What is the work of and for the future? How do we need to transform and redefine our strategies, environments and relations within the realms of work and life, so they can bring us toward a future community that we desire and identify with? For the 30th edition of Tanztage Berlin together with the association ZTB Berlin (celebrating its 20th anniversary), we are reviving a format envisioning alternatives to what the system of art production offers us and maybe even solutions to problems it creates. Its first part, moderated by Kasia Wolińska, will be dedicated to questions of work culture and the future of labour. Its second part moderated by Simo Vassinen will be dealing with the topic of mental health among Berlin’s dancing communities.

Do you feel overworked, overstimulated, underrated and underrepresented? Time has come to step up and step in – into the field of possible futures! With the first part of the Future Workshop, we want to engage with a discussion that will eventually transform how we work, and for the sake of what. And while theorizing about it we attempt to do it. We propose three statements from invited guests: Angela Alvez, Joana Tischkau, Frosina Dimovska and Dunja Crnjanski, that will be followed by a conversation. To our guest, we direct an invitation to depart from a personal story to further reflect on it in a shared struggle. And, as ensuring a future is what we want, we propose tools and strategies tested and developed by our fellows, so together we can think of what has to be done to improve our work lives, our work culture and our future perspectives.

The event is a departure point for the working group run by Kasia Wolińska / ZTB e.V. which will start regular work in February 2021 and will aim at initiating reforms within Berlin’s free dance scene and its work culture. All interested parties are invited to join the group. No previous experience or ZTB membership is required.

The event will last a total of 2 hours with a 10-minute break and a 15-minute audience discussion and will take place as a Zoom webinar. It will also be streamed to vimeo and facebook. The panel will be held in English spoken language with audio description. Irina Bondas and Stefan Schade will translate into German spoken language. Oya Ataman and Svea Loy will translate into German sign language. Questions from the audience can be asked in English and German spoken or written language as well as in German sign language. The chat and raise-hand function can be used for this purpose. If you use the raise-hand function, we will let you join the discussion and turn your audio and video on. Questions can also be submitted on vimeo and facebook via the chat and commenting function. For questions or more information, please contact Gina Jeske at or 030 27 89 00 35.

Kasia Wolińska – (born 1990) –  choreographer, dancer, and writer born in Gdańsk, living in Berlin.  Graduate of the Dance Department at Music Academy, Łódź, Cultural Anthropology Department at University of Łódź and Dance, Context, Choreography Program at HZT Berlin. She collaborated with, among others, Agata Siniarska, Anna Nowicka, Rosalind Crisp, Anton Vidokle, Gosia Wdowik, Rafał Dominik. In the years 2013-2018, she ran a performative project Hi Mary. Since 2018, she has been writing a blog on dance and politics www.danceisaweapon.com. Together with Faerieda Sandstrom she founded The Future Body At Work. She is a board member of ZTB e.V., the organization representing the interests of the free scene of dance in Berlin.

Angela Alves is a performer, artist, activist and mother based in Berlin. She studied Dance at ArtEZ (NL), Science of Dance at Freie Universität Berlin and she is interested in perceptions of healthy and sick, as well as in article 3 of the German constitution. Therefore her work deals with issues of self-care, rebellion and the question of how to find comfort in the mode and art of unavailabilty. In 2014 she founded TURN. Neue Bewegung für Multiple Sklerose e.V. – an association that organises art projects, dance workshops and round tables.

JOANA TISCHKAU dances. Her first dancing memory goes back to Kaoma’s 1989 Hit Lambada which she moved to at a children’s birthday party. This experience led her to enroll at her neighborhood dance school for training in Jazzdance, Hip Hop and Videoclip Dancing. In 2010 she decided to make it official so she went on to study contemporary dance and theatre at Coventry University in the UK and choreography and performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen. Her artistic practice is a hybrid mash-up where the writings of bell hooks meet beatboxing, whiteness is turned into a work-out, youtube tutorials become here only source material and where Roberto Blanco is hailed as an afro-german hero, subversively distorting socio-cultural practices, codes and meanings inscribed onto bodies of color within the context of pop culture, western art and dance history. Joana works independently as a choreographer, dancer and community dance artist and in teaching. One of her recent productions, PLAYBLACK is a copy of the 1990 Kids Television program Mini Playback Show and was invited to the Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2020. PLAYBLACK formed the conceptual breeding ground for BEING PINK AIN’T EASY.

Dunja Crnjanski and Frosina Dimovska are artist from Novi Sad, Serbia. They are members of Pokretnica collective and co-founders of the organization Practicable – platform for contemporary art and culture, working in self-organization and self-education in the field of contemporary dance and performing arts in Novi Sad. They are co-curators and co-organizers of Pokretnica festival of contemporary dance and performance (since 2017), focused on developing structures and improving conditions of work on local contemporary dance scene.

They are also members of Per.Art organization from Novi Sad, active as performers, artistic collaborators, and educators in the frame of Art&Inclusion program which develops, presents and promotes the work of artists with and without intellectual disability.