to access, reach and define different forms of the “invisible” or what is “unknown” or “not represented” but shareable. 

By experimenting with movement under specific physical and sensory conditions or by employing certain somatic practices, we will explore the body as a landscape, an ecosystem, a place that is both physical and imagined, where the visible and the invisible meet.

Through her choreographic and theatrical work as well as her performances, installations, texts and videos, Ivana Müller explores poetics of language, rethinks the notion of body, movement, voices and their forms of representations, revisits the place of imagination and the imaginary, and questions the idea of ‘participation.

In her experimental, radical and formally innovative work, she often explores the idea of social choreography, staging communities or groups reflecting on the relationship with surroundings and environments they live in. The notion of collective and collaboration is equally important in the way Ivana Müller sees the artistic practice itself, often working in collaboration with artists, theorists, writers, gardeners… applying the principles of dialogue, conversation, and other forms of collective writing in the creation of the work. 

The relationship to voice and language has been another fundamental interest in I.M’s work. Taking the formal aspects of language, its syntax and its rules, as choreographic principles she developed various works questioning the notion of convention and different ways of embodying it. 

Although she creates in a variety of media, theater is the primary frame in which she develops and presents her work. Over the past 20 years she created  a great number of works witch have been produced and presented in festivals and theaters in Europe, United States, Brazil and Asia. Her work is also shown in the context of visual arts, including in visual arts contexts such as the 2015 Venice Biennale (official exhibition, Central Pavilion), Garage Museum Of Contemporary Art Moscow, Hayward Gallery/Southbank Center London, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, National Museum of Singapore, Zachęta – National Gallery, Warsaw, Centro Cultural Kirchner Buenos Aires, Lafayette Anticipations Paris etc.

As part of her work, Ivana Müller organizes artistic and discursive encounters as well as collaborative practices. She also teaches frequently, notably at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, the University Paris 8, the University of the Arts in Zürich, SODA- HZT – University of the Arts Berlin, P.A.R.T.S. Brussels, Exerce, ICI-CCN in Montpellier, DAS Theater -Amsterdam etc.

Ivana Müller was born in Zagreb and grew up in Croatia and Amsterdam.  She lives in Paris and works internationally.

Site:  ivanamuller.com 

The focuses will be to bring our perception channels to a state of immediacy and to let our motor system become maximally reactive.

This happens through applying explorative anatomical research as well as opening improvisational structures and the negotiation between information from within and around the bodies.

We aim to develop a mobile and flexible body that has the possibility to unfold in many ways. At the same time we will remain attentive to our perception and to the body’s performative potential in each moment.

Through a series of guided improvisations, we are training our ability to unite the mental, the physical and the emotional; being and doing; choreography and presence.

Sigal Zouk is a dancer/artist working in Berlin since 1997.

She received her training at the Emek Izrael Dance School and joined the Bat-Sheva Ensemble from 1994-96. After moving to Berlin and working with artists such as Luc Dunberry and Juan Cruz Dias de Esanola, she became a member of Sasha Waltz and Guests from 1999-2004. In 2005, she began her collaboration with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods; first as a dancer and then as choreographic advisor/outside eye for the work of Stuart and Phillip Gehmacher as well as Stuart’s following works. In 2007, she began her long-time collaboration with Laurent Chetouane in which she created 10 dance and theatre works for the stage. 

During the past few years, she has begun to develop her teaching practice where she guides professional dancers to locate their feeling body to a presence that has the potential to navigate in and through any situation. 

She teaches in several European dance departments and institutions including Tanzfabrik Berlin, HZT University Center for Dance Berlin, ZZT Hochschule für Music und dance Köln, DDSKS Copenhagen, DOCH Uni Art Stokholm, Cullberg Ballet Stokholm, Carte Blanche dance company Bergen, CNDB Bukarest, Suzanne Dellal Center Tel- Aviv, Ponderosa TanzLand, Hollins University (Virginia/ USA), Plovdiv summer program Bulgaria, and many more.

Zouk accompanies artists and choreographers such as Meg Stuart, Jared Gradinger/Angelä-a Schubot, Antje Shupp, The progressiv wave, Tamara Rettenmund, Mor Demer, Shannon Conney and Moritz Majce on their artistic journey, helping them to work with their limitations and their potentiality. 

She was awarded the best performer in Dortmund Festival 2010 as well as dancer of the year from Tanz Magazine 2011.

In this workshop we practice to be in resonance with what we do, what we are, what we move and sense in the context of what is around us.

Everything happens in relationship to this context, and is influencing and influenced by it.

