Selection 2023

The selection ranges from solo productions and trios to large ensemble pieces with nearly 20 dancers and includes a dance film project. Shorter works of 10 minutes as well as full-length pieces are represented.

Almost half of the award winners’ productions were created on the initiative of young dance professionals, some of whom realized their works on their own for the first time. For this purpose, they cooperated with associations, socio-cultural centers, youth cultural institutions or dance schools. Other pieces were developed at independent theatres, ballet schools or dance schools with a contemporary profile.

The young dance makers touch on the central social issues of our time and share their dark visions for the future. The focus is on political content, such as dealing with the revolution in Iran or with global social injustices, questions of climate change and sustainability, the body in its individual, social and also political or feminist dimensions, social media and the increasingly obvious after-effects of the pandemic on Generation Z. The latter are reflected, among other things, in a new dance program for the young generation. Here, the young dancers succeed impressively in turning inner worlds and processes outward with the language of dance and bringing them to the stage.

Stylistically, the current cohort presents contemporary and urban dance – improvisations, instant composition, Afro, dancehall, hip-hop, heels voguing, house and waacking. There is also an exploratory component to the ensembles that combine or evolve and overwrite different styles. Thus, we see the combination of contemporary dance and acrobatics or movement languages equally influenced by voguing, Serbian folklore, temple dance and the movements of the game of baseball, or contemporary material is developed that integrates traditional Colombian-Caribbean elements.