By the Baltic Sea

View of the shipyard in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

14.08.2023

Adventures between sun, sails and clouds: How the Perform[d]ance initiative is bringing dance to rural areas

Elisabeth Nehring

It is one of those pleasant spring days in Stralsund, when instead of a cool sea breeze, the wind brings mild sea air to the small town on the Baltic Sea. A hint of gold mixes with the clarity of the midday light, and there is a slight sheen on the rooftops. Families stroll, teenagers roam the streets; as everywhere else in the world where there is something to explore, the tourists can be recognized by their sometimes astonished, sometimes searching looks and their often very purposeful stride through the old town. Seagulls screech in the harbor. You have to be careful that they don’t steal the fish from your fish sandwiches.

View of Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

Once a wealthy and powerful trading center, Stralsund is now a World Heritage City – a magnet for all who loves the historic flair of northern Germany. Anyone who wants to visit the sea and the islands of Hiddensee or Rügen will pass through here – for an ice cream, a stroll through the old town, or a visit to the Ozeaneum, the famous marine museum with its giant aquariums and elegantly curved facade.

Tourists also occasionally visit the theater, but the majority of the audience at the four-genre theater which has been operating under the name Theater Vorpommern together with the theaters in Greifswald and Putbus since 2006 are locals. The establishment’s numerous changes in directorship have been witness by a predominantly older audience of regulars – only choreographer Ralf Dörnen has remained in office as ballet director for more than a quarter of a century and has determined the fate of the ballet ensemble since 1997. In the meantime, he has become one of the rare choreographers to have been in charge of the entire theater at the same time.

Old Market Square, Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

Old iron foundry

Peter van Heesen

Stralsund’s status as something of a hotspot for contemporary dance on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea and a cultural anchor point for the region is largely thanks to the Perform[d]ance association, founded in 2001. The organization is headquartered in the Theaterpädagogisches Zentrum Mecklenburg-Vorpommern theater in the center of the old town and radiates a wide range of activities in the field of artistic dance education and dance art for all ages far into the surrounding area, into the villages and towns of the Western Pomerania-Rügen district.

Children dancing at Old Market Square in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

Claas Früchtenicht playing the piano on Old Market Square

Elisabeth Nehring

This may not make Stralsund a dance metropolis, but it is “definitely not a backwater” either – at least according to the young man who has set up a piano in the middle of Old Market Square and is filling the spring afternoon with his improvisations as if it were a matter of course. Claas Früchtenicht is twenty years old and grew up in Stralsund; he knows every corner and every stone here.
Why did he choose this really big stage on the most beautiful of all Stralsund’s squares? By chance, he laughs, adding that he had just been looking for a spot far enough away from shops and restaurants so that no one would chase him away. And he wanted his audience to stand behind him so he’d be less likely to have stage fright. On Old Market Square, everyone always positions themselves so that they have a view of St. Nicholas Church and the famous Town Hall with its exquisite facade. It was only after he started playing that he discovered that the very center of the square is an acoustic amplifier and that even the most delicate piano notes played there can still be heard from afar.

Claas Früchtenicht is not only a street musician, but also a dancer. One who soaks up all influences like a sponge and moves tirelessly and with relish. He has been dancing since he was four years old – first in children’s classes, later with the Perform[d]ance youth company. Now he occasionally teaches the younger generation and is on his way to becoming a professional dancer. He describes why he has never considered Stralsund provincial when it comes to dance: “When I go to dance classes here, I know that I will always learn something new. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with the teachers who teach here all the time or those who only stay for a while. Sometimes someone who has come from far away stands in front of me and shows me who they are and what you can do with your body. The fact that you can experience so many different influences at Perform[d]ance has given me so much. And that’s why I kept coming back to the classes: I knew they would never be the same!”

Claas Früchtenicht

Peter van Heesen

What he receives, he passes on. Claas has just come back from the Am Mühlgraben nursing home which is home primarily to people with dementia. Together with his former teacher – dancer and choreographer Dörte Bähr – he goes there once a week as part of Perform[d]ance to work with the elderly. Through their efforts, the pair are helping residents, some of whom were previously barely able to move , to regain their mobility and independence. The program is neither physiotherapy nor gymnastics or dance, but a kind of joyful, playful, and very individualized body work that allows people to test their own physical abilities and, in some cases, regain them for a while.