This practice demands a tuning of awareness also when we move free from resonance, without meaningfulness, without affecting or being affected – which happens very quickly and often, when we stick to our patterns and don’t pay attention.

Once we are in resonance, we become co-creators of the space and the moment we share, and feel an agency and responsibility that makes our dance matter, in every moment.

Practicing dance like this makes it a powerful response to the challenges of our times and a resource for change, resilience and empowerment – for ourselves, the groups and the non-human life we co-exist in and with.

Jan Burkhardt is a dancer/choreographer, Laban-Bartenieff Movement Analyst, musician and musician, physiotherapist and professor.

The focus of his artistic and pedagogic work is the resonance between somatic exploration and its communication into space, investigating  the flows of consciousness through the body, and its rules and expressions in space and time. Besides collaborating internationally in the independent art field, Jan is regular guest lecturer in several european university dance programs and is professor for contemporary dance in artistic context at HfMT Cologne.

At the core of my choreographic practice lies a fascination with post-cinematic dynamics and the digital production and manipulation of images. This fascination has shaped Visible Thinking Body (VTB), the movement practice I have developed since 2013 through the creation processes of my dance performances.

VTB is a dynamic framework that evolves with each project, generating new tools to address specific conceptual questions. These tools are methods for navigating and thinking through the moving body, ultimately creating dances that are performed. Central to this practice is the exploration of how thought—ranging from memory, decision-making, and cognitive activation to impulse, intuition, and imagination—transforms into action, and how this transformation generates dance.

VTB is structured around two primary lines of focus:

Search and Find: this approach treats the body as an archive of movement artefacts, excavating and recontextualising stored physical memories.

Navigate and Arrive: a more imaginative practice, this employs multiple navigation systems to stimulate exploration and world-making through dance, creating new alignments of kinetic manifestations. 

Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer living and working in Berlin since 2008. His work has been presented all over Europe and he has led workshops and educational activities at various institutions around the world.

His dance practice can be seen as a relentless search through embodied and digitized archives in order to place a critical lens on what has been archived, to rescue what was supposedly lost, and to reinvent what has not been documented. The accumulation of history serves as an old map that becomes a starting point towards revealing a new image of dance. Her performances provoke intense experiences that fracture accepted ideas and embrace the complexities of our times.

Site: sergiumatis.com

This workshop invites dancers, performers, and movement-based practitioners to engage in an interdisciplinary exploration of natural action, illusion, and embodiment. At its core lies the interplay between philosophical inquiry and somatic experimentation, asking how movement can become a vessel for critical thought—and how ideas can be rendered physically, theatrically, and performatively.

We will read and interpret key philosophical texts that examine perception, nature, power, and the body, weaving them into practice through movement scores and performative improvisations.

Drawing inspiration from the history of nature documentaries, the staged rituals of early magic shows, and the performative diagnoses of hysteria in the 19th century, participants will reimagine these historical formats as choreographic devices. These sources, both troubling and rich with theatricality, offer lenses through which to examine the politics of representation, the spectacle of the body, and the entangled relationship between truth, fiction, and performance.

Structured as an embodied seminar, the workshop will alternate between reading sessions, group discussion, and physical experimentation. Participants will work individually and collaboratively, translating ideas into action and actions into forms of meaning-making. Rather than aiming for finished pieces, the emphasis will be on processes of transformation, interpretation, and critique.

We will ask: How does a performer ‘read’ an image, a gesture, a metaphor? What does it mean to perform illusion or to mimic natural behavior? How can outdated or problematic historical forms be reactivated critically through dance and performance today?

The workshop methodology emphasizes embodied research, speculative performance, and collective inquiry. Participants are encouraged to bring their own questions and areas of interest as we collectively build a shared language between thought and action.

Practical considerations:

• bring a notebook and pen of your preference
• wear comfortable clothes and sport shoes – depending on the weather we might take walks outside too
• press a plant you like some time in advance

Larisa Crunțeanu’s practice as performer, video artist, and sound collector flows between reality to fiction, engaging in an open-ended conversation with the viewer. She studied Journalism (BA) and Photography and Dynamic Image (MA), and in 2021 she successfully defended her PhD thesis at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Larisa Crunţeanu’s works create contexts in which facts and memories are reactivated, fostering collective engagement and the emergence of new practices. Many of her projects reflect on the notion of collaboration and the ideas behind objects and narratives.

