This weekend Festival Programme Commun is kicking off in Lausanne! Apart from a vivid performance programme Arsenic invited to a Life Long Burning meeting, which includes a three days watch-and-talk programme for our Creative Crossroads artists, led by Ysaline Rochat.

Sometimes you get a second chance. Or, some of you do. If you are a dancer and/or choreographer with decidedly professional ambitions, either based in Rumania or in Finland you get a second chance to apply for danceWEB 2024! Because two of our Life Long Burning partner – 4Culture and Moving in November – are each covering the fee for and nominating one participant for this year’s scholarship programme.

Pauline Lavogez (ICI–CCN Montpellier) and Denisa Rad (4Culture) as well as the Berlin based artists Yvonne Sembene, Hanna Schillinger and Adèle Aïssi-Guyonare are invited to Tour through Tanztage! This peer to peer workshop is a guided & shared do-it-yourself exercise in watching and talking about the work seen in Tanztage, one's own artistic interests, professional practice and experienced difficulties in creating dance works. Tour Through Tanztage is moderated by Inge Koks.

How important can the art be for our human being development? The question ”What meaning does the art have?” becomes a call to action, for an artist who lives in an area affected by crises, when every day can bring danger. Then, the artistic act it is not just a privileged choice, but an instrument of survival. Ephemeral nature of the body and the human capacity to facilitate or prevent the recovery of the interior conflict. A discussion about the artistic ways used to strengthen both individual and collective initiatives.

With Mihaela Michailov (dramaturg & critic, Romania), Vladimir Us (artist & curator, Moldavia), Enkidu Khaled (director & performer, Irak/ Belgium), artists in residence of „LifeBoat”: (H)anna Kyrychyshyn (Ukraine) and Rita Lira (Ukraine).

An artistic production based on the results of the creation labs with local artists, based on ”Working Method”, a methodology developed by the director and performer Enkidu Khaled. The representation tackles current themes through a personal and cultural identity, under the quote ”theatre is an instrument of survival, not a privilege.”

You are invited to a unique journey around the world of sounds, where every element resonates to vibrational frequencies. What is our relation with breathing, wind and the sounds of matter? A performance based on the exploring of relations between people and the sounds of the environment. This performance is directed by Myriam Van Imschoot & newpolyphonies, in collaboration with participants & local artists.

This performance explores how vulnerable is our capacity to connect with ourselves through two different methods: intervention (how we interact with ourselves and with others in an intimate way) and the witness ( how we share our experiences with others and how we inspire each other).

Can theatre projects propose a public space that facilitates both the radical imaginary and the pragmatic utopias? What kind of projects can inspire the political action and thinking to get over the artistic sphere, succeeding to extend the theatre sphere of action, to stimulate the ways and possibilities to find a way to engage in the social issues of the present time? This approach is meant to interrogate the structures - social, political and economic - that give a certain framework to the existence of each of us.

With Claudia Bosse (choreographer & director, Germany/Austria), Edit Kaldor (theatre maker & writer, Hungary/Netherlands), Florian Malzacher (plawright & curator, Germany), Arkadi Zaides (choreograph & performer, France), moderated by Simone Willeit (Uferstudios Berlin).

What is there that can not be seen? Which is the moment where we create meaning? How do text, sound, image and sensations complete each other to make us understand a phenomena as “experience”? And how do these contexts define the experience of dance? A mixture of expressions creates narrative to a performance that is – or not – present. A solo lecture-performance, continuously moving its center of perception, always switching its basis of representation. The performer describes memories, imagination, impressions, changes points of view in the story and tries to link her train of thoughts to the present moment.

A lecture performance by Claudia Bosse with different media about (performative) thinking and choreographic practice with, in or as landscapes. An installative spread out with pasts and possible futures, along some works, body resonances as well as new explorations, with different dimensions of time, space and cohabitation.