Perform[d]ance dance class

Peter van Heesen

For Claas, the work he does in the nursing home does not differ greatly from the children’s dance classes in terms of fundamentals: not learning steps, not dancing right away, but instead playing a lot and getting to know your own body. Dörte Bähr, he says, showed him how to move without getting injured – and above all, how to have fun doing it. It is not difficult to predict a great future as a dancer for the twenty-year-old. As Früchtenicht says, he was “socialized through dance – and grew up with Perform[d]ance.”

Peter van Heesen

Perform[d]ance was founded more than 20 years ago by choreographer Stefan Hahn and cultural manager Dörte Wolter. Now in her early forties, the latter grew up in Stralsund, while Hahn is twenty years older and originally from Hesse. After studying choreography in Berlin, he first went to Anklam for a production and then moved to Stralsund.

Perform[d]ance dance class

Peter van Heesen

As artistic director, Stefan Hahn puts a lot of energy into Perform[d]ance: He teaches classes in the studios of the Theaterpädagogisches Zentrum, stages dance pieces with the youth company, and comes up with infectious ideas, and sometimes grand visions. He is a “character,” as the British would say with elegant restraint, rather than “everybody’s darling,” but also someone who passionately pursues his goals and tirelessly inspires his students to dance. For Früchtenicht, he is an older friend and mentor who – in addition to his love of dance – has taught him one thing above all: If you want to have fun and be successful in this art, you need discipline and continuity.

Stefan Hahn

Peter van Heesen

Dörte Wolter is a clever and persistent networker of ideas who keeps track of everything; she is the association’s manager – one of her many professional commitments that take her everywhere. She travels a lot, sees a lot, takes dance pieces she has produced to international festivals, and also networks Perform[d]ance with artists and initiatives in other German states and internationally.

Perform[d]ance dance class

Peter van Heesen

Over the years, the two have established and gradually expanded a large number of contacts – first in the city and the county, then in Western Pomerania and throughout the entire state. Perform[d]ance’s most productive and sustainable collaboration to date has been with the Schloss Bröllin residency program and Theater Vorpommern. Through the “Mecklenburg-Vorpommern tanzt an” program – made possible by the Tanzpakt multi-year funding program – the three partners join forces to realize production residencies, classroom pieces, dance festivals, and the revived Greifswald Festival, now called “Tanzfusionen.”

Dörte Wolter

Peter van Heesen

While not always smooth, the collaboration is nevertheless usually extremely productive, supported by the extraordinary commitment of individual people: In addition to Dörte Wolter and Stefan Hahn from Perform[d]ance, these include choreographer Martin Stiefermann and curator and cultural manager Sabine Gehm as representatives of Schloss Bröllin, who, together with the dramaturgy and management teams of the theater in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, have made an enormous difference and put the state on the map of key dance regions.

TanzFusionen in Greifswald

Peter van Heesen

Dörte Wolter has this to say about Perform[d]ance: “It takes a lot of networking, every day: for example, for establishing new programs, with parents, school administrators, other cultural institutions, or the city and county administrations.” She has known the cultural policy structures, actors, and politics for decades and is also familiar with the German and international dance scenes – an ideal starting point for bringing dance artists from different parts of the world to Western Pomerania. “Perform[d]ance is not an island, but an initiative that sends out rays in all directions,” says Dörte Wolter.

TanzFusionen on Greifswald Market Square

Peter van Heesen

So there are many evenings when internationally successful choreographers and dancers such as Roser López Espinosa from Spain, Tamara Cubas from Uruguay, Raymond Liew Jin Pin from Singapore, Patricia Apergi from Greece and countless other artists sit together with Stralsund’s dance professionals in various constellations in one of Stralsund’s restaurants – either because they are working on a dance production as part of a residency, because they are rehearsing a classroom piece or because they are on tour here with pop-up pieces.

Dancing by the Sund in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

The core team of Perform[d]ance comprises half a dozen dedicated people from different professions based in Stralsund. They come from the fields of dance art and mediation, organization, management, light and video design, and stage and costume design. Other dance artists join temporarily, stay for a year or two and then move on. Then there are those who arrive to give input for only a brief time, such as for a workshop or residency – and are eager to return.

