Essen Dance Week 2024

From 7 to 13 October 2024 the cultural office of Essen, together with the Essen-based dance scene, is organising a week of dance across the whole city. The aim was to strengthen dance in Essen and, in a myriad of ways, make it visible. The programme comprises a series of activities such as open studios, performances, networking opportunities, urban dance battles and much more organised around this year’s bestowal of the German Dance Award at the Aalto-Theater on 12 October 2024, and the Kultursalon at PACT the evening before.

Throwback ›Memories & Resistance‹

Current and former residents at PACT provided insights into artistic working processes. With Idylla Silmarovi, Edgar Kanakykõ Xakriabá, iSaAc Espinoza Hidrobo, Roman Jungblut and Qusay Awad.

Recap - songscapes and other narratives

The ›songscapes and other narratives‹ festival explores voices, stories and melodies that connect the past with the present. The individual works invite you to listen to forgotten, found and imagined stories and to trace the contradictory nature of human feelings of belonging and community, different motivations and forms of relationships.

Recap - life.like

What spheres exist beyond the dividing lines of the living and non-living? What relationships and spaces of possibility emerge between technologies and artistic practices? In a transdisciplinary program of lectures, talks, installations and performances, 'life.like' questioned the boundaries between machines, objects and biological systems.

SOUND ON Vol. 2 Aftermovie

Bei ›SOUND ON Vol. 2‹ kamen über 30 junge Musikhungrige zusammen und haben aus zwei Workshoptagen praktische Skills, Selbstbewusstsein und Kraft für eigene Schritte in der Musik- und Medienwelt geschöpft. Was war los? Das Team von BeatBasteln führte ins Thema ›Producing‹ ein, der erfahrene Raffi Balboa (OK Kid) coachte in ›Producing für Fortgeschrittene‹ und Gîn Bali gab Einblick in ihre Philosophie beim Auflegen und zeigte ihren Workflow an den CDJs, während Ella O’Brien-Coker handfeste Tipps für das (Self-)Management in der Musikbranche teilte. Rapper Horst Wegener aka Jesué feilte mit den Teilnehmer:innen an Songs und bei Joël-Joâo ging es beim Songwriting in die Tiefe. Dazu teilten Benjamin und Anna von Figur Lemur wertvolles Know-How zu Musikvideos und Live-Sound.

Retrospect – Kids Days

During PACT's ›KIDS DAYS‹ the whole house transformed into a swirling playground for our youngest visitors and their families: Rotating circles, colorful lights, music, and juggling combined to create a diverse program that evoked both intense emotions and moments of serenity.

Retrospective: Peer to Peer – A Month of Media Art in NRW

Marco Donnarumma on ›I Am Your Body‹

»Since being diagnosed, ten years ago, with a degenerative condition that is making me increasingly deaf, I've been reflecting intensively on the inescapable multiplicity of one's perception, embodiment, identity. I pondered, of course, also about how my artistic work could respond to such a earthly, factual matter as a drastic bodily change and the inevitability of everything that comes with it.«

Ends of Worlds

How can we say something about the future through the lens of the past? Michiel
Vandevelde examines the recent history of western modern and contemporary dance,
from Isadora Duncan to Anna Halprin. Their dances and choreographies are read as
codes and signs from the past that infiltrate the future. Which ideological remains are
reflected through these dances? What if the traces of these dances are to survive
humankind as we know it? How would they be interpreted in the future?

Tim Etchells im Interview zu ›Under Bright Light‹

Forced Entertainment’s ›Under Bright Light‹ is a Sisyphean slapstick, a warehouse somewhere in a cartoon hell, a brash video game on a broken loop. In conversation with PACT, Tim Etchells talks about the rocky road leading up to the creation of the piece.

Mette Ingvartsen on ›The Dancing Public‹

Evoking collective moments of dancing manias from the past, Mette Ingvartsen explores movement ecstasy within a social gathering in the aftermath of a pandemic. Her solo explodes the solitary confinement of 2020 with an intense mixture of unstoppable movements, incessant music and high-paced rhythms of words and chanting. A dance feast, a concert of spoken word poetry or a physical frenzy until exhaustion, this shape-shifting piece incites questions: Can a dance hijack and reshuffle the social corpus of the public? What is the need for excess and movement we might feel in our bodies today? Are we ready to be high on life again?

Meg Stuart on the making of her piece ›CASCADE‹

In August 2020, Meg Stuart was working at PACT on her new creation ›CASCADE‹ which would have premiered at the Ruhrtriennale 2020. In September 21 it can be seen on stage at PACT as part of the Ruhrtriennale 2021.