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The CircusDanceFestival was initiated by the company label Overhead Project to further the promotion of young talent in circus and dance. The festival is a three-year model project with nationwide broadcasting in Germany. Its run time is from 2020 to 2022. A combination of festival, sector-specific residency, and co-production program.
The CircusDanceFestival project will run for three years.
The heart of the project – the five-day festival – first took place in 2020. Again, this year, in 2021. And will take place one last time in 2022. Always during Pentecost. The main location is in three large tents. At the outdoor area of the TPZAK Circus and Artistic Center Cologne.
However, the performances are presented in various formats: tent performances, university cooperation, site-specific and city interventions, lectures, workshops, and research presentations.
The goal is to reach a broad regional audience as well as to interest and connect with the professional international circus and dance scene.
Over the three years of the project, the program section Junge Wilde (Young and Wild) offers visibility and networking for regional youth and young talent groups.
The residencies are offered in advance of the annual five-day festival. Artistic coaching for young performers is provided during those residencies.
In addition to the entire project space and support for national German applicants, four residencies and two co-productions are also open for groups from outside of Germany. They take applications every year.
An international symposium was held for this year’s 2nd edition of the festival.
The project is being developed under the overall organizational and artistic direction of the Overhead Project label, which has been active in this area for ten years and is internationally established and connected.
For this year’s festival, a cooperation between the festival, the Cologne Center for Contemporary Dance, and the Brussels circus university ESAC was initiated.
As part of the projects for the festival, the students initially went out into urban and rural areas. There they interacted with stairs, trees, piles of sand, and gravel.
And they climbed the heights with the help of human pyramids which they formed with their own bodies.
Another focus of this year’s festival was the human body.
For example, 3xEva. A fascinating piece by performers Laura Runge, Yolande Sommer and Rahel Gieselmann.
In their performance they deal with the sexualizing looks that they felt on their bodies as young artists in the children’s and youth circus and as a gymnast in competitive sports.
Yolande Sommer also focuses intensively on the menstruating body and its absence in the prevailing discourses on rehearsals and training. Which definitely is a topic for other body-based arts as well.
Because of the limited opportunities to perform and travel, many performances were rather presented through documentaries. The TV channel Arte, for example, proved to be an excellent partner and produced some spectacular films.
For the coming year, the festival organizers hope that they will be able to present the entire program in front of a live audience.
For the German circus industry as a whole, they also hope that the central demands of the Contemporary Circus Manifesto will finally be implemented. It was already published five years ago and presented to the German authorities.
The manifesto includes the recognition of circus as an art form within the performing arts. A clear division of the circus sector in the respective institutions. Equal treatment in the case of public funding. And equal access to venues and rehearsal rooms.
The public funding of the CircusDanceFestival is a positive and important step in the right direction.
Official website CircusDanceFestival
Facebook page CircusDanceFestival
Further sources:
The article “Ode ans Object” by Tom Mustroph in Theater der Zeit
The CircusDanceFestival is a festival launched by Overhead Project in cooperation with TPZAK Cologne.
Funded by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund with funds from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, Ministry for Culture and Science, State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne.
Artistic director Tim Behren.
Project management Malte Garrecht.
Management / PR Mechtild Tellmann Young and Wild program section ZAK Cologne Communication k3 Berlin.
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Liam Klenk was born in Central Europe and has since lived on four continents. Liam has always been engaged in creative pursuits, ranging from photography and graphic design, to writing short stories and poetry, to working in theatre and shows. In 2016, Liam published his first book and memoir, 'Paralian'.
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