The Perform[d]ance team (from left to right: Claas Früchtenicht, Julia Krassow, Steffi Hielscher, Stefan Hahn, Dörte Bähr, Dörte Wolter, Olga Kiateva, Felix Grimm) Peter van Heesen

Peter van Heesen

The team is international: The dancers and choreographers who regularly teach classes and stage pieces in Stralsund hail from Germany, Hungary, Brazil, Russia and – most recently – Ukraine. Some of them commute between Stralsund and larger cities like Berlin or Hamburg, others move here for a while. It is exactly this mixture of continuity and constant new influences that accounts for the quality of Perform[d]ance and that has made Stralsund, a city of 60,000 inhabitants, a key dance location.

Olena Polianska

Peter van Heesen

For choreographer Dörte Bähr, the exchange with new colleagues is “incredibly empowering – something that gives you the courage and strength to keep going.” The 50-year-old, who returned to her native Western Pomerania after training and working in Leipzig, Essen, Dresden, and Berlin, has been part of the Perform[d]ance team since 2004 and experiences the value of local and regional networking almost daily.

World Dance Day on Old Market Square in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

“Everyone knows everyone here: When I see a group of young people on the street, I know that that boy over there is taking dance classes with me and his brother with Stefan. Those are the children of the mayor or the pastor, who was so enthusiastic about the last performance that she offered the community hall for next time. These diverse connections that have grown over the years are typical of life in rural settings – and incredibly important for our artistic work.” This work takes place in afternoon classes for children, adolescents, and adults, in school classes – and in a course called “Tanz ohne Alter” (Dance without age), but which everyone just calls “die Landfrauen” (the country women).

Public dancing in front of the Hansa-Gymnasium secondary school in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

For this course, Dörte Bähr drives from Stralsund into the Western Pomeranian hinterland every Wednesday evening. In her spacious station wagon, which is showing its years and the toll of countless transports of speakers, costumes and stage setups, dogs and children, she chugs past the prefabricated residential buildings and allotments of Stralsund and Greifswald, past fields and through short stretches of forest. Past North German red brick Gothic, half-ruined or beautifully renovated manor houses, a Swedish-style round chapel, innumerous newly-built family homes in ocher and bilious green and – impossible to avoid in this area – wind turbines of all sizes: an area just a few kilometers from the Baltic Sea and yet quite far from the hustle and bustle of tourism.

Peter van Heesen

Now during the summer, the group of women aged between 50 and 85 sometimes dances on the farm of Nanni Mau, which is located between fields and roads. Chestnut, linden, and fir trees grow in charming disorder around the house and stable; in the garden behind the house the apple trees are so close together that their foliage hides the fields behind them. When crossing the bumpy meadows you may well sprain an ankle and scratch up your shins on the huge nettles and thistles. Upon arrival, the setting sun shines on the concrete square in front of the house and the sweet scent of lilac mingles with the spice of wild, herbaceous chamomile and the smell of the pigsty. That evening, your gaze will time and again be caught in the wide, almost cloudless sky.

Peter van Heesen

Nanni Mau, a sturdy woman in her mid-fifties with a suntanned face and warm eyes, grew up here but has lived in the neighboring village for many years; today, apart from a young intern, the only creatures that live here are two pigs of almost unimaginable size – at least from a city dweller’s point of view – two Highland cattle, a few sheep, and Lili the cow.

Peter van Heesen

The animals will be the only spectators that evening, and indeed they seem to be attracted by the energy generated by the dancing. Udo, Nanni’s husband, has the same friendly look as his wife, but laughingly waves off the invitation to join in a round of dancing today. Before getting in the car, he jokingly grabs his back to demonstrate: No way! And so the women, who gradually roll up in cars and on bicycles, keep to themselves.

Peter van Heesen

Before they begin and concentrate entirely on the movement, Nanni, Annett, Elke, and the others set up a buffet of homemade delicacies from their gardens in a sheltered corner by the house, bathed in the evening sun: mustard pickles, pickled zucchini and plums from last season, radishes fresh out of the ground, dandelion jelly, fresh spinach puffs, bread, and soup – all for “afterwards,” the convivial gathering that follows the joint dancing.

Peter van Heesen

The class begins by standing in a circle with a flow of movement from different directions and dynamics: stretching the body wide and pulling it close together, spreading, twisting, knotting and stretching arms and hands, placing feet and legs close together and then straddling them wide, rolling shoulders, working through the back. Moving quickly, slowly, fluidly, jerkily, impulsively. The women work on redirecting to their own physical sensations the attention that has been everywhere but their own bodies all day. Dörte Bähr emphasizes the regenerative elements of dance as well as the pleasurable and playful layers.

