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Dance

Dance as an artistic, mediating, and scholarly-research practice is physically, exploratively, and reflectively central to the three courses in Department 7/ZZT.

Hub for dance and dance research

The Center for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance forms an important hub for dance and dance research within the contemporary dance landscape. The three degree programs BA Dance, MA Dance Education and MA Dance Studies convey practices and perspectives of performative dance art, dance education and dance studies. This constellation, unique in Germany, forms an inspiring, artistic-practical as well as research-oriented study environment in which interdisciplinary work and experiments are carried out.

In addition to the bachelor's and master's degrees, the Department 7/ZZT is the only institution in Germany to offer the possibility of a doctorate (Dr. phil.) in dance studies since 2009 and hosts the Forschungskolleg Tanzwissenschaft, which offers an institutional and content-related connection for international researchers in cooperation with the German Dance Archive Cologne.

Ein langgestricktes Gebäude mit großen Fenstern

The dance in Cologne Nippes

The Center for Contemporary Dance / Department 7 of the Cologne University of Music and Dance is located in Nippes, a central, urban and lively Cologne neighborhood, with spacious facilities: seven dance studios, a Pilates studio, a 150-seat studio theater and several seminar rooms, a reference library and an online media room accessible to students. The professors and instructors are internationally renowned.

Address

Center for Contemporary Dance
Cologne University of Music and Dance
Turmstrasse 3-5
50733 Köln

Latest news


From July 11 - 18, 2024, this year's ZZT graduates will show their final presentations:
Pamela Banchetti, Isabel Carvalho, Yi-Chen Chen, Valeria Cordes, Lena Valentina Hauth, Isaac Hidrobo, Rita Maria Klos, Lea Marie Neumayer, Zay-On/Andrés Patarroyo, Hannah Reena Reif and Elin Tezel are graduating from the BA Dance program at the ZZT, Sophie Carnetzki from the MA Dance Mediation program.

The presentations can be attended by appointment.

Dates:
Thursday, July 11th
4.00 pm  Yi-Chen Chen, "LEANING"
7.00 pm Valeria Cordes, "zero one"
 
Friday, July 12th
4.00 pm Lena Valentina Hauth, "Realidead"
7.00 pm Rita Maria Klos, "hold me, sister"
 
Monday, July 15th
4.00 pm Lea Marie Neumayer, "in time out"
7.00 pm Isabel Carvalho, "CHAMA, CALL FOR US"
 
Tuesday, July 16th
4.00 pm Isaac Hidrobo, "PROTAGONISTS"
7.00 pm Zay-On (Andrés Patarroyo), "Parálisis Mental"
 
Wednesday, July 17th
4.00 pm Hannah Reena Reif, "That's why"
7.00 pm Elin Tezel, "Come Cut this Throbbing Heart"
 
Thursday, July 18th
1.00 pm Pamela Banchetti, "Forget me Not"
7.00 pm Sophie Carnetzki, "URBAN INTERFACES- research exhibition" - registration via Sophie Carnetzki

Venue: ZZT Studio Theater, Turmstraße 3-5 Cologne

Link to Registration

Titled LACE#2: Mediating Touch, the ImPulsTanz Symposium will take place from July 26-28, 2024 in Vienna, Austria. The Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnerships project RELAY - Thinking Artistic Material in Music and Dance will be represented on July 28 with the Deep Dive workshop series “Relay-ing” and a panel.

The artistic research project RELAY investigates the materiality of movement and sound and the transformation that takes place when these are transferred between people, places, contexts and across time.

The ImPulsTanz workshops will give participants an insight into the methods and tools that RELAY has developed over the course of the project to date. These tools interweave physical, reflexive and documentary practices and explore how knowledge is created through transfer and transmission.

Sunday, July 28, 2024

The workshops and the panel will be held in English.

