explore dance at the German Dance Award
On 12 October 2024, explore dance was honored for outstanding development in dance at the German Dance Award ceremony at the Aalto Theater in Essen. The network thus received one of the highest and most prestigious awards for dance in Germany.
Editorial team | 31. Oktober 2024
The jury statement of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland states:
With a diverse range of thematic offerings from friendship to physics, the network creates spaces at various locations for experiencing contemporary dance and the socially relevant issues it addresses. (…) With formats such as the Mobile Pop UP, explore dance goes beyond its main objectives to offer children and young people dance through performance, it also introduces them to modes of perception and takes them seriously as an audience. explore dance’s focus is not only on dance education (…), the touring system, which allows individual members to show their work throughout Germany, is also a special strength of the network. In this way, contemporary dance is actively reaching out to young audiences, as it is an audience that cannot travel to festivals, galas or well-known venues in the same way as working adults.
On the evening before the gala event, choreographer Anna Konjetzky presented her explore dance production “MOVE MORE MORPH IT!”.
The Pop Up piece – danced by Sahra Huby, who has just been awarded the Dance Prize of the City of Munich – is a journey through different identities, self-designs and fantastic figures. It premiered in Munich in 2018 and has since been shown in around 70 performances across Germany and internationally – from Johannesburg to Laos, from Mexico City to Reutlingen and Copenhagen
From the laudatory speech by Helge Lindh, MdB
In his laudatory speech, cultural politician Helge Lindh, member of the German Bundestag, paid tribute to the service to democracy that explore dance provides:
„explore dance beteiligt unendlich aufrichtig und ernsthaft junge Menschen, Kinder und Jugendliche, am tänzerischen Schaffensprozess, indem es ihre Lebensperspektiven, ihre Realitäten, ihre Fähigkeiten will und würdigt. Und es erkundet damit auf eine schonungslos ehrliche Weise das wahrlich komplizierte Beziehungsgeflecht von Tanzkunst, Leben und Demokratie ganz praktisch. Und leistet damit ganz konkret tausendmal mehr für den gesellschaftlichen, emanzipatorischen, demokratischen Prozess als zahllose Panels und Podien dieser Erde. Es ist radikal künstlerisch und radikal gesellschaftlich zugleich.“
The award is a promising signal for the future of the network, which still lacks a long-term funding perspective, especially at federal level, but whose importance and track record for the development of dance as an art form as well as aesthetic education at federal and state level is undisputed.
The states and municipalities of the four partner cities that support the nationwide network also congratulate from Saxony, Hamburg, Munich, Brandenburg and Potsdam on the outstanding award as part of the German Dance Award:
