A group of people are dancing together outdoors on cobblestones. In the foreground, a person in a grey dress raises their arms in an expressive pose, while others stand around them laughing and clapping. Many are wearing colourful clothes and summer outfits, some holding drinks in their hands. The atmosphere appears exuberant, energetic and communal.
  • Thu 25.09.25
  • Fri 26.09.25
  • WerkStadt

Der Kleine Laden WerkStadt Assembly

Art and Encounters
An urban laboratory for exchange

Ein Gruppenfoto der Band Baba ZuLa: Vier bunt gekleidete Personen posieren stehend vor einer roten Wand. Links eine maskierte Person mit schulterlangen Haaren und dem Musikinstrument Löffel in der Hand, daneben Murat Ertel mit dem Instrument Electric Saz, daneben eine tanzende Esma Ertel und rechts neben ihr Perkussionist Ümit Adakale.
  • Fri 26.09.25 18:30 h

Concert Assembly

House of Namus / BaBa ZuLA
As part of the event series ›Art & Encounters‹

A scene from the performance F*cking Future: The image shows a group of dancers dancing shirtless on a darkened stage.
  • Fri 10.10.25 20 h
  • Sat 11.10.25 20 h

Dance

Marco da Silva Ferreira
F*cking Future

Links: Buchcover IMAGE von Svea Mausolf. Das Cover is pink, oben in schwarzer Schrift und in Versalien der Titel "IMAGE", darunter der Name der Autorin "Svea Mausolf". In der unteren Bildhälfte ein Insekt mit blonden Haaren und bunten Flügeln. In der unteren Bildhälfte in schwarzer Schrift der Name des Verlags "Gutkind". Daneben das Buchcover von Laura Kriegs Album. Es zeigt Laura Krieg vor einer blauen Wand. Darüber in roter Schrift der Text "Laura Krieg" und der Name des Albums "Crepuscule".
  • Thu 23.10.25 17 h

Concert Music Assembly

Svea Mausolf / Laura Krieg
DUO:DONNERSTAG

Eine Szene aus der Performance GLITCH WITCH. In der Bildmitte drei Performer*innen auf einer Bühne, die in lila Licht getaucht ist. Auf dem Bühnenboden sind riesige, leuchtende Diskokugeln zu sehen
  • Fri 07.11.25 20 h
  • Sat 08.11.25 20 h

Dance Performance

Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods & Dance On Ensemble
GLITCH WITCH

A scene from subjoyride. The photo shows Boglárka Börcsök on stage. Boglárka has red hair and wears a bob with bangs. She is wearing a short white top with black stripes and a red skirt. She is looking to the left. In the background is a red curtain that reveals a colourful painting.
  • Fri 14.11.25 20 h
  • Sat 15.11.25 20 h

Dance Performance

Boglárka Börcsök & Andreas Bolm
subjoyride

Public Programme
A child with curly dark hair, kneeling on a floor covered with a canvas. The child has wax crayons in the hands and paints the floor with them.
Photo: Danny Willems

September at PACT

In September, you can look forward to a firework of colors and emotions at PACT! In ›WASCO!‹, a wonderfully colourful action painting performance by Lisbeth Gruwez, Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, hetpaleis, and Voetvolk, the stage belongs to ten children. With wax crayons, paint buckets, and jazz, they will build their own universe from scratch on September 11, 12, 13, and 14.
People dancing on the street.
Photo: Rage Audacity

Event Series Arts & Encounters

For the 2024/25 season, the seven theatres that make up the Alliance of International Production Houses are organising an event series focusing on the field of practice we call Arts & Encounters. The series of events will see each of our Alliance members present strategies on how to foster even greater participation and involvement on the part of groups and individuals representing our multifaceted society. Together with these “accomplices” – the people without whom our theatres would not be what they are today – we are eager to examine a number of pressing issues, including our shared lives in neighbourhoods of diversity, potential strategies of resistance in the realm of social networks, and the growing tension between generations. Last but not least, we also want to continue to explore ways of opening up our theatres even further to the public and boosting the status of these venues as valuable spaces of encounter.
Das PACT-Foyer: Im Bildvordergrund drei große Holztische mit jeweils 10 Stühlen, dahinter die weiß gekachelte Bar.
Foto: Dirk Rose

Ausschreibung: Gastronomie bei PACT Zollverein

PACT Zollverein ist ein international renommiertes Produktionshaus für Tanz, Performance, Kunst und Wissenschaft auf dem UNESCO-Welterbe Zollverein in Essen. Unser Haus steht für Offenheit, Gastfreundschaft und Vielfalt. Für unsere großzügigen Gastronomieflächen suchen wir eine engagierte, kreative gastronomische Partnerschaft, die sich mit unseren Werten identifiziert und einen lebendigen Ort für Gäste, Künstler:innen und die Nachbarschaft entwickelt. PACT versteht Gastronomie als integralen Bestandteil seiner Kulturarbeit - als sozialen und kulinarischen Begegnungsraum für ein diverses, internationales Publikum. Ein Aufenthalt in der PACT-Gastronomie soll auch ohne etwas zu konsumieren möglich sein.
Das Gebäude von PACT Zollverein von außen.
Foto: Dirk Rose

