Light. Something appears: an image, a formation, movement, development, transformation. Dark. And light. Something new: it is massive, it turns, it vibrates, it encompasses everything. Dark. And light. Surprise. And dark. And light. And dark.

"Join" makes a simple and yet difficult attempt: How can dancers come together at completely different points in their personal and professional trajectory? How can an ensemble of professionals working at the highest level dance together with a group of students? How do people come together in their diversity? What connections are possible beyond a standardising and unifying norm? "Join" takes a step in this direction for dance. Students from the city where the performance takes place dance together with the ensemble of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company. The dramaturgy of the evening is determined by instant blackouts, which lend the scenes a sense of immediacy and constantly challenge the audience's perception.

"Join" is funded by the "Fonds Zero" programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. This is intended to support cultural institutions in trying out climate-friendly forms of production and new aesthetics with the lowest possible climate impact. The CO2-emissions are recorded during the process. Any emerging potential for cutting emissions is intended to make our working methods more sustainable in the future.

„Join“ unternimmt einen einfachen und doch schwierigen Versuch: Wie können Tänzer*innen an völlig unterschiedlichen Punkten ihrer Entwicklung zusammenkommen?

Ioannis

Choreography

Dancers of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company

Dance students from the respective city

Dance

Pauline

Choreographic assistance

Philipp

Dramaturgy

Emanuele

Music

Stage and Lighting

Thomas

Costumes

Smaralia

Rehearsal manager

Join

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam

This is a full circle moment. William Forsythe is regarded as one of the most important choreographers of the late 20th century. His innovative approach to the tradition of ballet has opened up directions for dance that would otherwise be difficult to imagine. From 1984 to 2004, Forsythe directed the Ballett Frankfurt and from 2005 to 2015 The Forsythe Company, which was later renamed Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company.

Forsythe is now returning to the place of this legacy of many years and is developing a new work with the company for the first time. Starting from a toolbox of improvisational construction, he creates a structural order which, instead of signifying something else, offers an aesthetic pleasure in itself. Like in a kaleidoscope, patterns emerge that are always unpredictable and surprising yet within a clear framework. The dancers explore the movement system that they themselves form to its limits. The audience is invited to follow this exploration and experience the work as a living, breathing system.

William Forsythe has been active in the field of choreography for over 50 years. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st century art form. Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 1976. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the Ballet Frankfurt after which he founded and directed The Forsythe Company until 2015. Forsythe's deep interest in the fundamental principles of organisation of choreography has led him to produce a wide range of projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation.

While his work for the stage resides in the repertoire of ensembles worldwide, his installations are presented internationally in exhibitions and museums. Forsythe has been the recipient of numerous awards, which include the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, Der FAUST German Theatre Award and the Kyoto Price, all for lifetime achievement.

William

Cyril

Tanja

Light

Dorothee

Undertainment

Live-choreography, the methodology of Ioannis Mandafounis, allows for a choreography to be created on the spot. In “Lisa” this includes the dancers individually choosing when to enter and exit the stage. From this simple arrangement a lot of different situations can arise. The sudden appearing and disappearing creates surprising changes, a one-on-one encounter between two dancers might abruptly turn into a group scene. Someone is suddenly left alone and an emotional solo starts.

The piece combines these dramaturgical principles with poems by the lyricist Osip Mandelshtam from the Soviet Union and music by Gabriel Fauré. Historic costumes from the thirties provide a visual context to the texts which will be heard in the Russian original as well as in up to eight different other languages. In this way shorter and longer narrative threads emerge, which the audience can choose to follow – or not.

Is this a crime scene? Or is it just business as usual? Is it better to be polite and say hello or to hide in the bushes as quickly as possible? Keeping both feet on the ground is of little use, if reality itself is shaking.

Concept

Gabriele

Piano

Lisa

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Teatri di Reggio Emilia

The piece is part of the longer-term development being pursued by Mandafounis as Artistic Director of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company. The ensemble works on the basis of his methodology, which enables the dancers to create a new choreography live on stage from their bodies, movements and actions, in every performance and new moment on stage.

In addition to this focus on improvisation, Mandafounis repeatedly undertakes unusual experiments in his productions: be it that he combines improvised dance with narrative dramaturgies, or focuses on collaboration with dance students, or allows the audience to get very close to the ensemble in a changing performance with different stations. "Here Is There" will also be part of this exploration of the boundaries of what a dance evening can be.

The new piece "Here is There" by Ioannis Mandafounis celebrate its world premiere on 04.06.2025 in Frankfurt at Bockenheimer Depot.

Here is There

Schauspiel Frankfurt

Auditorium Conciliazione

Sergei Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto is considered a particular challenge for pianists. Beyond the technical virtuosity, which certainly contributes to its appeal, the music is characterised by an extraordinary emotional complexity. In his creation for the DFDC, Thomas Hauert brings the concerto to the stage in the 1982 recording with Martha Argerich. The ensemble immerses itself in the music and enters into a playful dialogue with it. The dancers interpret the music from their subjective perception with their bodies and engage with the rhythm, dynamics and emotional contrasts. At the same time, they interact with each other in a complex interplay.