Her works have been shown in major institutions and biennales, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Biennale Matter of Art in Prague, Art Encounters Biennale in Timișoara, Warsaw Biennale, SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, and Museu de Arte Brasileira (MAB FAAP) in São Paulo. In 2023, Larisa Crunțeanu published her first book, Protocols of Singularity, with Dispozitiv Books.
website: larisacrunteanu.com

In June 2022, the Choreographic Devices conference at the ICA-Institute of Contemporary Arts in London opened a discussion about how choreography is no longer just the art of ‘making’ dances. The term is now being used to “investigate and animate the intersecting spatial, corporeal, affective and informational dimensions that intersect with each other and the world”.

So where does a choreographic practice stand today? It requires a holistic approach that recognizes multiple histories, practices and agency. The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to critical texts and practices that intersect with dance, movement, theater, performance and visual arts and that include a decolonial, post-materialist and post-anthropocentric thinking.

The workshop is structured as a forum, texts will be discussed and translated into movement, sessions will seek to encourage an in-depth dialog and investigation of individual and collective work in the contemporary context of performance practices and performance studies, focusing on the aesthetics and politics of ‘action’ in the current eco-socio-political context.

Irina Botea Bucan adopts a symbiotic artist-teacher-researcher methodology that consciously questions dominant socio-political ideas and places human and non-human agency at the centre as a means of meaning-making.

Choosing to work in diverse contexts such as: academic institutions, alternative galleries, museums, art biennials, film festivals and community centres; she currently focuses on decentralising cultural discourses and the possibility of sustaining a creative differentiation that exists outside a dominant system of hegemonic values and critiques. Performance, reenactment, simulated auditions, elements of direct cinema and cinéma vérité are combined in her artistic approach. The works are developed through a collaborative process in which the performers are participants in the process, while the role of the director fluidly shifts from an observational to a reflective, participatory and performative mode. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at Goldsmiths University of London, and teaches at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Solo and group exhibitions include: Venice Biennale 55, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New Museum, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Jeu de Paume National Gallery, Paris; Kunsthalle Winterthur, Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y León, Spain, Gwangju Biennale 2010, U-Turn Quadriennial, Copenhagen; 51st Venice Biennale; Prague Biennale; Kunstforum, Vienna; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Argos Art and Media Centre, Brussels; MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), Bucharest; Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland, Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowki Castle, Warsaw. Festivals: Artefact Festival, Leuven, Rotterdam Film Festival, Impakt Panorama, Utrecht; Polis Adriatic Europe Festival; Awards: Outstanding Artist Award "Visual Artist Prize 3Arts", Silver Award for Impakt Film, International Residency at Recollets, Cite des Arts, Paris, Constantin Brancusi etc.

During the CoTeaching Week, four pedagogues — Gisela Müller, Rok Vevar, Gregor Kamnikar, and Dejan Srhoj — will propose to explore different procedural aspects of dance making (composition, construction, performance, and expression), focusing on diverse approaches rooted in postmodern dance from the 1960s. This tradition emphasizes the egalitarian use of various choreographic tools. The sessions will include practical, theoretical, and historical material, along with lectures, assignments, discussions, and hands-on work. Audio-visual materials will also be provided for viewing and discussion.

The CoTeaching is an educational format in which pedagogues co-lead the same dance training or workshop. The name of the format itself suggests a cohabitation of ideas, teaching methods, and perspectives on contemporary dance. The workshop opens the educational process by fostering a safe teaching and learning environment where the transfer of knowledge—as well as dance and theoretical practice — takes place in a welcoming and inclusive manner. Both dance pedagogues and theorists co-teach to support this integration. It requires participants to remain open to new propositions, to the possibility of mistakes, and to the sharing of knowledge.

The format was developed by members of the Noman Dance Academy network and has been in practice since 2012, being implemented in Slovenia, Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Italy.

More about CoTeaching: researchcatalogue.net

Gisela Müller studied contemporary dance in Paris, Amsterdam (SNDO), and New York. She was a member of various dance companies and founded The Move Company in 1992. Since 2004, she has been the Artistic and Pedagogical Director of Tanzfabrik Berlin Schule and served as a board member from 2004 to 2024. From 2006 to 2010, she was a guest professor responsible for developing and managing the BA program at HZT/Berlin. Since 2012, she has been an active member of the Eastern European network Nomad Dance Academy. Since 2017, she has collaborated with the musicians Gebrüder Teichmann, with whom she was an Artist in Residence in 2021/2022 as part of the EU project Life Long Burning.

