Elisa Frasson

When a dance artist can no longer create physical movement, one option is to start again by sewing fabric. The Noa Eshkol. No Time to Dance exhibition at the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin offered important insights into what creation can be.

In times of shift towards authoritarianism, militarisation, and planned major funding cuts, Berlin festival Tanz im August, founded just before the Wall came down, is preserving its original spirit to provide an open space for an international and local dialogue.

In the hot month of July, the 2024 Biennale Danza festival edition entitled ‘We Humans’ sought to give space to human beings’ need to communicate through movement. 

While Italy's football team lost resoundingly, but not unexpectedly, against Switzerland, renowned Berlin-based choreographer Constanza Macras brought an engaging and emotional show back to the stage of the Volksbühne. 

With Overture by Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau and Angel's Atlas by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, the Staatsballett Berlin and its intendant Christian Spuck present an evening that reconfirms how dance is able to give something back to the world.

Approximate Sonata 2016 (1996, 2016), One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000), and Blake Works I (2016) are the pieces by star choreographer William Forsythe that were premiered by Staatsballett Berlin. 

Attending Tanztage Berlin is like diving into a warm, enveloping magma of varied dance vocabulary, where the fluidity of the aesthetic codes presented goes hand in hand with tackling urgent current political themes. 

The 35th edition of Tanz im August (TiA) marks Ricardo Carmona’s first as artistic director. Carmona is a former dance and performance curator for Hebbel Am Ufer, presenting a programme that reconsiders the conceptual and physical versatility of contemporary choreographic gesture through the search for new narratives, facing the current climate, and political urgency.