Choreographic Convention
Life Long Burning is hosting a yearly professional platform/symposium addressing current issues of the dance field as well as the field’s place in society. Choreographic Conventions are planned in Timișoara/RO (European Capital of Culture, 2023), Zagreb/HR (2024), Leuven (2025) and Helsinki (2026). All network partners participate in every edition in different roles.
The Broken Cake: Quiet Tones, Soft Sounds
Choreographic Convention #4
The Choreographic Convention #4 is taking place on Friday, 13 November, in the frame of Moving in November in Helsinki, Finland. Uferstudios in Berlin and danceWEB in November are co-hosts.
The day unfolds through different routes – in French, parcours – each with its own programme and dramaturgy. Participants choose one parcour and follow it from beginning to end together with their group.
For this special occasion, we have invited artist living and working in Helsinki with whom the festival has a connection and a history. The invitation was deliberately formulated very openly, asking about the state of choreography in Helsinki and Finland.
The invitation also addressed the festival’s 40th anniversary and the current funding cuts Moving in November is suffering from, alongside the entire art field. It opened a reflection on what it means to celebrate such an occasion, what round anniversaries represent and for whom, and what happens when a festival postpones its birthday celebration until the conditions for celebrating it properly are in place. These reflections turn towards the celebratory, the failed celebration, and dramaturgies that are not built on climax or spectacle.
Listening into the proposals that the invited artists have made – quiet tones, soft sounds – notions of sensing, dwelling, reflection, contemplation, and rest come through – but also absurd celebrations, pleasure, playfulness, and the fading spectacular.
We specifically invited to this day: Chen Amor Nadler & Kadence Luella Neill, Esete Sutinen, Jana Unmüßig, Lydia Touliatou, Maija Hirvanen, Maija Mustonen & Satu Herrala & Anna Karhu-Cormier, Mikko Niemistö, Sara Grotenfelt, Suvi Kemppainen, and Vincent Roumagnac.
We also invited students through two local university programmes at Uniarts Helsinki that collaborate closely with the festival, and whose students are currently in dialogue and exchange with students from other European art universities: LAPS (Live Art and Performance Studies), represented by Monia Penttinen and Vivian WONG Wing Lam, who are working with Elena Faki and Saeed Asadsangabi from HZT in Berlin, and the MA Programme in Choreography, which is hosting this year’s gathering of the Nordic Choreographic Platform (NCP), bringing together MA choreography students from Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm.
— Kerstin Schroth, Artistic Director of Moving in November
All parcours include the Soup Talk Panel with choreographer Michael Turinsky, Riina Hannuksela and Noora Karjalainen. The discussion takes its starting points from Turinsky’s Precarious Moves, presented at the festival on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of November.
After the Soup Talk, the different parcours cross paths, bringing groups together for shared events and encounters, while at other times each group follows its own route. The rhythms and contents of the parcours vary, bringing together performances, artistic interventions, workshops and spaces for conversation and reflection.
Some of the artists and works encountered on Friday can be followed further over the weekend, offering opportunities to return to questions and artistic practices in different contexts. These include Michael Turinsky’s Precarious Moves, Milla Koistinen’s In the Waning Light II, Matilda Aaltonen’s To follow your tail, Findlay//Sandsmark’s broken (iteration III – for Helsinki) and Vincent Roumagnac’s installation Tokonoma Series (Festival).
You can explore the detailed schedules of all the parcours and find descriptions of the artistic proposals included in them on Moving in November's website.
Buy your day ticket for the ChoreoCon here.
Choreographic Convention #4
ChoreoCon #4
The programme of our forth and final Choreographic Convention – on 13 November in Helsinki – is online!
The day unfolds through different routes, each with its own programme and dramaturgy. Participants choose one parcours and follow it from beginning to end together with their group.
Moving in November & ChoreoCon
This year's programme of Moving in November in Heksinki is online! In the frame of this contemporary dance festival, we will also host our final Choreographic Convention of Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found. So, mark it in your calendars: 5–15 November Moving in November, 13 November ChoreoCon #4!
Re:pertoire
Choreographic Convention #3
The Choreographic Convention #3 is taking place from 27–30 April in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by STUK, co-hosted by Agora, Cité internationale de la Danse.
Choreographic Convention #3
Choreographic Convention #3: Re:wind - Expanding Documentation
An international symposium about alternative ways of documenting and (an)archiving dance by STUK, Life Long Burning and Counterpoint KU Leuven.
Re:wind - Expanding Documentation invites artists, scholars, dancers, archivists, heritage workers and activists to chart, critically reflect on and expand the idea of dance documentation. Highlighting the essential role of documentation in the transmission of dance, the symposium investigates how dance is translated, mediated, disseminated, and transformed into material and immaterial forms and how these forms actively shape the afterlives, meanings, and historiographies of dance.
Opening Choreographic Convention #3: Re:pertoire
The festive opening of Body of Work 2026 - Re:pertoire.
On the opening night, you’ll fully experience what the festival stands for: how dance continues to reinvent itself in diverse and dynamic ways. After months of rehearsals, five non-professional dance groups from Dansstroom take the stage with their favorite pieces of dance repertoire. The girls from the dance performance GIRLS by fABULEUS return to the dance floor after 13 years, this time as adult women. That same evening, you can be the first to explore the exhibition in STUK Studio featuring audience memories, a video series, and podcast corners with stories from dancers.