Peter van Heesen

Little by little, the women’s awkward, still stiff or jerky actions become soft flows of movement. The pleasure of doing this without being observed or evaluated is reflected in the open, sometimes laughing faces of the participants. There is more frowning and visible effort later during the coordination exercises: these involve steps and arm movements in different directions, requiring a rewiring of the synapses. Gradually, they work their way through the entire body: from the feet to the legs and from the torso to the arms, hands, neck, and head.

Peter van Heesen

Not everything is a success. Failed attempts are acknowledged with tender self-mockery or sighs, or forgotten immediately. In Bähr’s class, no one has to work on an exercise until they get it perfectly right; it is all about feeling, developing, and rediscovering body awareness, trying things out and playing – also with the physical representation of emotions: How do excitement, boredom, anger, joy, and love express themselves in the body?

Peter van Heesen

Here the women gleefully approach the border of caricature, sticking their noses up in the air, looking at each other contemptuously or with puppy-dog eyes dripping with affection as they dance past each other. In one or the other, you can sense the actress she might have been in another life.

Peter van Heesen

The obvious differences in temperament and character cannot hide the fact that the lives these women have led contain a little bit of everything: strength, hard work, perseverance, pragmatism, loss, exhaustion, disappointment, but also a great deal of human warmth and beauty, the capacity for joy, and the longing for happiness. That is why they are here: Because in dance, they find something that is not so easily achieved in everyday life – a feeling of lightness, ease and sensuality, the experience of feeling yourself.

Dörte Bähr (right)

Peter van Heesen

As a group, despite all their joy and desire to move, they emanate a great calm and familiarity with each other, a self-understanding that comes from having shown themselves and seen and touched each other many times in dance and play. This clearly shows what Dörte Bähr means when she says: “When you dance, there is always an engagement with the others – even when you dance alone.”

Dörte Bähr (right)

Peter van Heesen

Everyone is a dancer – Rudolf von Laban’s famous dictum also applies to the work of Perform[d]ance in Western Pomerania. From the beginning, Dörte Wolter and Stefan Hahn were clear about two things: They wanted to bring as many people as possible between Barth and Richtenberg, Rügen and Demmin into contact with dance, and they wanted to achieve this on the basis of a dance-artistic, non-pedagogical attitude. In addition to using contemporary dance technique as a basis, their approach emphasizes the creative element – whether as early dance education, creative children’s dance, contemporary dance for young people or in courses with imaginative or expressive names such as “BoysBoysBoys,” “Inge dances” or “Dance without age.”

Peter van Heesen

In order to reach children who do not attend dance classes voluntarily, the Perform[d]ance team works extensively with schools and daycare centers. This has helped win over more than 40 institutions in the region to the cause of dance, including the Jona elementary school, the Hansa-Gymnasium secondary school and the Grünthal integrated comprehensive school in Stralsund, as well as various schools and kindergartens on the island of Rügen and around Greifswald. Over the past two decades, Perform[d]ance projects have set in motion more than 170 school classes. The organization has established a particularly intensive and continuous collaboration with the Freie Schule Rügen in Dreschvitz. “We meet the children where they spend most of their lives: at school,” says Stefan Hahn.

Steffi Hielscher in a dance class with children

Peter van Heesen

Whether it’s a morning class or an afternoon class, one thing is a constant in Perform[d]ance’s work: Demanding choreographies are created and presented together with children, teenagers, dance students, and professional artists – also outside of studios and theaters. Especially in the first few years after the initiative’s founding in the summer of 2001, they performed their productions in a number of unusual locations in Stralsund and the surrounding area, explains Dörte Wolter.

Olga Kiateva teaching dance to teenagers

Peter van Heesen

These included the Sundlichtspielen – a former movie theater, the Hansedom water park, the Volkswerft shipyard in Stralsund, the Kulturkirche St. Jakobi, a shipyard in Lauterbach on the island of Rügen, the Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum, and an industrial warehouse belonging to Stralsund-based company Ostseestaal. The art of dance should reach people in places that are not immediately associated with art and thus guarantee a different proximity to reality.

