Dance Nexus Festival 24

Taksuki Takada

Dance Nexus Festival, our first public event, took place on 30 & 31 August 2024, for which we transformed the Kunstverein Bellevue Saal Wiesbaden into a temporary theatre. A total of nine performances, seven workshops, an installation, a panel discussion, a joint brunch and a closing party came together, involving 33 artists from the local scene as dancers, performers, choreographers, composers, DJs and teachers. For the opening, Yana Prinsloo (University of Mainz) moderated the panel discussion and spoke with Jan Deck (LaProf Hessen), Mareike Uhl (ID Frankfurt), as well as Mareike Buchmann and Johannes Schropp (artists, members of Dance Nexus) about the current situation of independent dance artists in Wiesbaden, Mainz and the surrounding area, alongside possible, sustainable paths for the scene into the future. The festival was artistically accompanied by the installation ‘Archaeologies of Body Histories’, a choreographic research project by Lena Kunz. In addition to two performance evenings in the fully packed hall, we were happy about the lively participation in the workshops and moved by the inspiring conversations and overwhelmingly positive feedback from the audience.