DIN A13
“MYspace SAFEspace NOspace – Part 2”
26.09.2025, 20:00 Premiere
27.09.2025, 20:00 hrs
28.09.2025, 19:00 hrs
Premiere 2025 – Part 2 of the two-part production
“Safe Space” – a valuable protected space, an intimate bubble, a safe cosmos within the so-called “normative world”. Who shapes this space, who is allowed to use it, who is left out? DIN A 13 tanzcompany explores these questions with the two-part production “MYspace SAFEspace NOspace” – bringing performers with physical disabilities on stage with artists from the ballroom community (LGBTQ+).
Part 1 of the overall concept was realized in 2024 as an artistic intervention in public space: A mobile “Safe Space” container was positioned in various districts of Cologne. Dancers sought a performative exchange with passers-by and local residents. They reacted in very different ways: curious, irritated, hostile and even aggressive. These encounters gave rise to new choreographic impulses, which will now be explored in greater depth in part 2, the stage version.
Part 2 premieres in September 2025 and develops the performative experiences from the public space further – now within a changeable, non-classical stage space that is in constant motion.
Three protagonists personally invite the audience to become part of these spaces – or separate them from the close-up insights they have just gained. The production questions the concepts of closeness and distance, privacy and publicity – and shows how fragile and permeable the boundaries of “safe spaces” can be.
Encounter and demarcation, intimacy and irritation alternate. The dynamic between the performers and the audience creates a dense, immersive experience that is constantly being reconstituted. An interplay of exclusive inclusions and the exclusions that accompany them.
Participants:
Artistic direction & choreography: Gerda König (D)
Co-choreography: Charlotte Virgile (F)
Dramaturgy: Marje Hirvonen (FIN)
Performance: Danjel Sesar (D), David Mendez (D), Sophia Hankings-Evans (D)
Stage design: Lea Dietrich (D)
Costume: Monika Odenthal (D)
Music: Frank Schulte (D)
Film documentation: Gerhard Schick (D)
Lighting design: Marco Wehrspann (D)
Homepage: Andrea Hoffmann (D)
Press and public relations: Neurohr & Andrä (D)
Social media and financial management: John Herman (D)
Creative Producer: Anastasia Olfert (D)
Supported by:
Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Kunststiftung NRW, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Kämpgen-Stiftung.
DIN A 13 tanzcompany receives top-level funding from the state of NRW.
About DIN A 13 tanzcompany
DIN A 13 tanzcompany is one of the few dance ensembles internationally whose members are made up of dancers with and without physical disabilities. Since 1995, DIN A 13 tanzcompany and its artistic director and choreographer Gerda König, in artistic collaboration with choreographer Gitta Roser from 1999 to 2020, have been enriching the dance world with new aesthetic categories that continually challenge and question the usual ways of seeing contemporary dance. Presumed boundaries and evaluations between physical characteristics and top dance performance are dissolved in choreographic images that provocatively pose questions and invite artistic dialog.
The focus of the artistic work is on the exploration and visualization of the movement quality of “other bodies”, which is used in its diversity for the choreographic work, expanding it and thereby enriching the spectrum of contemporary dance.
www.din-a13.de/en
