Projects
Connection of theory and practice
FB7/ZZT offers students an active connection to a heterogeneous professional field through regional, national and international cooperations and promotes ongoing professionalization, internationalization and an interdisciplinary, professional exchange.
To this end, it develops cross-disciplinary and cross-curricular formats that combine artistic projects with theoretical and historical reflection, or pedagogical and artistic practice, and exemplifies a connection between theory and practice. FB7/ZZT has a highly qualified, committed and cooperating team that develops and networks teaching and projects in a lively exchange.
Dance education benefits from the cooperation with international partner universities, dance science from the unique possibility of a permanent cooperation with the German Dance Archive Cologne, dance education from cooperations with the Quartier am Hafen Cologne, among others. In addition, continuous discussions and detailed feedback, mentoring as well as project-related work identify the center as a place where the development of methodological procedures are both the content and the method of teaching.
Projects
The goal of the BA Dance program is the artistic training of technically skilled, body-conscious, reflexive and competitive dancers and performers. The dance studies at the ZZT are characterized by a close cooperation between education and the professional field. An important part of the curriculum are projects, in which the future dancers and dance mediators deal with the working methods of renowned contemporary choreographers or perform their own choreographies. Performance practice is seen as an integral part of the training, whereby students can also gain experience within the production-oriented areas of a dance performance, i.e. in dramaturgy and public relations on the one hand, and in stage realization, lighting and sound on the other.
Interdisciplinary projects
2026
ECHO
"Echo from Montepulciano" brings together a dedicated group of international students from the HfMT campuses in Wuppertal, Aachen, and Cologne at the Palazzo Ricci in Italy. Curious, adventurous, and with a strong team spirit, they rehearsed, discovered new, very new, and old music, choreography, sound, and movement, and performed the resulting program together. In the most recent edition, “Presence” by Eftichis Vittorakis (composition) and Vera Sander (choreography) was rehearsed and premiered with nine musicians and dancers from the HfMT. “Presence” is a kind of game, a set of rules that creates connections with the performers and arranges spatial and sonic events in a non-linear sequence.
“Echo from Montepulciano—Presence,” which was performed in Cologne as part of the 100th-anniversary celebrations, resonates within the university in Cologne with the sounds and movements developed during the students’ one-week residency in October 2024 under the direction of Prof. Werner Dickel, Prof. Florence Millet, and Prof. Vera Sander, find an echo at the university in Cologne. Lasting networks and artistic collaborations among the participants have emerged that extend beyond the excursion.
The next excursion is scheduled for October 11–28, 2026. The focus will be on artistic teamwork, creativity, and cross-location artistic collaboration with practitioners of chamber music, composition, choreography, and dance; world premieres of works by the composition class and choreographic pieces; and major works of contemporary music and historical chamber music. Dialogue between creators and performers and the development of shared concepts.
Faculty members are:
Center for Contemporary Dance: Prof. Vera Sander
Chamber Music and Ensemble Conducting: Prof. Marko Milenkovic, viola; Prof. Dr. Florence Millet, piano
Life.Coding - DATABODIES
A collaboration between the ZKD and the BA in Dance FB7/ZZT
Algorithms play an increasingly prominent and ubiquitous role in our lives, whether in the form of music and shopping recommendations, administrative processes, or artistic applications such as generative music. Together, we will develop and test algorithmic strategies for integrating music and dance, learn to use code and sensor data for this purpose, discuss how artificial intelligence challenges our conception of algorithms as fixed, unchanging sets of instructions, and test our results in the artistic project DATABODIES.
2023
Games, Costumes, Genders and Identities / Transcendentia
The project, which emerged from a seminar cooperation between the Center for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and the Fashion Department at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, focuses on the performative use of costumes. While sporting competitions in particular convey traditional role models, a dance-historical perspective and practical dance forms enable participants to challenge and question normative gender identities. In a workshop project entitled "Transcendentia", students from the Digital Media and Experiment and Fashion Design courses at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences worked together with BA and MA students from the Center for Contemporary Dance at the intersection of dance, digital and fashion.
Derived from a seminar cooperation between the ZZT Center for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and the Fashion Department of the FH Bielefeld, the project emphasizes on the performative use of costumes. While sporting competitions in particular transport traditional role models, a dance historical perspective and dance practical form of games enable participants to challenge and defy normative gender identities.
Students of the Digital Media and Experiment and Fashion Design) worked together with BA and MA students of Center for Contemporary Dance
at the meeting point of dance, digitally, and fashion.
Co-operation partners / Collaborating instructors:
- FB7:ZZT, HfMT Cologne
- Prof. Dr. Sevi Bayraktar, Professor for Dance, Performance and Music at the Center for Contemporary Dance,
- Prof. Jan Burkhardt, Professor for Dance Practice in Artistic Context
University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld:
- Prof. Philipp Rupp, Professor of Fashion Design,
- Prof. Herwig Scherabon, Digital Media and Experiment (DMX), Assistant lecturer Marcus Wildelau, M.A.
