PROGRAM somebody@maschinenhaus 26
Friday, April 24, 10:30 AM & 7:30 PM
MIND THE GAP / Company Flying Elephant
MIND THE GAP by Company Flying Elephant is an intense piece about the fragile boundary between private intimacy and public perception in queer relationships. Through dynamic choreography and physical interaction, two performers question societal expectations and the freedom to live and love as they wish. Humorous and at the same time touching.
The performance immerses itself in the complex reality of queer relationships and reveals the gap between the private and the public. Two performers negotiate the tension within their relationship, the gap between self-perception and public judgment.
MIND THE GAP invites the audience, through captivating choreography and physical proximity, to experience the emotional and physical dynamics of a partnership up close. The duo opens a space for reflection on equality, intimacy and the challenges that shape every relationship. The piece was developed on the basis of interviews with members of the queer community. The performance is dedicated, representatively, to negotiating these collective experiences. Beyond the queer perspective, MIND THE GAP fundamentally questions forms of personal unfreedom. It is about reflecting on where we confine ourselves and others within norms and expectations – regardless of gender or orientation.
The dancers and choreographers Florian Entenfellner and Lucas Lopes Pereira work together in Company Flying Elephant and jointly developed the piece MIND THE GAP in 2025. Both perform internationally in renowned dance and physical theatre productions and combine high artistic quality with an accessible human approach – with the aim of giving people an impulse to reflect on their own lives – playfully, humorously and touchingly.
Dance & Choreography | Florian Entenfellner & Lucas Lopes Pereira
Music | Marco Girardin & Despoina Gkotsopoulou
Dramaturgy | Daphni Patsourakou
Project Assistance | Paula Luna Steinmaurer
Image Credit | www.marc_jacobs.eu
Duration: 60 min
Age: 13+
Funding | City of Essen Cultural Office, City of Salzburg, City of Wels, Province of Upper Austria, Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (tour funding Austria), City of Graz
Saturday, April 25, from 7:30 PM
Frederico Mendes Teixeira, Cheng-Yang Peng
Grid : drift / Frederico Mendes Teixeira
“You don’t know the rules, but you understand the game” – this is how Grid: Drift begins, in which three dancers transform the stage into a dynamic field of lines, spirals and patterns, while the choreography moves between order and chance. Movements combine, repeat and transform into fleeting compositions; structures emerge and dissolve – until the game ends and the question remains whether, without clear rules, there could ever have been a winner.
“You don’t know the rules, but you understand the game.” This is the starting point of Grid : drift. Three dancers transform the stage into a shifting field of lines, intersections, spirals and grids that form colorful patterns on the floor.
By taking up the logic of visual systems and repeating patterns, the choreography moves between order and chance, clarity and confusion. Movement phrases combine, repeat and rearrange themselves into temporary compositions in space – sometimes precise, sometimes suspiciously chaotic. The dancers play alone, together and occasionally against each other, following rules that were never fully explained but nevertheless somehow make sense. Structures emerge, dissolve and reorganize themselves while systems flirt with chaos and strategies are invented on the spot. At some point, the game ends. But if no one really knew the rules… was there ever a winner?
Frederico Mendes Teixeira is a dancer, dance teacher and dance composer from Brazil and lives in Essen. He studied in the Master’s programs in dance composition and dance pedagogy at Folkwang University, where he currently teaches Labanotation in the BA Dance program. He leads the ongoing research project Syncopated Conversations, which explores interdisciplinarity in dance, and works with various artists, companies and collectives.
Dance | Helena Bröker, Paul Vincent Heinrich, Nicolò Ritrovato
Choreography | Frederico Mendes Teixeira
Project Assistance | Valentina Restrepo Giraldo
Image Credit | Ursula Kaufmann ; Ralph Deinl
Duration | 30 minutes
Lagom / Cheng-Yang Peng
In Lagom, a simple morning unfolds in which two people gradually perform versions of themselves and struggle to meet beyond rehearsed roles. The duet questions the exhausting pursuit of being “enough” and asks whether what we are searching for has always been within us.
Lagom is a Swedish word meaning “not too much, not too little, just right.”
Two people wake up and prepare for their day. What seems like a simple morning routine slowly reveals something unsettling: they are not just getting ready – they are rehearsing themselves.
As they meet, they try to establish a connection. But how can one share a real moment if both are performing? This duet explores the exhausting gap between what we are and what we think we must be. It asks: what if what we are looking for has always been within us?