Rok Vevar (1973) is a dance historian, archivist, curator, and publicist based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he founded The Slovenian Temporary Dance Archives in 2012. He is a member of Nomad Dance Academy, the Balkan contemporary dance network, and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia. He is also co-curator of CoFestival, an international festival of contemporary dance, and a dance community activist and advocate in Ljubljana. He edited the book Day, Night + Man = Rhythm: An Anthology of Contemporary Slovene Journalism 1918–1960 (2018), for which he selected materials and wrote accompanying texts, and authored Ksenija, Xenia: The London Dance Years of Ksenija Hribar 1960–1978 (2020). In 2019, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award, and in 2020, the Vladimir Kralj Award for his achievements in theatre criticism and theatre studies (2018–2019).

DISCOllective artistically and playfully explores what else dance, choreography, improvisation, and practice can be through the roles of dancer, choreographer, performer, clown, teacher, writer, producer, citizen, and more. The findings of its artistic research are shared in formats such as improvisation, practice, performance, dance, play, game, event, choreography, installation, lecture, workshop, class, publication, (clown) act, video, and score, among others.

Dejan Srhoj is a dancer developing a long-term project called Composing Differences, which explores choreographic principles related to community through improvisation, sharing of practices, and education. The project includes Mapping the City, in which Dejan invites people to observe their city as a choreographic performance, and Evening of Dance Solos, in which he invites choreographers and musicians to create short solos for him that are then woven into a full evening performance. Dejan is a co-founder of the Nomad Dance Academy network, CoFestival (an international contemporary dance festival), and Fičo Balet. He is completing an MA in New Performative Practices at SKH in Stockholm.

Renowned for her powerful transformation of African ancestral dances into contemporary and urban forms, Alesandra Seutin invites dance students in Romania to an immersive week of movement, voice, and storytelling.

This workshop is an invitation to explore identity, voice, and personal narratives through dance, word, and song. Moving beyond technique, participants will connect deeply to their own stories, using the body as both instrument and archive.

Expect to move, vocalise, write, and transform — breaking through conventional frames to embody truth and claim your space as an artist.

Alesandra’s practice encourages participants to embrace their individuality while entering into dialogue with others. The week will culminate in an informal sharing, celebrating the voices, stories, and bodies that have shaped the journey.

This workshop is movement lived, voice unleashed, and power reclaimed.

Alesandra Seutin is an award-winning multidisciplinary performance artist, choreographer, and director whose work blends movement, theatre, music, and media. She trained at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Middlesex University in London, later studying the Acogny technique in Senegal under Germaine Acogny. She is now a worldwide ambassador and teacher of the technique.

In 2007, she founded her company, Alesandra Seutin (formerly Vocab Dance), which has developed a diverse repertoire of over eleven productions and earned a reputation for high-quality, politically engaged performance. Her work explores identity, power, and place through dance, song, and storytelling.

From 2019 to 2021, she was Guest Artistic Director of the UK’s National Youth Dance Company, and from 2020 to 2024, Co-Artistic Director of Ecole des Sables in Senegal. She has received more than 20 choreographic commissions, including from Sadler’s Wells, KVS, Phoenix Dance Theatre, Merce Cunningham Company, and Channel 4.

Alesandra is a face of KVS in Brussels and has been an Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells since March 2024. In 2023, she was awarded the Golden Afro Artistic Award for Dance & Choreography.

This workshop explores listening as an expanded, embodied, and relational practice that shapes movement, perception, and space. By examining sound not merely as acoustic signal but as vibratory, political, ecological, and material force, participants engage with sonic choreographies that move beyond human-centered frameworks.

Integrating deep listening, resonance, improvisation, and technological experimentation, the course bridges sound and movement through exercises on relational attunement, ecological rhythms, material interactions, and hidden frequencies. Participants are invited to experience how sound destabilises hierarchies, generates collective dynamics, and transforms the body into a resonant site of sonic exploration— ultimately developing new choreographic approaches rooted in auditory attention, vibrational presence, and expanded sensory awareness. 

The workshop offers a range of texts that explore sound, listening, and vibration from different perspectives — artistic, political, philosophical, and ecological – the bibliography here. Each week, we will focus on a few selected texts together, through discussion or short excerpts. These will guide listening exercises, improvisations, and reflective practices. The rest of the bibliography is available as optional supporting material — a resource to explore during or after the course, depending on your curiosity and interest. Our main focus is not theoretical knowledge, but developing a personal and embodied relationship with sound through listening, movement, and shared exploration.

Simina Oprescu (b. 1993) is a Romanian composer and sound artist working with electroacoustic composition, spatial sound, and psychoacoustics. Her practice explores sound as both material and affect — shaping perception, attention, and relation. Drawing from synthetic sources and environmental recordings, she creates intimate sonic spaces that move between scientific inquiry and poetic resonance.