- Prof. Dr. Anna Zika, Theory of Design
2020
Richard Tuttle: 10 Kinds of Memory and Memory Itself (1973/2020)
From the Kolumba exhibition guide:
"Richard Tuttle's early work Ten Kinds of Memory and Memory Itself, first performed in 1973 at the Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco and a year later at Yvon Lambert in Paris, is exemplary of a development that began to emerge in the 1970s, and not only in his work: the work consists of 10 drawings that the artist lays out on the floor using strings and which at first glance are reminiscent of signs of a foreign alphabet. Under the influence of Yvonne Rainer and the Judson Dance Theater, Tuttle's interest shifts away from the finished object to the process of its execution, which remains inscribed in the work as such and which he understands as a (re)enactment of physical memory(s). (...)
For the opening of Chapter 2 on Wednesday, September 23, we will perform Ten Kinds of Memory and Memory Itself. Due to the current situation, we unfortunately have to postpone the originally planned performance by Richard Tuttle himself. However, the artist has passed on his experiences to students at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. They will perform the work at the opening and every week thereafter on Saturdays at 3 pm."
performed by
- Jana Griess, Giada Peli, Jovana Petrovska, Almuth Isa Maria Schmidbauer, Katharina Senzenberger, Josefine Simonsen, Emma Stacey and Amalia Zafeiri, accompanied by Constanze Schellow and Barbara von Flue
Cooperation partners
- Kolumba and TanzKöln as part of the exhibition "Das kleine Spiel zwischen dem Ich und dem Mir",
- September 15, 2020 - August 16, 2021
2019
Treatise on the Veil
Together with the visual artist Nick Mauss, students developed a choreography as an examination of the bodies and physicalities of an installation put together by Mauss with works of art from the museum. The 4-hour performance was integrated into a space of painting, photography and sculpture.
- Nick Mauss in collaboration with Brigitte Huezo, Paulina Jürges, Camilla Schielin, Josephine Simonsen, Christoph Speith and Sebastian Varra, accompanied by Constanze Schellow, Allison Brown and Jana Griess
- November 23/24 and 26/27, 2019, Museum Ludwig as part of the exhibition "Transcorporealities"
Transposium
2019
Transposium #1: Transcorporealities.
- November 23, 2019, 10:00 a.m. - 7:30 p.m., Center for Contemporary Dance and Museum Ludwig.
- With: Antonia Baehr, Allison Brown, Artmann&Duvoisin, Lars Frers, Jana Griess, Isaac Hidrobo, Brigitte Marielos Huezo, Paulina Jürges, Miriam Leysner, Nick Mauss, Leonie Radine, Miriam Rieck, Constanze Schellow, Camilla Schielin, Josefine Simonsen, Christoph Speit, Sebastian Varra, Gosie Vervloessem, Haitang Zhang.
A symposium of a different kind, Transposium #1 at the Center for Contemporary Dance (ZZT) brings together deliberately undisciplined artistic and scholarly perspectives on transcorporealities (...). Lecture performances, a 'lecture exhibition', research and impulses from the fields of dance, performance, theater studies and sociology meet each other. In the afternoon, the program will continue at the museum with excerpts of a body-based tour format designed by an artistic-scientific collective of FB7/ZZT alumni. Afterwards, there will be an opportunity in the collection to visit the work Tract on the Veil by Nick Mauss, whose choreography was developed together with and will be performed by students. The transposium will conclude with a conversation in the museum foyer between the artist and the participating dancers about the joint work.
The direct dialogue between museum and dance practice, in which the Center for Contemporary Dance and the Museum Ludwig have entered at eye level and guided by curiosity, respect and interest, offers the possibility of opening up and making accessible to each other perspectives of dancers and visual artists, curators and scholars, press departments, security guards and administrative bodies.
The cooperation was part of Konstellationen, an initiative that promotes joint projects by actors and institutions from the fields of dance and visual arts to mark the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Publikationen
Dissenting through Dance: Folk Dance, Gender and Political Protest in Turkey.
- Sevi Bayraktar, 2026
Der Satyr in Theater und Tanz – Historische Kontexte und Aktualisierung einer marginalisierten Figur
- Johanna Hörmann, 2025
Virtual Ecologies - Digitalitäten und Ökologien im Feld des Tanzes
- Hrsg. Yvonne Hardt, Marisa Berg, Anna Chwialkowska und Ulrike Nestler, 2024
- Miriam Althammer, 2024
Tanzen/Teilen - Sharing/Dancing
- Hrsg. Sevi Bayraktar / Mariama Diagne / Yonne Hardt / Sabine Karoß / Jutta Krauß, 2021
- Hrsg. Yvonne Hardt, Martin Stern, 2019
- Hrsg. Mariella Greil, Vera Sander, 2016
Choreografie, Medien und Gender
- Hrsg. Marie-Luise Angerer, Yvonne Hardt, Anna Weber, 2013
Reflections, Tasks & (F)acts
- Hrsg. Yvonne Hardt, Katarina Kleinschmidt, 2012
- Hrsg. Yvonne Hardt, Martin Stern, 2011
Beitrag in der Publikation "Tanztechniken"
- Hrsg. Ingo Diehl, Friederike Lampert, 2010
- Yvonne Hardt, Vera Sander: Jennifer Muller – Muller Technik
- Hrsg. Friederike Lampert, 2010
Archive
2026
- SOLOEDITION'26
- ZZT bei der 10. Biennale Tanzausbildung
- SOLOEDITION'26 on Tour
- IMPACTZONE 26
- What's the Big Deal About Resistance?