Lagom is aimed at anyone who has ever felt the need to be “enough.”
Cheng-Yang Peng is a freelance choreographer based in Germany and a graduate of Folkwang University of the Arts. He has worked with Aalto Ballett Essen and Theater Hagen and performed at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Summer Games 2024 in Paris. Influenced by Alexander Ekman, Pina Bausch and Marco Goecke, his cinematic choreographic language combines precision, dynamic physicality and playful energy. Since 2025 he has focused on his own independent creations.
Choreography | Cheng-Yang Peng
Dance | Feng-Ti Yang, Pier Paolo Lara
Music | Marco Girardin, composed specifically for this choreography
Stage Design | Xzavier Tang
Project Assistance | Ke-Chieh Liu
Photos | Ke-Chieh Liu
Duration | 30 minutes
Age | 16+
Funding | Supported by City of Essen Cultural Office
Special thanks | B:STUDIO
Signatures / Claudia Küppers & Antonia Koluiartseva
Claudia Küppers and Antonia Koluiartseva research dance as “writing in space.” Based on patterns, typefaces and their graphical representation, a finely poetic yet expressive personal signature emerges through improvisation – a bodily signature in space, a dance-writing.
Claudia Küppers and Antonia Koluiartseva research dance as “writing in space.” Based on patterns, typefaces and their graphic representation, a finely poetic yet expressive personal signature emerges through improvisation – a bodily signature in space, a dance-writing.
The choreographic signature of Antonia Koluiartseva follows her musical intuition and is, in its expression, both deeply sensitive and playful. The music follows the dance as an abstract narrative that is at once occasion, contrast and source of inspiration, relating to the dance sometimes anticipatorily, sometimes waiting, sometimes illustratively. This results in a dance solo that oscillates between the aesthetic expression of dance, music and space.
Claudia Küppers is a choreographer, dramaturge and producer for contemporary dance and dance theatre. Her artistic roots lie in her studies of Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen. In her choreographies and productions, the treatment of socially relevant topics is combined with the research of an innovative vocabulary of movement, guided by the personal expression and choreographic signature of the involved dancers. Antonia Koluiartseva is a dancer and choreographer. Born in Russia, she now lives in Wuppertal. She completed her training in ballet and contemporary dance at Tanzcentrum Prague and the University of Tallinn. For over a decade she worked in Russia and Europe, among others as a permanent member of the St. Petersburg “OKNO Dance Project” and later at Aura Dance Theatre in Lithuania. After her first own productions in Estonia and Russia, she completed a Master’s degree in choreography at Folkwang University of the Arts (2018–2021). Her works have been shown at numerous international festivals.
Sunday, April 26, from 6:30 PM
Dance, Dinner & Talk with Claudia Küppers & Antonia Koluiartseva / Ying Xiao / Tabea & IG Tanz
An evening creating space for exchange and encounter
Idea & Choreography | Claudia Küppers
Dance & Choreography | Antonia Koluiartseva
Music | 1 Henry Purcell: A Ground in Gamut, 2 Henry Purcell: Chaconne in G minor, 3 Henry Purcell: Suite in A minor / Saraband, 4 Jean-Philippe Rameau: Suite in G major / Les Sauvages
Photos | Landscape Manuel Meza / Portrait Alexandra Rumyantseva
Duration | 15 min
Funding | The solo is supported by MoveArts e.V. and the independent scene Düsseldorf / Performing Arts e.V.
Silent Etchings – Unwritten / Ying Xiao
The dance piece “Silent Etchings – Unwritten” examines the female body as an archive of historical trauma and silence. Through the combination of contemporary dance and traditional Chinese elements, the invisible history of the “comfort women” is made physically tangible.
In “Silent Etchings – Unwritten,” the performer embarks on a physical search for traces. The project addresses the history of the so-called “comfort women” and questions the inscription of violence into the body.
In this process, the deep, controlled breathing of Korean dance (this community lives primarily in northeastern China—especially Yanbian—as well as on the Korean peninsula (North and South Korea)) merges with the rhythmic power of Wa dance and contemporary choreography.
The piece breaks with linear narratives and creates a space of collective memory in which the audience is invited to adopt their own position as observers. It is an exploration of the fragility and strength of women in times of war and poses the urgent question: how can we actively preserve peace today? In a time of global escalation, the body becomes a site of resistance against forgetting.