View of the shipyard in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

Only then were established cultural venues added: the theaters in Putbus and Stralsund, the Marstall theater on the island of Rügen, and finally the Alte Eisengießerei near the Theaterpädagogisches Zentrum, which would become a regular venue. Over the years, the group has created more than 50 large and small productions as part of courses and with school classes. Public visibility remains a central aspect of Perform[d]ance’s work: To this day, there is dancing in Stralsund’s Old and New Markets every year on World Dance Day.

The themes and vehicles of the pieces are as diverse as the people. Sometimes they are taken from the reality of young people’s lives – questions about their own identities, about feelings and situations they face as teenagers, about dreams, fears and hopes, or about digital and real-world methods of communication. Or they are political, such as the confrontation with being foreign or different, or the destruction of nature and the planet. Sometimes the pieces are inspired by other arts: Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, Theodor Storm’s or Mark Twain’s stories, the wild world of comics or the rainbow of colors.

World Dance Day on Old Market Square in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

While Dörte Bähr works with the young dancers to develop themes and choreographies, Stefan Hahn begins each production with a specific artistic idea. “I go into a production with a vision. That may be old-fashioned compared to newer approaches in participatory dance, where a theme is first explored together. But that’s not my thing.”

Scene from “Die Regentrude” by Dörte Bähr at the Alte Eisengießerei

Peter van Heesen

His approach has been extraordinarily successful within the framework of the youth company, whose members naturally change every few years, but are always strongly challenged. They have already been invited to the Tanztreffen der Jugend in Berlin three times: in 2022 with “ÜberLeben,” in 2018 with “Babel,” and in 2014 with “COMIX.” This is not only the highest accolade that a dance production created by and with young people can receive; these invitations also show that Perform[d]ance brings the world to Stralsund, but also takes a piece of Stralsund out into the world.

Scene from “ÜberLeben” by Stefan Hahn in the Alte Eisengießerei

Felix Grimm

Stefan Hahn, Dörte Bähr, and their colleagues often have to travel long distances for the various courses, lessons, and rehearsals – to Barth on the Bodden, Bergen on the island of Rügen or, as we have seen, into the Western Pomeranian hinterland. Indeed, they sometimes cover hundreds of kilometers by car in a week. If one could name only one characteristic of dance in rural regions, it would be the long journeys and the need to constantly be on the road to bring the art of dance to the people.

Karolina Serafin

But it can’t be done in the countryside without travel and a considerable outlay in terms of personal and work time – not when your own work demands that every child in the county should come into contact with dance at least once before they grow up. A sentence with which choreographer Stefan Hahn sums up the Perform[d]ance philosophy – and which is accordingly often quoted. Bringing every child into contact with dance at least once in their life – in Western Pomerania this works best on Rügen. The Freie Schule Rügen in Dreschvitz is a special kind of elementary school, a place of learning that is the stuff of dreams.

Rügen Bridge

Peter van Heesen

The school and the after-school program are spread over several buildings on sprawling grounds surrounded by nature; the affiliated forest kindergarten is housed in two colorful construction trailers. There is a lush herb and vegetable garden where the children can get their first taste of botany, a park with mature trees and streams for playing and exploring – and just beyond that, the rolling hills that make Rügen’s hinterland so charming. Approximately 130 students attend the mixed-age Montessori elementary school, where students in grades one through three and four through six are taught together.

Freie Schule Rügen

Peter van Heesen

Perform[d]ance has been collaborating with the Freie Schule for a long time. For the past 16 years, the dance artists and facilitators have been working with a mix of classes from grades four to six to create a dance production each school year. This includes three school periods of dance per week, stage and costume rehearsals, and two performances at the Putbus Theater. Visits to performances are also part of the program, but the real focus is on the collaborative, creative development of a dance piece that is eventually performed on stage.

Performance at the Freie Schule Rügen

Dörte Wolter

The school year of intensive dance study at the Freie Schule is part of what is known as the “cultural triad”: one year of dance, one year of drama and stage design, and one year of choir and orchestra. This approach means that each child has the opportunity to experience different artistic challenges over the course of three years and express themselves creatively on stage in different art forms.

Peter van Heesen

Former principal Monika Morawietz, who was commissioned by the school community to introduce the cultural triad, says: “This means that dance, drama, and choir are not school subjects in hiding, but three opportunities to really shine.” During the year of dance, students and parents are challenged in particular by the extended dance rehearsals that even take place on weekends in the final phase. There is much to organize, especially transportation. As in many rural areas, a public infrastructure is in place on the island but this is not developed enough to allow the children to travel by bus to the rehearsal locations. They have to be brought.