Austrian B-Girl Silke Grabinger and her wingman G Dudas-Simo are giving a Hip-Hop Contemporary Dance Workshop. They will encourage you to explore your whole movement vocabulary in this highly physical lessons. The focus lies on technique, expression and musicality. For the intermediate level, previous experience in HipHop, Breakdance and/or contemporary dance is an advantage, while beginners will be introduced to all these styles. Participation is free!

Access to information and education are the fundamental requirements for participating into social life. What kind of collective education and information spreading platforms are accessible and to what type of target public? What kind of steps towards building an alternative platform or transdisciplinary collaboration are there? Who are the ones considered right to take part in the greatest decisions or on the contrary, pushed away from the historical context? Last, but not least, it will be discussed the manipulation of social media, the right wing radicalization and anti-feminist in the online and the tactics of manipulation on these kind of social platforms, that can be the germinative action for radicalization.

With Radu Apostol (theatre and film director,light designer, founder of Replika Cultural Association, Romania), Viorel Cojanu (actor, founder & president of Replika Cultural Association, Romania), Rok Vevar (historian of dans & curator, Slovenia), Caspar Weimann (performer, professor & mentor, Germania), Stanislava Ovchinnikova (interdisciplinary artist and curator, Ukraine, Finland and Germany), moderated by Raluca Rădulescu.

Necropolis is a documentary and choreographic investigation that examines the concept of collective responsibility and focuses on commemorating the thousands of anonymous refugees who unfortunately failed to reach Europe safely. Since 1993, UNITED for Intercultural Action, a network of hundreds of anti-racist organizations from all over Europe, has been compiling a list of refugees and migrants who lost their lives on their way to the continent. As of June 2022, when the latest updated version was released, the list included information on 48,647 reported deaths. The total toll is certainly much higher, as many people are neither found nor registered. The show of Arkadi Zaides, together with the artistic team, documents this invisible landscape is stretching in all directions across space and time and brings back to life the life of those unidentified, anonymous bodies.

Man is not the measure of all things. This is the premise on which the artists' research is based. The exhibition proposes directions and formulas for a sustainable future, for a non-invasive and non-aggressive coexistence in society through harmony with the environment. The works are a development tool for inclusion and community processes, a metaphor marked by human egocentrism and its inability to interact, an aspect which unfolds over into other realms.

Artists: Marilena Preda Sânc, Liliana Mercioiu Popa, Mălina Ionescu, 13m10j, Natalia Silaghi, Andreea Medar, Maria Calotă, Mihai Toth

Curators: Andreea Căpitănescu & Maria Oroșan Telea

A selection of contemporary dance short films created by Ukrainian choreographers and dancers, followed by a Q&A with Stanislava Ovchinnikova (curator and interdisciplinary artist from Ukraine).

Let The Body Speak is a video archive of works, movement practices and discussion of Ukrainian dancers and choreographers, created to preserve and document the somatic experience and visual evidence of the processes occurring in Ukrainian contemporary dance after the 24th of February, 2022.

"The human body is an archive that stores impressions of all the events that happen to it during its lifetime. Based on this scientifically proven idea, we decided to create a video archive of works, movement practices, and discussions of Ukrainian choreographers and dancers during the war.” - Anton Ovchinnikov

Curated by Anton Ovchinnikov and Stanislava Ovchinnikova.

Intimate Choreographies - Rencontre Internationale is a performative exploration. The concept, developed under the artistic direction of choreographer and curator Andreea Căpitănescu, revolves around the idea that surveillance spaces can surprisingly foster a deep emotional intimacy that transcends the unequal authoritarian structure of technology.

Performed by Judith State, Flavia Giurgiu and Elena Vlădăreanu at Magdalena Festival in Montpellier.

Rita Lira and Hannah Kyrychyshyna, two dancers from the Ukraine, visit Timișoara for a  2-weeks-residency. They are given studio space at Casa Tineretului and they will take part at the Choreographic Convention 2023. Their stay will finalize with an Open House event in which they share their experiences.

Creative Crossroad artist Alex Mirutziu is currently in Budapest, in residence at Workshop Foundation.