Students, autumn semester 2022

Ivana Balabanova

Give your body back to yourself.

Take it from your parents,
Take it from your brothers and sisters,
Take it from your grandmothers and grandfathers, 
Take it from your aunts and uncles, 
Take it from your children.
Take your body from your friends and enemies, 
Take it from your audience,
Take it from your teachers and your students.
Take it from the thiefs,
Take it back from whoever took it.

It is yours. 

Photo: Portrait of Ivana Balabanova

    Soraya Leila Emery

    Create in order to see.
    Keep looking for things where there is nothing.
    Reshape reality to make the poetry of the ordinary come alive.
    A space-making endeavour for the unseen, the unknowable, the imperceptible, the ephemerality.
    Create to give sustenance to the soul – ceaselessly, wildly dreaming, craving and loving.

    Follow the curiosity with humility.
    Yes to infinite pleasure – skim, arouse and soothe.
    Experience the freedom of shapeshifting, or provoke when necessary.
    Vulnerability is power.
    Collaborate horizontally.

    As long as you’re starting anew – always, at every moment – you can break the rules.
    Sometimes challenging the rules is just widening the rules.
    At times there are no rules.

    Photo: Portrait of Soraya Leila Emery

      Diane Gemsch

      I am manifesting that dance offers expression.
      Expression of unspoken energy. Of the wordless. And of the obvious.
      To be a language, that you speak, and that speaks to you.
      Everything and nothing.
      As simple, pure and complex.
      Versatile and maybe as well rigid.

      I am manifesting that you may see the motion in movement in
      you, me and everything alive.

      I am manifesting my dance to be radical.
      An act of love.
      Expressing life in all its ways, shapes and forms.
      The ugly, the wild, the sensitive, the authentic liar and the queen.

      Let there be chaos.
      Let there be structure.
      Feel the discomfort of the unknown.
      And find peace in it.
      Lean back into it, to let black holes give birth to the new.

      be here. there. present.
      see the geometrical forms that shape life.

      I want dance that breaks the rules and that finds comfort in the rules.

      I am manifesting that dance connects.
      As a practice, as a tool.
      To connect you to you.
      To connect you to the other

      Photo: Portrait of Diane Gemsch

        Levin Huesler

        What is dance? Do I even know?
        Is it an expression? A statement? A form of resistance?
        A conglomeration of emotions, feelings, and thoughts?

        Could it be all of these or none at all?

        The more I learn, the less I seem to know?
        Making me feel like a child that discovered the Easter Bunny isn’t real.

        Is stupidity measured by a lack of knowledge?

        Am I less of an artist because I don’t know who you are talking about?
        Do I need to know all that came before me?

        Does knowing more make you a better artist?

        Is it perfect because others like it? If I give them what they want, will I
        be happy? Is a smile or applause necessary? Could it be better?

        Does my artistic worth rely on others?

        This leads me to the questions of:
        Will I be able to tell the stories that I aim to tell? Will I be able to stay
        authentically me, if I take the advice of others? Is it possible to
        translate an idea or cerebral experience into a physical creation?
        Can I make a difference, an impact, a change?

        Is it acceptable? Can I do this? Will I succeed? Will they understand?

        Yes.

        Photo: Portrait of Levin Huesler