Choreographic Convention #3: Archive stories
Archive stories or Dancing Neurons, Laughing Cells! / Denise Luccioni: Since the mid-1970s, Denise Luccioni has worked as an assistant, tour or production manager, curator, and translator, and been both a firsthand witness and a close collaborator of some of the key figures in an evolving performing arts scene on both sides of the Atlantic.
Choreographic Convention #3: Podcast
The Body of Work podcast explores the questions that arise when working with repertoire through interviews with dancers. During the festival, listening corners will be set up in the STUK Studio and the Vitrine where you can discover the podcast.
Bodies in free fall
Choreographic Convention 2024
The Choreographic Convention 2024 is taking place from 19–23 November in Zagreb, hosted by Antisezona, co-hosted by Nomad Dance Academy. The programme is being cooked at the moment and will be revealed here once it is served.
More about the ChoreoCon 2024 at Antisezona.
Photo Gallery
ChoreoCon 2024 & Annual Network Meeting
Choreographic Convention 2024
Participatory Programme: CONSTELLATION OF BODIES
An open lab by Teodora Ežovska. The focus of the Constellations of Bodies workshop is on creating group dynamics and harmony among participants by developing awareness of internal dynamics, space, time as a measuring unit, and proximity.
ChoreoCon 2024 Opening: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE DANCE KIND
A Performance Situation Room: Close encounters of the dance kind
What would you send into the future of dance? We asked the local dance scene to dance and write their answers to the following question: If there were something at your disposal right now that you would send into the future of dance, what would it be? We received answers from those at the beginning of their journeys, as well as from those who have been on this trek for a while. For very trivial practical reasons, the responses presented in the film don’t encapsulate the entirety of our scene, but demonstrate its multiplicity, polyphony, strength, persistence and permanence.
Panel Discussion: NOMAD DANCE ADVOCACY TRANSFORMATIVE POLICIES FOR DANCE
Antisezona and Nomad Dance Academy put together a day of discussions, aiming to sketch beter future scenarios of our dance community:
Activating the Present of Dance: Discussing Cultural Policies
Futuring: Dance Research as the Foundation of a new Dance Institution
New Structures for a new Future – Call for Action
Exhibition Opening: Dancing, Resisting, (Un)working
Dancing, Resisting, (Un)working – Aspects of Dance as a Cultural, Political, and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After is an exhibition curated by Nomad Dance Academy – (Non)Aligned Movements. It performs a long-term research on developing the digital archive of contemporary dance and the performing arts of the post-Yugoslav region.
Performance: Desire to make a solid history will end in failure
The starting desire in the creation of this dance performance by Igor Koruga is the question: in what way can archiving dance art be an artistic practice? The author’s exploration of this desire takes place through a transgenerational creative exchange with six choreographers/directors/dancers/performers of the local independent dance scene: Nela Antonović, Anđelija Todorović, Jelena Jović, Tanja Pajović, Boris Čakširan, and Sanja Krsmanović Tasić.
Modular School – Interactive Installation
In the frame of ChoreCon 2024, the participants of the Modular School will share their collective work at TALA PLE(j)S. Through an interactive installation, visitors will have the opportunity to explore individual projects intertwined with group responses.
Participatory Programme: Naama Shoshana Fogiel Lewin
A morning class rooted in a self-creating practice, combining theory and various exercise and movement methods to explore non-normative ways of giving and receiving care for both, our own bodies and others’.
Dance, Resistance, (Un)Working – Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After now in Ljubljana
The exhibition Dance, Resistance, (Un)Working – Aspects of Dance as Cultural, Political and Art Work in Yugoslavia and After, which opened in November 2024 in the frame of the Life Long Burning Choreographic Convention in Zagreb, is on screen in Ljubljana from 20 March until 31 May.
Celebrating Trouble
Choreographic Convention 2023
The Choreographic Convention 2023 was hosted by 4Culture/Romania and co-hosted by danceWEB/Austria and took place in Timișoara, the European Capital of Culture 2023 under the topic Celebrating Trouble from 4–8 October 2023. It offered performances, panels and workshops.
„While the sky is falling over our destiny, can we still celebrate, dance, sing? The Celebrating Trouble – ChoreoCon transforms theatre into a scene for our becoming as humans, an invitation to reflect, dialogue and artistic action.“
Choreographic Convention 2023
Panel Discussion: Art as a way of survival
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).
Showing: Working Method
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.”
Performance: A Song For Everyone
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.
Performance: INTERVENTION IS ENOUGH EVIDENCE. Finally
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).
Panel Discussion: Theatre as a public space
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).
Solo Lecture Performance: Precedents to a potential future
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.
Lecture Performance: LANDSCAPE/S
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.
Workshop: Hip–Hop Contemporary Dance with Silke SILK Grabinger
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!
Panel Discussion: Forming (public) opinions
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.
Performance: Necropolis
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.
Exhibition: Multi Species. „Co-Creating our environment”
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
Contemporary dance short movies: Let The Body Speak
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.
Lifeboat Residency
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.