Hauert brings with him principles and rules for improvisation that have been developed working with his own company ZOO, over more than 25 years, which rely less on control and more on the collective intelligence of everyone involved. This approach is juxtaposed with Rachmaninoff in an interesting way. While the latter is an exemplary figure of creation that sort of is above it all, and authoritatively dictates to the musicians, including the soloist, Hauert's practice is distinguished from such a superelevated concept of genius in favour of a radically collaborative creative process. The dance does not perceive the music as a command, but uses it as a stimulus, as a playground, as a counterpart in a constantly renewing and surprising dialogue.

Thomas Hauert founded his company ZOO in Brussels in 1998. ‘Cows in Space’ was his first piece, which was immediately honoured at the Rencontres de Seine-Saint-Denis/Bagnolet. Since then, the company has developed more than 21 pieces. In addition to his work for ZOO, Hauert has been a guest choreographer for the Zurich Ballet, Toronto Dance Theatre, Candoco Dance Company, Ballet Junior de Genève and the Ballet de Lorraine, among others.

Inspired by his choreographic work, Hauert developed an internationally recognised teaching method based on his movement research with ZOO. Since 2013, he has been the artistic director of the Bachelor's programme in contemporary dance at La Manufacture, the Lausanne School of Performing Arts.

Playing with Sergei, Martha and the Others

Forsythe / Hauert

Mercat de les Flors

Human encounters are always unpredictable. You eye one another, rush ahead, wait, circle each other, stumble, suddenly stop, start again - and maybe realize, ah, yes, we can understand each other.

The scenes in "À la carte" use different props, sound effects, music and lighting to allow for a variety of dance styles, atmospheres and topics. The starting point is always the encounter between the ensemble and the audience, just as if they were cooking a colorful menu together. The framework for this is Ioannis Mandafounis' dance methodology, which makes it possible to create a choreography live on stage. Almost nothing that the dancers do in this production is predetermined. All movements arise from the meeting of the different bodies.

"À la carte" was the first production by the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company under the artistic direction of Ioannis Mandafounis. With this work, the ensemble presents its dance practice, which is based as much on the exchange between the individual artists as it is on communication with the audience.

Manon

Musical direction

Anna

À la carte

Teatro Stabile

Theater Freiburg

Hellerau - European Centre for the Arts

De Singel International Arts Centre

A celebration of the small but mighty, transforming everyday life movements into dance, Pizzicato invites kids to join in the treasure hunt, open the junk drawers, and discover new sounds and movements. Listening to the music not only with their ear, watching the dance not only with their eyes, but with their whole body. We tell the story of a tiny little world of secret places and magical objects that have the power to transform reality. Every movement can become a choreographic event, suddenly becoming a dance.

Viola and bow usually go hand in hand, but "Pizzicato" shows off another side of the instrument. Performed entirely in pizzicato, it highlights the virtuosity and expressiveness of plucking and reveals the dancing rhythms hidden in everyday objects. A performance of embodied sound, opening a subtle and organic dialogue between music and dance for the little ones.

NINA VALLON is a Swiss-Brazilian choreographer and dancer. She pursues an interdisciplinary approach to choreography and performance. She danced for The Forsythe Company and shaped the independent contemporary dance and performance scene in Frankfurt by founding ID_Frankfurt, the Rough Cuts Festival and the Z-Zentrum. She is currently collaborating with American violist Julie Michael on various projects and searching for new ways to combine music and dance.

Nina

Julie

Viola

Marta

Stage

Pizzicato

Bockenheimer Depot

Rosalind Crisp's artistic passion is in using compositional tools to ‘forget’ movements and reveal instead how they can be forever reforming themselves when freed from set patterns and meanings. Her practice works with the constant changingness that relates to the reality of our material bodies - and that reflects, more and more starkly, the world that we are ‘undoing’. Her compositional tools invite dancers to absorb, recreate and transmit this continual changingness. She will engage the dancers of DFDC not with the psychology of what they experience, but with the corporeality of it.

As one principle to enable that vulnerability the dancers will inhabit the transitions where something is not yet one thing nor another, while drawing the audience's attention to how movement is forming, rather than to the moves thereby produced.In this practice rupture is as valid and important as flow. The work is presented in a setting of proximity where the audience can move and shift their own bodies throughout the space. Pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy will improvise live, adding his similarly visceral treatment of the piano to the dance.

ROSALIND CRISP is a choreographer and dancer based in Orbost, Australia. In 1996 she established the Omeo Dance studio in Sydney as a place for her choreographic research. The studio became the home of the experimental dance scene in Sydney for ten years. In 2003 Crisp was invited by Carolyn Carlson to become the first Associate Artist of her ‘Atelier de Paris’. The Atelier managed and toured Rosalind’s company’s works throughout France and Europe (2004-2014), and facilitated her collaboration with French, European and Australian artists.