Scene from the performance “Quasi nix” by Julia Krassow and Dörte Bähr at the Putbus Theater

Peter van Heesen

By now, says Monika Morawietz, even the parents have internalized the cycle of the “cultural triad”; they know that sending their child to school in Dreschvitz means investing their own time and energy – especially during the dance year, the year of great challenges. But it also means that their child will stand on the big stage and have a unique, valuable experience.

Peter van Heesen

The dance year is “feared and loved” by the children, laughs Monika Morawietz. “But they come out of the experience infinitely stronger.” Not only is their posture much more impressive than before, she says, but they also develop a new, more confident radiance. “When you see them in class giving a presentation afterwards, you can see that they are living the presentation with their whole body, with all of their gestures and facial expressions. That’s a real gift.” Monika Morawietz says they would never have decided to integrate dance into the school day in this way if they didn’t believe that this art form has a tremendous impact on young people.

Scene from the performance “Quasi nix” by Julia Krassow and Dörte Bähr at the Putbus Theater

Peter van Heesen

Elisabeth Nehring

Not every school makes it as easy as it was and is in Dreschvitz. The Perform[d]ance team had to work hard to convince other schools that dance could be a valuable experience for children and teenagers. Principals and teachers had to be persuaded, and fierce student opposition to the respective dance project had to be overcome. Stefan Hahn recalls one project in which more than half of the rehearsal time was spent dealing with student resistance and skepticism. He even did solo rehearsals with one student who had already been introduced as a “problem child” and ended up dancing with him in the performance.

“I want to see them all on stage,” is one of Stefan Hahn’s central maxims. He calls dance a “primeval democratic artistic medium.” “I don’t want to exclude anyone, no matter how great the resistance. That takes a lot of strength. You have to be able to let go, and not to take insults and struggles too personally. You need a certain ability to distance yourself, otherwise you’re in the wrong job.” Integration and transformation are two of the main goals of Perform[d]ance in bringing dance to rural areas.

Duet with Stefan Hahn and a student

Thomas Aurin

Claas Früchtenicht also remembers the transformative effect of his first stage experiences. He went to the Jona school in Stralsund and took the Dance elective, taught by Dörte Bähr and Stefan Hahn. His first time on stage at the Alte Eisengießerei was in the third grade – in the piece “Kümmert euch,” a “trashedy” about children stranded on a garbage dump, questioning their own consumption amidst a giant collection of plastic waste. Although he “never wanted to stop dancing” during rehearsals, getting up in front of a large audience was difficult: “Stefan didn’t ask me if I wanted to go on stage. He gave me a little push and said, ‘Do it!’ That may sound harsh, but it’s the best thing that could have happened to me.” He had three solos in that production and was practically “dancing the whole time.” It was an experience that changed a lot of things.

Scene from the piece “Kümmert euch”

Richard Rocholl

There’s something else he remembers, too: “There was no right and wrong during rehearsals. If someone was reluctant, they were allowed to stay that way.” After a short pause for thought, he adds with a laugh: “I wasn’t like that. I was totally psyched and active. Stefan often had me run my twenty laps first. And once he decided that we’d start a piece with cartwheels on stage, because I had so much energy that needed burning off.”

Peter van Heesen

Not only Claas Früchtenicht, but also other former students who danced with Perform[d]ance in their youth are now on their way to becoming professional dancers and choreographers, or have been on stage for a long time. For Dörte Bähr, one vital criterion for success is the continuity with which she is able to implement her way of teaching artistic dance in a particular place. That is why her work at the Freie Schule in Dreschvitz is so special to her. Every third grader at this school has seen an older boy who looked “cool” while dancing on stage – that makes it easier for her as a dance educator to reach even those who don’t feel called to dance.

Peter van Heesen

How does she get those students who are not naturally interested in dance involved in the creative work, especially in an environment that is otherwise more focused on cognitive performance – even at the Freie Schule Rügen? “You have to shift them, put them in a state that is different from that of their everyday. You have to get them into a movement that makes them feel themselves. No matter what you do – whether you dance on a chair, tip it over, scream loudly, jump, leap – if you don’t get them to experience something new, nothing will happen!”