Ying Xiao is a choreographer and curator based in Essen and China. After studying at the Minzu University of China, he completed his Master’s degree in dance composition at Folkwang University of the Arts in 2021. His artistic language combines contemporary dance with Chinese classical and folk dance as well as Tai Chi practices. In 2025, he was appointed cultural and tourism ambassador of the city of Lanxi. He focuses on intercultural projects and the exploration of bodily archives.
Choreography | Ying Xiao
Dance | Shuang Liang
Music | Sin Film | Guo Ke
Photos | Karl
Duration | 12 min
Age | 16+
Support | TanzFaktur Köln (residency) / City Library Essen / Chinese “Comfort Woman” History Museum (documentary material)
Project G2 or Post Traumatic Femtasy / Tabea Jung
“Project G2 or Post Traumatic Femtasy” is an intimate duet that explores how female desire can be reimagined after centuries of suppression. Strong, sensual, vulnerable and searching, it deals with female desire between patriarchal influences, shame and pornographic narratives.
“Project G2 or Post Traumatic Femtasy” is an intimate duet choreographed by Tabea Jung. It explores how female desire can be made visible and reimagined after centuries of suppression. The body becomes palpably a bearer of history and a place of resistance. The duet explores how to reclaim one’s pleasure, fantasies and desires beyond social conditioning. Traditional gender roles attribute active sexuality to men, while women are assigned a passive, controlled sexuality. Female desire is often ignored, shamed or forced into stereotypical images. These images are deeply rooted in religion, medicine (e.g. the “hysterical woman”), art and in the portrayal of sexuality in film and pornography. How can I know what I really want if I have never been asked? How can I discover my own fantasy and trust it? What does it mean to think and dance about desire beyond shame, control and the male gaze?
Tabea Jung is a choreographer based in Essen working across dance, fashion, music, and video with a focus on political and feminist themes.
Choreography / Concept | Tabea Jung
Dance | Shauna Fischer, Merel Bastiaans
Music | Béla Baumann
Costume | Hannah Creak
Photos | Lennart Pimpl
Duration | 20 min
Funding | supported by Tanzhaus NRW
URSPRUNG | Origin / Ying Xiao
“Origin” is a choreographic encounter between Chinese classical dance and contemporary dance. Starting from point, line and surface, the piece explores the beginning of the human being and the relationship between the individual and society. It poses a fundamental question: Who am I when I return to the point of origin?
Ying Xiao is a choreographer and curator based in Essen and China. After studying at the Minzu University of China, he completed his Master’s degree in dance composition at Folkwang University of the Arts in 2021. His artistic language combines contemporary dance with Chinese classical and folk dance as well as Tai Chi practices. In 2025, he was appointed cultural and tourism ambassador of the city of Lanxi. He focuses on intercultural projects and the exploration of bodily archives.
Choreography, Concept, Costume | Ying Xiao
Dance | Matilde Bottigelli / Ying Xiao
Assistance | Shuang Liang
Music | “Uni Rec” Alva Noto
Photo | Juli Wang
Duration | 7 min
Friday, May 1, 8:00 PM
THERE | WHERE / KOLLEKTIV ELEVEN
THERE | WHERE continues the trilogy about limbo – a state of uncertainty between standstill and decision. Between being and becoming, passivity and resistance, the dance theatre production poses a central question: Where does the next step lead?
In THERE | WHERE, we continue our trilogy about limbo – an in-between space of uncertainty, characterized by states of suspension and existential decisions. Inspired by La sociedad de la nieve, we reflect on remaining in an inhospitable place where life, hope and morality exist in a fragile balance.
This full-length dance theatre performance explores the space between being and becoming, between passivity and resistance – a place where time and direction blur. In doing so, we aim to open up a reflection of our collective reality, in which uncertainty, loss and decision-making can be experienced as part of human existence. THERE | WHERE invites the audience to enter this threshold experience and to ask themselves: Where does the next step lead?
KOLLEKTIV | ELEVEN brings together artists from dance, music, dramaturgy and lighting design and is based in the Ruhr area and the Bergisches Land. Lara Pilloni, Julia Monschau, Frederico Mendes Teixeira, Álvaro Severino and Julio Ernesto Escobar Mellado develop interdisciplinary works in which movement, sound and space intersect. Different cultural backgrounds shape the collaborative artistic process.