 

Further information and registration

 

WORKSHOPS, 2.15 - 3.45 pm

Introduction by Konstantinos Tsakirelis and Rasmus Ölme

 

WORKSHOP 1

Three women combining different disciplines - history, archaeology and choreography - we share our desire for discovery. Embedded within all three practices lies the notion of listening, noticing, multidimensionality, and awareness, which can be used as creative tools. As part of the deep dive we like to share aspects of our creative process that infuses our practices. We will try to trace through all the senses the impact of history on different sites and how it connects different communities.

This workshop will be facilitated by Stella Malliaraki, Vera Sander and Evita Tsakalaki.

 

WORKSHOP 2

To start with we would like to propose a collective soundpainting exercise in which we will create a composition together in real time using voice, body, and environment.

From here, we continue to explore our bodies as transmitters - between 2 or more other bodies, between spaces, spots, moments, in playful and meaningful ways, in sound and movement and any other means of communication, in and between conventional and unconventional spaces such as staircases, corridors, lobbies etc.

To end with, we offer ways of  taking time for listening, exploring, contemplating the artistic material in the making, and meditating upon the material that we carry away and the material that we leave behind.

This workshop will be facilitated by Jan Burkhardt, Cătălin Crețu, and Andreea Duta.

 

WORKSHOP 3

In this workshop we will share practices and scores that were developed in the making of the ARTwork, a shape-changing sculpture that has been made by all participants of the RELAY project.

The scores are suggestions for entering collaboration without the need for consensus as a starting point, but through a direct engagement with diverse artistic materials. By paying attention to what is already in the room, the idea is to let common themes and interests emerge from practice.

The workshop will be facilitated by Maia Means and Max Wallmeier.

PANEL 4 - 6 pm

The workshops start with an introduction into RELAY and the “Relay-ing” methods. Participants will then have the possibility to choose one of the three workshops. After the workshops, a joined “smuggling” session with all workshop participants will provide insight into the material developed in all three workshops.

"RELAY - Thinking Artistic Material in Music and Dance" is a three-year artistic research project made possible by the ERASMUS+ program "Cooperation Partnerships". Cooperation partners: Danish National School of Performing Arts (DASPA, Copenhagen), Sikinnis (Heraklion), Hochschule für Musik und Tanz (HfMT, Cologne), National University of Music Bucharest (UNMB, Bucharest), National Dance Center Bucharest (CNDB, Bucharest) and National University of Theater and Film, Romania (UNATC, Bucharest).

 

Three new reviews online

Three premieres were reviewed for "Bewegungsmelder": Sometimes I see The Future by Choy Ka Fai, reviewed by Frederike Bohr, More Than by Shahar Binyamini and fem:me by Kollektiv Diphthong, reviewed by Lynn Kuhfuß.

Bewegungsmelder is a project by nrw landesbuero tanz, tanznetz.de and the Master of Dance Studies at the Center for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance to open up national cultural reporting on the independent dance scene in NRW to the next generation - and to give dance in NRW more publicity.

WelcomeWalks: city walks as a process of encounter
 
In May and June, following the seminar “Reading and Understanding Urban Places” with Gabriele Reuter, students of the BA Dance specialization Mediation in Dance will conduct five different WelcomeWalks for five different people with refugee experience. The WelcomeWalk project is a collaboration between the Cologne Volunteer Agency and the Center for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance.
During the WelcomeWalk, one person with and one person without refugee experience meet for three walks and explore Cologne together.

Both sides of a WelcomeWalk tandem benefit: They experience Cologne through different eyes and get to know new places and people. The special thing about the WelcomeWalk is the meeting at “eye level”, i.e. the WelcomeWalk is not designed as an aid project with a corresponding power imbalance, but as an encounter process from which both sides benefit because both sides can help shape it.
How can impulses be formulated in a joint exchange that can be an inspiration to explore the urban space of Cologne?
What places are there in Cologne? What is there in these places? How can specific places in Cologne be experienced and explored aesthetically?
How can dance and movement possibly be a medium for experiencing specific places in Cologne's urban space?

The Cologne Volunteer Agency has been running the WelcomeWalk since March 2016, and 650 WelcomeWalk tandems have come together so far. This gives students the opportunity to develop small formats from an artistic and mediating perspective that allow them to experience places in Cologne in an aesthetic way.