A Tour Through Tanztage Berlin for Sara Lanner

Tanztage Berlin (www.tanztage.de) is a yearly 10 days festival that presents the new and upcoming artists based in Berlin, taking place at theatre Sophiensaele. With A Tour through Tanztage Berlin Uferstudios Berlin offers the Wild Card participant the possibility to visit all of the Tanztage performances in a small group of Berlin based choreographers, afterwards talking about the work seen and sharing thoughts on artistic and curational intents and ideas. Alongside this trajectory the participant can have access to a studio for several hours per day if requested and agreed in advance.

As host of this Wild Card, Uferstudios Berlin cover
- Costs of European travel to Berlin
- EUR 50,- per diems and free accommodation
- Tickets to the performances of Tanztage Berlin
- Access to several hours of studio space

The application deadline for this Wild Card slot was 31 October 2014, danceWEB selected the Austrian dancer and choreographer Sara Lanner for this slot.
Download her experience report in the right column.

Detailed information:
A Tour Through Tanztage Berlin

In these global times when artists travel around working with different international partners and an art scene which seems to have more and more a global context and outreach, the importance of the locality in/of the work and practice of the artist becomes an interesting question. Especially for young and starting artists just from school who are in the process of developing their artistic practice. How is the work conceived and produced in relation to the actual place where this happens and the people who live there? How does locality relate to the arts context it grew and developed in? 

Tanztage Berlin is a festival presenting young artists based in Berlin. Because of the geographical aspect in this focus, we could take a closer look to the importance of the city itself in the development of their work. Is it mainly the art context the artist grows up in, or can we deduce more specific elements stemming from the local surroundings. Can one, working as an artist or cultural worker, stay away from the specifics of the place and people who live there? Shouldn't we think in more diverse ways (than for example community art) in connecting to our surroundings? 

A Tour Through The Tanztage is a collaboration between the European program Life Long Burning/Uferstudios and Tanztage Berlin with Sophiensaele in which 7 artists are invited to participate: 2 international artists through the Life Long Burning Wild Card residencies, 2 artists from Sri Lanka and 3 artists based in Berlin. 

The participation includes seeing all the performances in the festival Tanztage Berlin in this small group and talking about the work seen in relation to their own work and the context and locality one comes from. The tour will be guided/moderated and some guests are invited throughout the 10 days. Nevertheless, the tour has a big element of self-responsibility and thereby the participating artist are invited to address their own main points and topics within the thematics.  

Questions (more to be added)
- what is your practice?
- how do we relate to the practice of others?
- how important is our context for the artistic choices we make and how we look at work?
- how can we think of locality in the work/practice? 

Start:
8 January: Opening day of the festival // during the day: short presentation of own work to the other participants in the Tour group
9 January: seeing performances
10 January: afternoon of discussions work seen in previous days & seeing performances
11 January: seeing performances
12 January: afternoon of discussions / talk with curator Anna Mülter & seeing performances
13 January: seeing performances
14 January: afternoon of discussions / talk with established artist (tbc) & seeing performances
15 January: seeing performances
16 January: afternoon of discussions & final conclusions & seeing performances
17 & 18 January: seeing performances