Her works have been presented at Museum Tinguely, EVA International, Märkisches Museum, Suprainfinit Gallery, and ORF musikprotokoll, among others, and released by the Swiss label Hallow Ground. A SHAPE+ artist in 2020, her compositions have been featured in The Wire, The Quietus, and Positionen. Her research-led approach bridges technical experimentation with listening as a mode of care, perception, and transformation.

Site:siminaoprescu.net

I am fascinated by movement in its smallest expressions. By exploring the interstices, movement seems capable of making the imperceptible visible and tangible. I link this taste for micro-movement with the desire to invite the viewer inside the lived body. I relate to the principle stated by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, that imagination increases the values of reality. I believe in the power of imagination to transform the body and movement. For me, research and choreographic writing become a space for play between presence, thought, emotion and gesture, where we explore everything that constructs a state of being in the body. Imagination, the body and sound are the raw materials with which I am gradually seeking to develop a choreographic language. I am particularly interested in the tension between the body as object and the lived body in the creation of a gesture. Oscillating between figuration and abstraction, I wonder how movement communicates a sensation.

One of the focuses of this research work questions the relationship between the imagination, the body and movement: how can we use the imagination to feed movement and presence? We seek to make an invisible world visible, to communicate through movement what we perceive internally. How can we charge a movement with intention? How can we bring movement out of a state, a sensation? This work approaches movement as a tool of translation that we seek to hone. This practice is nourished by the creative work carried out within the La pieuvre company. The company supports an artistic approach committed to the question of the representation of female identity, which it has explored in particular in the creations L’Épouse, La Ménagère and Portrait.

 The environment is also a recurring source of inspiration in her research and creative work. The projects Whales, Les amours de la pieuvre and Canicular share the common feature of being inspired by animals or insects, which they use as a starting point for choreography and sound. These creations carry within them a desire to reveal and draw attention to these fascinating curiosities from the environment and, in this case, the animal world. These different inspirations feed into a dance and an imagination based on processes of metamorphosis and hybridisation, between human and animal, between puppet, cyborg and humanoid.

Rebecca Journo studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, where she obtained a BA in contemporary dance in 2015. Alongside her work as a performer, she founded her company La Pieuvre in collaboration with Véronique Lemonnier in 2018. Accompanied by sound designer Mathieu Bonnafous, their artistic approach lies at the intersection of different mediums, including dance, performance, music, and photography. 

With La Pieuvre, Rebecca Journo created two solo pieces that form a diptych, L’Épouse (2018) and La Ménagère (2019), based on clichéd representations of women. At the same time, she is working on a trio, Whales (2020), which is entirely inspired by whale songs. Inspired by Véronique Lemonnier’s photographic work on self-portraits, she has created a quartet, Portrait (2022), which takes a very concrete look at the link between movement and photography. In 2024, she created canicular, a performance based on the song of cicadas, in collaboration with sound artist Diane Barbé, commissioned by the Festival d’Avignon and the SACD as part of ‘Vive le sujet Tentatives!’. Les amours de la pieuvre (2024) is the latest collective creation by the company la pieuvre, inspired by the erotic-horrific symbolism of the animal in Japan. The project highlights sound gestures and pushes even further the inextricable link between sound and choreographic composition around which the collaboration between Rebecca Journo and Mathieu Bonnafous has been built. This same work continues with the creation Bruitage (2025), which focuses on the technicality and craftsmanship of sound effects in cinema, highlighting the process of synchresis between sound and image, in this case between sound and gesture.

The course that I propose for the Academy of Dance and Performance revolves around questions related to movement and gesture, organized around the idea of exhibition and collection.

More specifically, the relationship of the body with history and collective memory, and the ways in which this memory can be transmitted between generations.

Manuel Pelmuș lives and works in Oslo. An artist with a background in choreography and dance, Pelmuș investigates the idea of living presence in exhibition contexts, exploring the relationship between the human body, memory and the construction of history. 

He was awarded the Berlin Art Prize in 2012 in the performing arts category and represented Romania at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 with a project conceived in collaboration with Alexandra Pirici. His works have been shown in numerous international museums and biennials, such as Palais de Tokyo, MUNCH, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou Paris, Para Site Hong Kong, Kunsthalle Vienna, Kiev Biennale, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, etc. He was a research fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, and is currently an associate professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Oslo and vice rector for art research at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo (KHiO).