What touches people? Where can points of contact be used, increased, made recognizable – or even connected?
Dear people, visitors, colleagues and friends who would like to share artistic practices of connection, solidarity and touch: Come along and spend a tactful evening with us!
Together with other colleagues, Shared Leadership in Dance (SLiD) invites you to the Studio Alte Post on July 11, 2025 for an evening in which practices of touch will be shared and passed on. In the presence of Elsa Artmann, Jenny Beyer, Verena Brakonier, Michael Hirsch, Anne Kersting, Sarah Lasaki, Sibylle Peters, Antje Pfundtner in Gesellschaft (APiG), Mable Preach, Liz Rech, René*e Reith and Ursina Tossi, the evening will move between tentative thinking and the search for solidary connections and alliances in contemporary dance.
Along various performative contributions, conversations and encounters, we would like to create space for touch and also share time, evening sun and snacks with you.
WHEN? Friday, July 11, 2025, 5:00 pm (until approx. 10:00 pm)
WHERE? Studio Alte Post, Kaltenkirchener Straße 1, 22769 Hamburg
ACCESS: If you have any questions about accessibility, please contact us: slid@posteo.de
REGISTRATION: The event is free of charge. However, we ask you to register in advance at: slid@posteo.de
We look forward to the many touching approaches of this evening and of course to seeing you!
Kind regards
Jenny Beyer, Antje Pfundtner in Gesellschaft (APiG), Ursina Tossi
The contributions and co-hosts of this evening:
ELSA ARTMANN – TOO STRONG FOR TOO LONG: Based on the fictional character “Freelance Lover” and in the form of an embrace, a love song and a rant, Elsa deals with collegial tenderness as a relationship utopia.
VERENA BRAKONIER – MY DANCE AREA, YOUR DANCE AREA: Who dances with whom? Who is allowed to take up how much space? Inspired by Dirty Dancing as a class-critical musical film, Verena gives a physical input on space, touch and classism. Because classism often works through the body, through shame, invisibility, volume, self-worth and appearance, Verena invites us to understand our own space and touch as something political: How have we learned to make contact, to take space, to avoid? And when does touch begin?
MICHAEL HIRSCH – TOUCH AND FRIENDSHIP: (PRACTICE) PERMEABILITY: How can we make ourselves more permeable? How to ask for touch and closeness? How to give it, but also: How to (accept) it? In a keynote speech, Michael Hirsch outlines practices and spaces for sociability and friendships in everyday life that can override bourgeois individualism here and there and enable us to open up to one another and become more permeable.
SARAH LASAKI – THE BODY AS INSTRUMENT: As a long-time dancer and member of “STOMP”, Sarah combines movement with rhythm, so that both run simultaneously. Sarah invites you to find out how the body sounds as an instrument and how I move in space with it. Whether alone or in small groups, we train the ear and the community.
SIBYLLE PETERS – TOUCHING YOU: On this evening, Sibylle Peters will share an excerpt from a working process: Sibylle is currently working on a solo lecture performance, in which she will revisit parts of the group performance “Touching You” from 2024.
MABLE PREACH – TOUCH AS RESET: Mable Preach likes to combine different points of contact between several stylistic elements and is oriented towards Afrofuturism. In her artistic impulse for this evening, she proposes touch as a language of the future and “uses” Afrofuturism as a collective residue that does not erase memory, but transforms it into connection.
LIZ RECH – THE FRAGILE SKIN OF THE WORLD: As part of STAY IN TOUCH, Liz Rech shares a physical practice that deals with questions of political tactility. What is the relationship between touch and reality – how do we touch “the fragile skin of the world” (J. – L. Nancy)?
RENÉ*E REITH – COMMUNICATE: What can I see that you don’t know? What do I know that you can’t see? Through joint configurations, we create intersensory encounters in which touch becomes an aesthetic means of communication.
SLiD is a commitment to collaboration and to sharing knowledge, resources, and labor in the field of dance. It was initiated by the three choreographers Jenny Beyer, Antje Pfundtner in Gesellschaft (APiG), Ursina Tossi and their teams.
SLiD is funded by the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Kultur und Medien.
Photo from the book “99 Fears” by Nedko Solakov.
Text in the picture: A sharing-all-of-our-fears line of losers is moving slowly. The leader is desperately waiting for another participant to touch his right hand and download the enormous fears-coming-from-everybody (s) burden. So far, no sign of a potential NEW leader.
Photos
Photos: Julie Nagel