Sara Müller Troconis: Not my responsibility

Choreography & Dance: Sara Müller Troconis

Surtitles: Julek Kreutzer, Diethild Meier

Duration: 20 minutes

The music for the piece contains English texts that are surtitled in German and English.

Image description:

Sara has dark, long hair, tied up in a high ponytail. Sara says her tanned skin hints at her Latin American roots. 

The focus is on Sara, who is holding a mirror in her hand and looking critically at herself through it. Her cheeks are flushed. 

Body dysmorphia, self-isolation. How does one’s perception of the body construct but also distort the relationship we have to ourselves? How does the environment influence us? 

From the day we are born society puts us in a box and tells us what is good and what is not good enough. This can influence us in a harmful way. So much so that we take all that rejection and put it onto ourselves, turning it into self-hate. Is there an escape from this system? Can we get out of the box? Can we recover from something that has marked us forever? How can we find peace within a society that limits us and our potential?

Sara Müller Troconis was born in Stuttgart and started performing show dance at age 10. From an early age, it was clear to her that dancing was her true passion. At age 16, she joined the Stuttgarter Ballett Jung, where she discovered her love for ballet, developed her technique and explored other styles, such as contemporary and jazz. She started teaching those styles at Contemp Dance Center and Karren Foster Academy. To further her training, she went to the jazz-based education DanceEmotion in Freiburg. For her last year she went to Berlin Dance Institute to focus on movement research and on developing her own choreographies. Not my responsibility is Sara’s first choreographic work. 

Imogen Pickles & Camilla Barbera: Swing: duo

Choreography & Dance: Imogen Pickles, Camilla Barbera

Sound score: Daisy Wells

Duration: 20 minutes

English spoken text is part of the performance.

Image description:

A scene in ada studio with natural light, during rehearsal: Imogen is standing in front of Camilla. Knees slightly bent, they are both bending their upper body to their left, with the left arm hanging down. Imogen is a tall, white woman , with long dark hair with lighter blonder ends. Imogen is wearing nude shorts, with a long silver shirt with a lime green t-shirt underneath. Camilla is a tall white woman with dark mid-length hair wearing nude shorts, with a silvery/sequins-looking short shirt on top.

"Swing: duo" originated from Imogen’s fascination with pendulum dynamics and how this swinging and doubling oscillation resonates with the human experience. What emerges from a constant push and pull that – with equal force - is bound in meeting and looping? Can a pendulum rest? Where does the equilibrium lie between attraction and repulsion? The choreography explores dependability, balance and escape; it investigates how and when humans relate, points of differentiation, proximity, distance, and how they confront and love each other. The soundscape created by Daisy Wells sculpts the performers’ emerging relationships and conceptualises a pendulum's dynamic through echo, playback and reverb, blending live speech and voice recordings. Looping materials were captured during rehearsals, recording the piece throughout the creation process. The dynamic relationships between the two parts of a pendulum are mirrored in form: a dance duet or simply two humans working together.

Camilla Barbera, originally from Italy, is a physical theatre maker, performer and dancer based in Berlin. She studied Culture, Semiotics and Communications between Italy and France before moving to Germany and graduating from Arthaus Berlin, where she specialised in Embodied Dramaturgy and Devised Theater and Performance. She trained in a variety of techniques and styles and is influenced by the Meisner technique, contemporary dance and instant composition. She seeks to explore human nature through an embodied creative process; her work spans different media such as visual art, object theatre and photography.

Imogen Pickles is a performer, creator and educator based in Berlin. Imogen studied Literature at King’s College London, then later Embodied Dramaturgy at Arthaus Berlin, and graduated from Rose Bruford Performing Arts College, with a Masters in Devised Theater and Performance. In 2022 she joined the Bildungsjahr Tanz Program at Seneca, Berlin. She is influenced by postmodernism; her work explores the minimal, allowing maximum space for interpretation. She seeks resonance and investigates the human, the real and the now.  

Naledi Majola: “We’re supposed to stand up here and tell you who we are”

Concept & Performance: Naledi Majola

Writing mentor: Andi Colombo

Translation: Julek Kreutzer

Surtitles: Julek Kreutzer, Diethild Meier

Duration: 20 minutes

Spoken English text is surtitled in English and German.

Image description:

A scene in ada studio with natural light, during rehearsal: Naledi is holding their arms high up in the air. Naledi is a Black person with short, black locs and is wearing a black t-shirt with an unbuttoned white shirt on top, black knee-length shorts, and dark grey socks. 

This is a showing of the early stages of a new project continuing the artist’s research into Black gender play. It started out with improvised voice recordings where they performed the word “girl” in different ways. They found that in Black vernaculars, especially from South Africa, gendered words like “girl” and “man” can be performed in a way that does not solely refer to those specific gender categories. They ask: can gendered language – through its performance - actually destabilise the rigidity of gender?

Inspired by the artist’s theatre background and their curiosity to translate their solo practice onto a group body, they are in the process of creating a chorus work. This showing is an early exploration into the form of chorus and questions if and how a chorus body can be found in a solo body. The relationship between text and movement is an essential part of this process and is supported by the artist’s writing mentor, Andi Colombo.

Naledi Majola (they/he/she) is a South African artist-researcher, based in Berlin. After completing a BA in Theatre and Performance, specialising in Acting, at the University of Cape Town (2014-2017), they started working as an actor, appearing in various film, television, theatre, and commercial projects. At the same time, they began to develop a performance-making and research practice, embracing various mediums, including movement, voice, sound design, and writing. After primarily working in Cape Town, Naledi moved to Berlin, where they completed the MA Solo/Dance/Authorship at HZT Berlin in 2024. Their work seeks to blur the line between theory and practice and is inspired by performance studies, pop culture, and South African history and art.

Frances-Marlene Prasse: ...but no Pressure!

Choreography & Dance: Frances-Marlene Prasse

Duration: 15 minutes

Image description:

A scene in ada studio with natural light, during rehearsal: Frances is a white, female-read person in her early 20s. Her reddish-brown long hair are braided in a ponytail. She has bangs and a nose piercing. Frances is wearing a top in beige and some wide, blue Adidas pants. She has a blue line painted on her forearm. Frances is looking to the left side, holding her right arm behind her, high in the air. Her knees are bent.

How many people fake smiles every day and waste their energy by hiding their true emotions? How has irony become such a common tool for coping with uncomfortable feelings? How long can we endure the inner pressure?

In this solo, Frances deals with the way stress and pressure affect her body and tries to keep up appearances. The initial material of this solo was created as part of her vocational dance education – now she has extended her research to “...but no Pressure” because she understood that it's okay not to be okay. Frances sees dance and art as an important way of communication. For her, it's not about performing something pretty but rather about making people feel something, even if they cannot put it into words. Inspired by the idea of catharsis and the interdisciplinary methods of dance theatre, she creates emotional and expressive choreographies in which she likes to use not only dance but also props, her voice and body percussion.

Frances-Marlene Prasse first set foot on stage as a child with the junior company of the „Leipziger Tanztheater“. She continued her dance training at the “Tanzzentrale Leipzig“, where she learned teaching methods and choreographic tools. Afterwards, she started to teach and became the dance director of the inclusive “Grüntöne-Ensemble“ in Salzburg.

In 2021, she moved to Berlin to study at the dance academy balance 1, which focuses on forming versatile dancers at a high technical level. There, she discovered her love for Graham technique, and deepened her knowledge of classical ballet, jazz and contemporary dance/floorwork. She will graduate in September 2024. In addition to dance, she loves to act and models for dance photography as she is excited by how a (moving) body in space can compose an image.