During the lecture Anna will try to answer the question: Is critical writing still "allowed" if the goal is to support the dance scene? Or is critique even needed to help contemporary dance to persist?
The Berlin contemporary dance scene is internationally famous for its energy and its many diverse colors—that is the great diversity of dance languages, dramaturgical ideas, performance formats, types of dancers, dance makers, and audience groups. In Berlin, the self-proclaimed "capital of contemporary dance", constant efforts have to be made to raise more political and public attention for the younger art form of contemporary dance. But in the daily struggle for attracting attention in a world of permanent distractions, the often small and for most people still "strange" and "avantgardistic" performances need communicative support to find their audiences. Writing about dance is one important way to help and there are new (short) programs that foster dance reviews.
The lecture will also show examples of different formats of online dance reviews (text based) plus video based forms of public communication as well as some often participative and itself physical forms of dance mediation that have developed over the past few years to overcome the fear of "not knowing what to say" about contemporary dance, the "silent", but sometimes seemingly very intellectual art form.