Peter van Heesen

This is precisely the principle behind what is called “Klassenzimmerstücke Tanz” (classroom dance pieces), which were first conceptualized in Western Pomerania five years ago – a pioneering work in the field of “dance for young audiences.” The crucial factor is that it must not only be possible to perform the pieces in a variety of classroom-sized spaces, but they must also fit into a van – including performers, props, and costumes. They are always incorporated into a workshop in which the students explore their physicality and a follow-up session in which they can discuss their impressions. Since 2018, three productions have been realized under the auspices of Perform[d]ance as part of the “Mecklenburg-Vorpommern tanzt an” project. Despite the somewhat unwieldy name, this model has been extremely successful with school classes throughout Western Pomerania.

Peter van Heesen

“The students experience dance as an art form that we bring to them,” says Dörte Wolter. “This is much easier than having a whole class travel to the theater in Stralsund on the insanely poor public transportation system.” In addition to this pragmatism, which is typical of life and (artistic) work in rural areas, there is another reason for bringing dance into the classrooms: The artists take different liberties, dare to do different things, and thus change the children’s everyday space. The classroom, which they believe they know inside out, is transformed by the performances into a place with new rules.

Scene from the classroom piece “Cometa” by Roser López Espinosa

Peter van Heesen

In the first classroom production, choreographer Stefan Hahn worked with two very different dancers: one with a physical disability, the other without. In their duet “Augenhöhe,” Dajana Voß and Magali Saby test what is possible in dance when one dancer is in a wheelchair and the other is not. During the process, they get very close to each other – and, quite incidentally, change the often entrenched convictions about who is “allowed” to dance and who is not. So far, they have performed “Augenhöhe” in more than 30 schools.

Scene from “Augenhöhe” by Stefan Hahn

Peter van Heesen

“Whether we performed in a special needs school or in a more elite institution – the children were touched and very focused. No performance was interrupted, the conversations were wonderful, they asked a lot of questions,” recalls Stefan Hahn. “Although I had great doubts at first about whether it would be choreographically interesting for me to make a piece for a classroom, I am very happy that we developed this format. It fits well here in Western Pomerania. But it’s also rock ‘n’ roll.”

Scene from “Augenhöhe” by Stefan Hahn

Peter van Heesen

In reality, taking dance into the classroom means packing up the van at half past seven in the morning, driving two hours to a remote school, workshop, performance, conversations, and then back again. Sometimes the artists and the team have to sweep the classrooms before the performance, sometimes they even have to empty them, because the arrangements made with the school did not work as well as they might have. “You have to like this daily routine; that’s the price you have to pay. But what you get is an audience with a great capacity for enthusiasm!”

Scene from the classroom piece “Hero” by Patricia Apergi

Peter van Heesen

Many children and young people in Western Pomerania are also an audience that rarely or never goes to the theater – and even more rarely comes into contact with international artists. For this reason, Dörte Wolter and Stefan Hahn decided to also invite choreographers from abroad to create pieces for the classroom.

Peter van Heesen

This initiative was a great success: Greek choreographer Patricia Apergi’s 2019 solo “HERO” has become a powerful piece about falling down and getting up again, and turning defeats into victories. The piece has made not only students, but also teachers and social workers, reflect on their own courage.

Scene from “Hero” by Patricia Apergi

Peter van Heesen

In “COMETA,” choreographed by Roser López Espinosa, dancer Nora Baylach falls from the sky as an astronaut, so to speak, i.e., through the door into the classroom, where she playfully turns the laws of gravity and learning on their head and, in the end, gets the assembled students moving with glee.

The fact that classrooms can become places for strange-looking visitors and surprising parties is well received. Since its premiere, Roser López Espinosa has been able to show “COMETA” more than 150 times – in Western Pomerania as well as in Spanish schools. Now there is even a version for the big stage.

Scene from “Cometa” by Roser López Espinosa

Peter van Heesen

This is also something special for the Spanish choreographer, whose dance productions have won her Spain’s most prestigious dance and theater awards. Describing the effect of these dance productions developed especially for students, Dörte Wolter says: “It is a special form of appreciation when dancers and choreographers from Spain and Greece find their way to a small school in Prerow, Binz or Sagard.”

Scene from “Cometa” by Roser López Espinosa

Peter van Heesen

Perform[d]ance hit the nail on the head with the classroom pieces – or rather: they recognized the signs of the times. Since the first production, numerous pop-up pieces for young audiences have been created in other federal states as well, which function similarly in their flexibility and adaptability to different spaces. The works are especially, but not exclusively, suitable for presentation in expansive regions where locations are far apart and long distances often have to be traveled.