Ausschreibung: Tanzpädagog*in für das PACT Café

Seit mehr als acht Jahren lädt PACT in Kooperation mit den Kinder- und Familienzentren BLAUER ELEFANT und Kleiner Pütt einmal wöchentlich zum PACT Café ein: Jeden Mittwochnachmittag zwischen 15 und 18 Uhr wird das Foyer zum Treffpunkt, Ort für Austausch und zur freien Spielfläche. Bei kostenlosem Kaffee und Tee kommen wir gemeinsam mit den Kolleg:innen des BLAUEN ELEFANTEN und des Kleinen Pütt und den Familien, die das PACT Café besuchen, ins Gespräch und nutzen das Foyer als Verweilort. In gemütlicher Atmosphäre konnte sich das Format als eine feste Größe im Alltag zahlreicher Familien aus den verschiedensten Essener Stadtteilen etablieren. Für Kinder gibt es eine Spiellandschaft mit vielerlei Holzspielzeug, Kinderbüchern und Gesellschaftsspielen.

Zusätzlich bieten wir ein wöchentliches kostenloses Bewegungsangebot für Kinder an, das immer mittwochs zwischen 16:30 und 18 Uhr stattfinden soll. Hierfür suchen wir ab dem 1. Oktober 2025 eine:n Tanzpädagog:in auf Honorarbasis.

Artists' Centre

Residenzen: Cyril Baldy
Jana Mila Lippitz

Residencies

Running all year round since 2002, the residency programme is open to professional artists from home and abroad who work in the areas of dance, performance, media arts or music, closely linking PACT’s core strands of activity in presenting work and facilitating research and development.

Bühnensitutation
Photo: Dirk Rose

Atelier

Since 2002, PACT has been the scene of a series of special take-overs known under the label ATELIER. The on-going format invites artists from the region, Germany and abroad to present their current projects to a broadly interested audience at PACT.
homes

Fellowship

With a fellowship PACT has been supporting artists who respond to social issues through their practices, and who make an impact in these fields through their artistic propositions. Provided with time, space, and a stipend, we place a focus on encouraging exploratory processes, in which pre-existing practices are pursued, but in which new ideas can emerge and new collaborations can be initiated.

Platforms

Aerial view of a winding turquoise river flowing through a colorful autumn landscape. The image shows vivid contrasts between the bright blue water, orange and brown foliage, and green patches of vegetation, creating an abstract, painterly effect. Trees and shrubs in various fall tones are scattered across the scene.
Photo: Xuanyu Han / Getty Images

IMPACT25 Countercrafts – On Practices of Resistance, Repair and Reworlding – 17 - 20 October 2025

When artistic practice engages with social realities, it reveals its particular strength: it is always both a part of the present day and a utopian force that reaches into the sphere of the imaginable.
In times of deepening inequality, narrow discourses and authoritarian attacks on democratic achievements, there is a need for spaces in which counterstrategies can be developed and tested, affects negotiated, and complex perspectives made visible. Art creates spaces of resonance for practices of resistance, repair, and reworlding, in order to challenge dominant narratives and foreground personal ideas of belonging and the future.
A group of people from above connected with fine lines
Photo: Gramling, Design: labor b

Spot on Governance – 1/2/8 Research Forum I 04.-17. December

Spot on Governance focuses on social regulations as a condition and interface of political and sustainable visions of the future. When it comes to access to resources and representation, or forms of self-organization, data sovereignty, collaboration, monopolization, and participation, a realignment of structures, processes, and practices is required everywhere.
Blue Skies Bodies in trouble Körper in Aufruhr
Gestaltung: labor b designbüro

Blue Skies - Bodies in trouble // Lectures and talks available online

The growing impact of technology on life as we know it brings changes to our bodies, our communities and the environment – what can we do? How can we understand and shape these changes collectively? Over the course of five days, PACT and medienwerk.nrw shine an investigative light on active interdisciplinary perspectives on new narratives, speculative visions of the future and alternative practices in the company of international artists, scientists, activists, publicists, students and audience members. All lectures and talks are available to see online.
All formats

Urban Space

Kinder im Foyer bei PACT Zollverein
Photo: Dirk Rose

PACT Café

Made possible with the support of the children's and family center BLAUER ELEFANT Zollverein, the ›PACT Café‹ is a friendly informal community space for conversation and exchange as well as a wonderful free playground for families and children of all ages. There’s complementary tea and coffee for the grown-ups and a play corner generously equipped with wooden toys, books, board games and handicraft materials for children of all ages.
WerkStadt
Photo ©: Dirk Rose

WerkStadt

Initiated by PACT in close collaboration with the ›Arbeitskreis Kunst und Soziales‹ (Art and Social Engagement Working Group), the WerkStadt is a new local hub for open and ongoing communal discourse, activities and knowledge transfer.
Der Kleine Laden von außen: Es handelt sich um ein kleines Gebäude mit großer Fensterfront auf der in roter Schrift "Der Kleine Laden" steht. Dahinter ein roter transparenter Vorhang. Vor dem kleinen Laden sind zwei kleine Beistelltische zu sehen und drei Personen von hinten.
Foto: Anton Vichrov

Der Kleine Laden – exhibition space & sensory archive of the district

Starting June, ›Der Kleine Laden‹, a former shop with a generous window facade located in the centre of Katernberg, will become a platform for artistic exploration of global issues and their significance for the neighbourhood, its residents and the Ruhr Area as a whole. The theme for 2025 is ›water‹. Local and regional artists were invited to submit works that examine water as a natural phenomenon, resource, and/or cultural symbol from different perspectives. 
All formats