Dance, Choreography, Concept | Lara Pilloni, Julia Monschau
Music | Álvaro Severino
Dramaturgy, Project Assistance | Frederico Mendes Teixeira
Lighting Design | Julio Ernesto Escobar Mellado
Text | Nefeli Papanastasopoulou
Photos | Lara Pilloni
Duration | 45 minutes
Funding | City of Essen Cultural Office | Bergischer Kulturfonds In collaboration with | Insel e.V. Wuppertal | IG Tanz Essen | .dott – Dortmund dance and theatre scene
Saturday, May 2, from 7:30 PM
Nene Okada, Jennie Boultbee, Valentina Restrepo Giraldo & Maria Savva
“Miss Perfect” is a dance theatre piece that humorously and critically examines the unconscious societal constraints placed on women and questions the ideal of the “perfect woman” constructed through social media and advertising. In a world of constant comparison and visible evaluation, it questions how internalized standards for success and happiness, shaped by invisible norms, influence people of all genders in their identity and self-realization.
Miss Perfect is a dance theatre piece that, in a humorous and critical way, portrays the unconscious social pressure placed on women in today’s society, as well as the ideal of the “perfect woman” constructed through social media and advertising.
In a world overflowing with information and publicly visible evaluation, we unconsciously internalize standards for success and happiness. Through the protagonist’s extreme striving for perfection, the piece raises the question of how invisible norms and the pressure to conform influence not only women but people of all genders in their self-expression and way of life. The piece invites the audience to reflect on the unconscious societal forces that shape our identity.
Dance, Choreography, Text | Nene Okada
Music, Sound Recording | Marco Girardin
Choreographic Support / Outside Perspective | Kati Masami Menze
Photos | Silviu Guiman (face photo) / Nene Okada (work images)
Duration | 15 minutes
Funding | Supported by City of Essen Cultural Office
Nene Okada was born in Japan and is a dancer and choreographer. She began classical ballet at the age of four and graduated from the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance (BA, 2018) and the Folkwang University of the Arts (MA in Dance Composition/Interpretation, 2022). Her dance film Gray was selected for the Roppongi Art Night Spin-off Project. In 2023, her solo Cho-Cho San premiered at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. She performs internationally while also developing her own choreographic works.
Miss Perfect / Nene Okada
The Place from Which / Jennie Boultbee
Forever is composed of now’s
Nor hesitate the days
The ones that went before are gone
And yesterday’s today
Staying with the trouble –
resist the urge to lose
Resting
Waiting
– Undone
The end surrenders me
The last repeated several times
Nor lost till we forget
The resonance of breath,
– To yet
Forever is composed of now’s
the dark to see the light
becoming incoming in-becoming
written by Jennie Boultbee
“The Place from Which” begins with an interest in what is seen versus what is not seen. Although we see and observe everyday life, our cities and environments provide us with a framework through which we view things. How can this architectural image shape how we perceive ourselves and our relationships?
“The skin is what resonates, what attracts us, yet it is what lies beneath the skin that makes the surface attractive and mysterious … It is the space behind the words that gives the surface a resonance that makes it matter.” — Robert Wilson
“The Place from Which” builds upon a physical practice that offers a literal place from which to begin and from which everything else emerges. Composed with an attention to absence and the playfulness that arises from the possibility of the unknown.
What remains seen and unseen; absence is allowed to activate imagination and expand meaning rather than diminish it. A work emerges that reveals its own construction: a dialogue between two performers, the self and the other.
Dance, Choreography, Video | Jennie Boultbee
Music | Fabian Neubauer
Photos | Esther Murdock
Duration | 30 minutes
Jennie Boultbee is a London-born dancer based in Essen, working across interdisciplinary collaborations.
MY ASS IS MY WEAPON / Valentina Restrepo Giraldo & Maria Savva
MY ASS IS MY WEAPON is a journey of resistance, joy and empowerment, in which hips and rhythm are explored as tools of agency and resistance.
MY ASS IS MY WEAPON explores how hip-centered dances – perreo, reggaeton, twerking and belly dance – can be reclaimed as acts of joy, strength and resistance. Movement becomes a language of celebration in which pleasure and power coexist.
The performance explores how these dances, which are particularly sexualized or stigmatized when performed by female-read bodies, can be transformed into tools of empowerment – as strategies to dismantle internalized shame and to challenge patriarchal and colonial structures.
The project brings together Maria Savva, with roots in the Middle East, and Valentina Restrepo Giraldo, with Latin American roots, in collaboration with a sound artist / sound-maker. Together, they trace how these dances move through everyday life – at weddings, cultural celebrations and parties – and focus on how hips carry pleasure, strength and emotions.