Peter van Heesen

This was tested in a four-day touring project in which three pop-up productions for young audiences titled “Pasta ohne Ende,” “1000 Kisses,” and “Hero” simultaneously toured classrooms, gymnasiums, and community halls in Western Pomerania. The dancers and choreographers traveled from kindergartens and schools in the hinterland to the Grundtvighaus cultural center in Sassnitz on the island of Rügen – always accompanied by dance educators who were responsible for the discussions before and after the performances.

Peter van Heesen

The Theaterpädagogisches Zentrum was the headquarters of Perform[d]ance from which the various artistic teams set off in all directions at seven every morning, only to return in the afternoon brimming with new impressions.

After the performance of “Pasta ohne Ende” with the 5elephants tanzkollektiv and Pascal Sangl as dance mediator

Peter van Heesen

Like Raymond Liew Jin Pin and Jascha Viehstädt, for example, who in their duet “1000 Kisses” kiss each other not quite a thousand times but a lot nonetheless, humorously questioning entrenched gender images and yesterday’s prejudices. It is a piece that would probably elicit giggles and a sense of “I don’t know what to make of this” from 12-year-olds around the world. On performing the piece in a gymnasium at the regional school in Binz on the island of Rügen, the two dancer-choreographers were met with great openness, attention, and many questions.

Scene from “1000 Kisses” by Raymond Liew Jin Pin and Jascha Viehstädt

Peter van Heesen

Do you really kiss a thousand times? Does it make your lips dry? Are you a couple? Why do you count your kisses? Why this, why that? The students’ questions did not stop and the social worker asked the performers to come back very soon.

Scene from “1000 Kisses” by Raymond Liew Jin Pin and Jascha Viehstädt

Peter van Heesen

This logistically extremely complex touring project was made possible by the “Tanz weit draußen” network, in which dance initiatives from various German states have joined forces to strengthen dance in rural regions. The “Mecklenburg-Vorpommern tanzt an” cooperation and with it Perform[d]ance, is an active part of this network. Extensive funding from the “Verbindungen fördern” program helps to facilitate residencies for dance artists in rural regions and allows networking opportunities to be developed, and existing dance productions sent from one state to another in the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Baden-Württemberg.

Scene from “1000 Kisses” by Raymond Liew Jin Pin and Jascha Viehstädt

Peter van Heesen

The pop-up tour through the vastness of Western Pomerania was thus a trial balloon for a better future for dance beyond the urban centers – a pilot project whose success involved many different forces and whose concept can be summed up in three words: Input for all!

Scene from “Hero” by Patricia Apergi

Peter van Heesen

Children and adolescents at schools far away from urban centers experienced an artistic interruption to their school day through dance. The visiting choreographers and dancers presented productions, exchanged ideas, and gained an insight into the realities of living and working in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Local dance artists such as Dörte Bähr, Stefan Hahn, and Claas Früchtenicht were able to expand their knowledge and network tremendously through these encounters and exchanges. In addition, the politicians from the city, county, and region who had been invited to get involved met with a concentrated load of artistic competence and organizational, logistical, and human experience with dance in rural areas.

Peter van Heesen

The discovery these days have afforded is that, despite the time and resources required, the increasingly diverse connections and collaborations of committed participants with years of experience with dance in rural regions are key aspects for the cultural strengthening of rural regions. This makes it possible to pass on knowledge. And, at least as importantly, a community can emerge from many lone fighters in far-flung rural areas.

Exchange with dance artists and politicians in Stralsund

Peter van Heesen

But – and this is another discovery – it takes money. A lot of money is needed to implement sustainable projects and establish professional networks.
The benefit of these days – beyond all that has been said – is a natural closeness that can arise when people come together through dance. When, after returning from the far reaches of Western Pomerania, all of the artists – guests and hosts – gather in a restaurant, exhausted but satisfied, the conversations are filled with exchanges of experiences, questions and understanding, revelations and listening.

Peter van Heesen

And there it was again: that touch of gold, that special magic of Stralsund, which is created when strangers come together here and form a temporary community, united in the conviction that the long, arduous journeys are worthwhile in order to take the art of dance to places where it rarely or never goes.

Peter van Heesen

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