Rosalind has created over 25 major works, numerous events and performances, internationally toured her work to hundreds of festivals and is sought after for her dance methodology. Her extensive body of work critically questions dance through a rigorous practice of live composition, in all its certainty and doubt. She situates the dancer as an art maker. Her works emerge from sustained studio practice and long-term exchange with a multi-disciplinary team of colleagues. Rosalind Crisp is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in recognition of her influence on a generation of Australian dancers, an Honorary Fellow to the University of Melbourne-VCA.

Rosalind

Neues Werk

As much as Ioannis Mandafounis is influenced by the innovations that were made in dance improvisation in the second half of the 20th century, his artistic journey is also that of a ballet dancer. To pay tribute to this double heritage he will create a duo that contrasts classical dance technique with the development of improvisational dance and his own method of live-choreography. This is a deep dive both into dance history and into the biography of a dancer. The passion, the grit, the endurance, glamour, doubts, triumphs and injuries – it’s all fiction and it’s all true.

Byways

Two travellers from outer space stop off on Earth with a mission: to find out what it means to be human. They have already gathered a few facts: for example, that there are things like time and money. They have learned how humans move from cartoons. But everything they do seems strange; the way they speak sounds a bit wrong and the way they dress is somehow funny. A few questions remain unanswered, and not just for the aliens.

"What's up, Earthling?" is a play for everyone aged 5 and older. It is a humorous, playful attempt to explore human habits, by the two choreographers and dancers Caroline Beach and Saida Makhmudzade.

CAROLINE BEACH is a choreographer, dancer and musician. She completed her master's degree in choreography at the Palucca University of Dance Dresden and her master's degree at the AdBK Nuremberg. She has shown her work in a wide variety of venues: theatres, galleries, off-spaces and in the digital realm.

SAIDA MAKHMUDZADE is a dancer and choreographer. She creates playful, conceptual works rooted in somatic research. She uses humour as a stylistic device to create space for the subtle and delicate, but also to get to the bottom of serious questions.

Caroline

Saida

Choreography and Performance

Amelie

Josef

Stage and Costume

Kati

Prodcution Management

Was geht, Erdling?

Maison de la danse

Maybe you can’t and shouldn’t try to explain a choreographic work. When asked, “what is the work about?”, the accurate answer would be: “well, I have no idea, we have to wait and see”. The only thing pre-determined when it comes to choreography, the way Emanuel Gat sees and practices it, is the HOW. The WHAT, the WHY, the WHEREOF, are all elements which emerge from the thing as it is happening.

Asking what a choreographic work is about, is like asking what the score is before a football match has even begun. And yet inviting to such a live experience should contain that which has actually already been decided on.

Emanuel Gat’s work with the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company will engage with two of the Lieder from Gustav Mahler’s song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde”. Two parts, with “Der Einsame im Herbst” and the last Lied of the cycle, “Der Abschied”, frame a third central part that is without music. Completely different every time it is being performed, the work follows principles in which the choreographic future cannot be designed, but has to be discovered by the dancers each time they engage with the work. Welcome, enjoy the experience!

EMANUEL GAT was born in Israel in 1969 and started working as an independent choreographer in 1994. Over the following ten years, through numerous projects, collaborations and creation processes, Gat developed a unique and personal approach to choreography and dance making, setting the foundations for his artistic vision and laying the groundwork for his future body of work. He founded his company, Emanuel Gat Dance, in Tel Aviv in 2004, and later chose to settle in France. The company has gained international recognition for its unique voice and has toured regularly to the four corners of the world, to great critical acclaim.

For the past 25 years Gat’s work has been presented in most of the leading dance venues and festivals all around the world, danced by a strong and diverse group of long-term collaborators. Parallel to his choreographic work, Gat designs the lighting to all of his works, making it an integral component of his creative process. During his entire career, Gat has developed a rich methodological set of tools and an original pedagogical approach to dance making. He is regularly invited to teach and collaborate with the world's leading dance schools and institutions, as well as offering regular opportunities for young dancers and makers to immerse themselves in his practice, through internships, workshops and master classes.

"Der Abschied" is a new piece by the Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat and celebrates its world premiere on 23 October 2025 at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt.

Schedule

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Undertainment

Lisa

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Undertainment

Lisa

Join

Join

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Lisa

Undertainment

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Undertainment

Lisa

À la carte

À la carte

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Lisa

Undertainment

Mandafounis / Forsythe

Undertainment

Lisa

Abschied

Abschied

Forsythe / Hauert

Undertainment

Playing with Sergei, Martha and the Others

Abschied

Abschied

Byways

Neues Werk

Neues Werk

Join

Join

Byways

Neues Werk

Neues Werk

Was geht, Erdling?

Was geht, Erdling?

Pizzicato

Pizzicato

Here is There

Here is There

Here is There

Here is There