MY ASS IS MY WEAPON is a journey of resistance, joy and empowerment, in which hips and rhythm are explored as tools of agency and resistance.
Concept, Choreography & Performers | Valentina Restrepo Giraldo & Maria Savva
Music | Live performance: BABY.LONIAX
Photos | Lou Gabriel @lougabr
Duration | 30 minutes
Funding | Supported by City of Essen Cultural Office
Maria Savva (she/they) is a queer Cypriot performance artist, dancer and choreographer living in Essen, Germany. A graduate of Folkwang University (BA Dance, MA Dance Composition), her work engages with queerness, absurdity, folklore and socio-political themes.
Valentina Restrepo Giraldo (she/he) is a Colombian freelance dancer based in Essen, Germany. She graduated in modern and contemporary dance from Folkwang University of the Arts in 2021. Her work explores identity, endurance, human connection and transformation.
Shams Kassab (BABY.LONIAX) is a multimedia performing artist focusing on postdramatic formats and (dance) performance. Born in Aleppo, Syria, their path led via Istanbul to the Ruhr area – biographical stations that shape both their artistic practice and political engagement.
Dasein / Echo Tái
“Dasein” is an installation performance by Ching-Mei Huang and I-Chu Lin that explores the relationship between body, material and time. Transparent water bags, falling drops and choreographic improvisation leave visible traces in space and on paper, creating a poetic dialogue between movement and object.
Nothing seems fixed; movement makes time visible. Objects filled with colored water hang at different heights in the space. Gradually, drops begin to mark the paper beneath them. A dancer moves among the swinging forms. A dialogue between body, material and gravity emerges. Time unfolds as a slow process of transformation.
Drops, traces and movements condense into images. Without linear narration, a space of perception emerges.
Stillness and movement exist in a fragile balance.
Memory appears as a trace in the material.
Eyes follow the transformation of the surface.
Duration becomes perceptible as a layering of moments.
Each movement shifts the order of space.
The atmosphere changes almost imperceptibly.
Traces grow into a silent record of time.
Dance connects body, object and image.
Water draws fleeting lines onto the paper.
In the end, a condensed landscape of traces remains.
Despite the stillness, the process continues to resonate.
Choral movements of the material remain in the space.
Here, it is enough to look.
Concept | Echo Tái
Dance | Ching-Mei Huang
Stage Design | I-Chu Lin
Sound Design | Nina Koncic / goodweib
Photos | Karl-F. Degenhardt & Anastassiya Ponomaryova
Duration | 30 minutes
Funding | Supported by City of Essen Cultural Office
Sunday, May 3, from 6:30 PM
Echo Tái & Aline Braun
Echo Tái (Echo台) is a German-Taiwanese artist duo consisting of Ching-Mei Huang and I-Chu Lin. Based on their backgrounds in dance and scenography, they develop interdisciplinary works between performance, space and visual design.
SMELL / Aline Braun
You see.
You hear.
You taste.
Yes, you see the piece. You hear the music. You taste the drinks at the premiere.
But do you also smell?
SMELL is a two-part contemporary dance piece that places the often-overlooked power of the sense of smell at its center. In a pop-inspired aesthetic, two dancers explore the opposites of seduction and repulsion as well as the connection between scent, memory and social repression.
In the world of theatre, we rely almost exclusively on sight and hearing, leaving some of our strongest senses unused. The sense of smell, which is most closely linked to memory and emotion, is absent on stage, although it has the power to draw the audience more deeply into a world than any set design or score.
The sense of smell evokes associations, creates atmosphere and stimulates imagination and reflection in a way that words and images alone often cannot. SMELL is a two-part contemporary dance piece that explores the duality of scent – its power to seduce and its ability to repel.
In a colorful, pop-inspired aesthetic, two women move within the tension between fragrance and dirt, between what remains in memory and what society prefers to forget.
Concept and Choreography | Aline Braun
Dance and Co-creation | Tullia Francischiello, Mariane Verbecq
Lighting Design, Photos and Videos | Arnaud Dubois
Duration | 45 minutes
Funding | Supported by City of Essen Cultural Office
Aline Braun, Mariane Verbecq, Tullia Francischiello and Arnaud Dubois met during their studies at Folkwang University of the Arts. Over time, they have collaborated on numerous projects, engaging with dance, choreography, photography and lighting across different fields. For SMELL, they combined their skills and their friendship to create a unique olfactory landscape. Welcome to our perfumed world!