Info about the Associated Artists
(For the English version of this article please click here.)
Jo Parkes
Jo Parkes is a freelance dance artist (D/UK). For over two decades, she has worked internationally with co-creative, participatory dance and creates installations, events, performances and videos. She is the founder and artistic director of Mobile Dance e.V. Mobile Dance offers art projects at the intersection of artistic and socio-political concerns. Mobile Dance has created projects in which hundreds of artists in Germany and the UK have been employed in participatory dance.
In 1995, Jo received a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue her Master’s degree in Choreography at the University of California (UCLA). She earned a degree (First Class) in English Literature and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. In 2019, she won the Honorary Award in the German Dance Prize. Her most recent work, The Walking Projekt, received the IKARUS prize (DE) in 2021. From 2019 – 2021, Jo was on the board of Aktion Tanz: Tanz in Bildung und Gesellschaft e.V. and is currently visiting professor at HZT, Berlin (UdK/Ernst Busch).
“I am delighted to be associated artist at Aktion Tanz in 2022. I would like to use this opportunity to engage in a process of co-learning with the members and colleagues internationally, initiating a series of discursive formats exploring ideas and questions which influence the field of participatory dance in these extraordinary time. I work with co-creation as a methodology for creating social change and would like to lay a focus in my explorations upon the intersection of participatory dance and artistic activism. Later in the year, I hope to create opportunities to share and explore my recent work “The Walking Project” created with Marcelo Schmittner, Viviana Defazio and Kaveh Ghaemi in partnership with FELD Theatre in Berlin. “The Walking Project” offers a space for reflection on the experience of the pandemic and explores hopefulness as a collective action; something which we do, rather than simply have (Rebecca Solnit).”
Lucia Matzke
The Krump dancer Lucia Matzke graduated in 2021 with a master’s degree in religion and culture from the Humboldt University of Berlin. As part of research for her master’s thesis, she worked in Northern Iraq on the topic of inter-ethnic-religious understanding and “Social Cohesion in Ninewa”. For the last few years Lucia has been working as a freelance dancer and dance teacher.
She teaches Hip-Hop and Krump to children and young people, at the motion*s Tanz-und Bewegungsstudio, in cooperation with the Schilleria, Seitenwechsel e.V., as well as in the TanzZeit Jugend Company. Lucia is also an active member of the Berlin Krump community and organizes networking events for the urban dance movement (urbandanceberlin).
In the future, she would like to develop her own dance exchange projects that combine her two passions: dancing and intercultural exchange. She is particularly interested in topics such as cultural participation and equal opportunities, which she would like to explore closely as an “associated artist” in the context of the project “RECONNECT PARTICIPATIVE DANCE- CONNECTING COMMUNITIES”.
NOMADIC ACADEMY
Sahra Huby, Carolin Jüngst, Anna Konjetzky and Quindell Orton are as the team of NOMADIC ACADEMY, four of six associated artists from Aktion Tanz in 2022.
NOMADIC ACADEMY is a three-year research project (initiated by Anna Konjetzky) that works as a base-satellite system, connecting the Bavarian dance community (with a core of Munich-based artists) with supra-regional and international dance scenes and professional dancers (satellites).
Nomadic Academy is both a practical and theoretical research trip that brings diverse people, groups, and institutions together. Our working and facilitating approach is about opening reflection and experience spaces for and with people, and also translating thoughts and inquiring questions into concrete ‘trainings’, exercises and “scores” that make these topics physically explorable and accessible.
By developing formats (live and online) and bringing different ‘communities’ together, we want to share our working approaches with Aktion Tanz and its members during 2022 and create different discussion spaces in order to share our artistic approaches, challenging norms, talking about dance and developing new body concepts and trainings that are more inclusive, more diverse and thus closer to the reality of people’s lives.
For this purpose we work with choreographic approaches (e.g. from contemporary dance and contemporary performance), movement trainings, political-activist approaches’ through accessible tools like audiodescription, or with streetart and drawings.