- DIE ORESTIE
- Bewegte Einführungen
- International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO'26)
- Circus Dance Practices #1
- Zwischen Körpern - Eine bewegte Kunstbegegnung im Kolumba Museum
2025
- SOLOEDITION'25
- IMPACTZONE 25
- "Presence " im Rahmen des 100jährigen Jubiläums der HfMT
- What's the big deal about access?
- Passing through
- Life.Coding DATABODIES
- Extended Play im Rahmen des 100jährigen Jubiläums der HfMT
2024
- SOLOEDITION'24
- 9. Biennale Tanzausbildung, München
- Grundlose Gestaltung im Rahmen von schrit_tmacher
- SOLOEDITION'24
- IMPACTZONE 24
- "What's the big deal about independence?"
- RELAY beim ImPulsTanz
2023
- SOLOEDITION'23
- IMPACTZONE 23
- Tanz in der Reihe Spitzentöne
- CreationLab (mit CircFestival
- RELAY / Symposium “thinking artistic material in music and dance”
2022
- SOLOEDITION'22
- IMPACTZONE 22
- CreationLab (mit CircFestival)
- In Act – Choreografisches Lab und Performance im Summerlab / Kolleg der Künste – Montepulciano
- RELAY
2021
- SOLOEDITION 21
- IMPACTZONE 21
- CreationLab (mit CircFestival)
- confab
2020
- SOLOEDITION 20
- Kolumba
- confab
2019
- SOLOEDITION 19
- IMPACTZONE 19
- confab
- unfolded no. 10
- Atlas 2 - Dialog of One
- Movement Research Lab mit Eva Karczag und Gästen (2018-2019)
- TRANSCORPOREALITIES – ein Transposium
2018
- Symposium „KÖRPER – FEEDBACK – BILDUNG: MODI UND KONSTELLATIONEN VON (TÄNZERISCHER)BEWEGUNGSANEIGNUNG“
- IMPACTZONE 18
- TRATTO
- unfolded no. 09
- Symposium „MUSIK/TANZ: TRANSFORMATIVE PRAKTIKEN“
- Die Atlas-Werkstätten von Agdz, Marokko: eine wissenschaftlich-künstlerische Begegnung (2016-18)
- Movement Research Lab mit Eva Karczag und Gästen (2018-2019)
2017
- unfolded no. 08
- Die Atlas-Werkstätten von Agdz, Marokko: eine wissenschaftlich-künstlerische Begegnung (2016-18)
2016
- 5. Biennale Tanzausbildung 2016 Köln
- Symposium „feedback and reflection – (re)thinking modes of artistic learning“
- Unfolding Practice
- A Scripted Situation – ein Performanceprojekt
- 4 x 4 - Performanceprojekt
- Die Atlas-Werkstätten von Agdz, Marokko: eine wissenschaftlich-künstlerische Begegnung (2016-18)
2015
- 3. Plattform für künstlerische Forschung, Austausch und Vermittlung im Zeitgenössischen Tanz
- frames : [ everyday]
- unfolded no.06
2014
- 2. Plattform für künstlerische Forschung, Austausch und Vermittlung im Zeitgenössischen Tanz
- Seven make sense
- tamed - Kongress
- SHANGHAI BOLERO — TRIPTYQUE
- SUPERGROUP
- swap! Performance im Rahmen der Claviernacht 2014
- unfolded no.05
2013
- 1. Plattform für künstlerische Forschung, Austausch und Vermittlung im Zeitgenössischen Tanz
- IMPACTZONE ´13
- Opportunity
- Residenz: Quartier am Hafen
- Backstage: Geschichten und Räumedes tanzhaus nrw
- unfolded no.04
2012
- crossover 55/2 - internationally mixed
- Yvonne Rainer: Raum, Körper, Sprache
- Social Movement
- unfolded no.03
2011
- Urban Fragments
- IMPACTZONE´12
- John Cage Projekt
- Le Sacre du Printemps
- Permanently Organizing Your Inner Spaces
- unfolded no.02
2010
- Continuous Project –Altered Daily
- Nocturne
- Choreografie & Institution
- Forschungsprojekt: Tanztechniken
- unfolded no.01
2009
- Shifting Grounds
- drumming
- Tanzabend
- Spezielle Orte und Choreografien
