danzon_eng

© Willy Vainqueur Guadeloupean dancer and choreographer Max Diakok discovered the traditional dance form of Gwoka in 1978 while studying advanced judo. In the following years, Diakok studied modern jazz, modern ka, classical, and contemporary dance in Toulon, France, and worked with choreographers such as Paolo Campos, Germaine Acogny, Jean François Durouré, Pierre N'Doumbé, Christian Bourigault, and Norma Claire, as well as theater directors such as Luc Saint-Éloy and Jean Michel Martial of the Théâtre de l'Air Nouveau. In 1996, Diakok founded his own dance company, Compagnie Boukouso, in Saint-Denis, Paris.  Keeping the search for new forms of movement in mind and eager to acquire other technical tools, Max Diakok continues to utilize the Gwoka movement vocabulary in his work, focusing primarily on contemporary dance, African dance, and body techniques such as yoga, buto, and contact. He was awarded the title of Knight of Arts and Letters in France in 2015.  Max Diakok's ...

© Frank Sperling Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games. These include videocan, Canadian national video archive of performance, and culturecapital, a performing arts economy trading card game.  asses.masses, their major piece, is a custom video game designed to be played from beginning to end by a live audience, one person at a time. It is the eight hour epic story of a herd of unemployed donkeys trying to get their jobs back, all while navigating the perils of a post-Industrial society in which they’ve been made redundant. It has premiered in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Flemish, and Catalan at major festivals in the US, Canada, Argentina, Mexi...

Waiting for Leaning Tree (Studio Stage - The Royal Danish Opera, 2025, March 8th) © Mehmet Kerem Özel Leaning Tree is a dance piece produced by the Dansk Danseteater (Danish Dance Theatre) and the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra. It was choreographed by Fernando Melo and its music composed by Signe Lykke. The first performances of Leaning Tree , which took place at the start of the 2023-2024 season in the main hall of the Royal Danish Theatre, were presented to the audience with live music performed by eight groups of musicians placed in different areas of the auditorium as well as in the orchestra pit, creating a feeling of immersiveness. In the 2024-2025 season, Leaning Tree was once again included in the programme of  Dansk Danseteater, this time performed with recorded music at the Danish Royal Opera's small hall, Studio Stage, as well as in various cities across Denmark, and at the Kuopio Dance Festival in Finland. Comprising 13 dancers from around the world and led...

Arsenale, Venice © Mehmet Kerem Özel La Biennale di Venezia has been organising the Biennale Danza as part of its music and theatre festivals since 1934, and for the past 19 years Biennale Danza has run under its own title. Although it takes place annually, it uses the term biennale (biennial - every two years) in its title in reference to the organising institution.  This year the Biennale Danza took place between 17th July and 2nd August 2025 and it’s the theme chosen by Wayne McGregor, the British choreographer who has been the its artistic director for the past four years, was Making Myth. This year's awards were announced in January and presented to the winners at its opening: Twyla Tharp received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and Carolina Bianchi received the Silver Lion.  This year the Biennale Danza featured 18 productions, including nine world premieres and two European premieres, with the festival co-producing 11 of them. During the last four days...

On a cool but sunny late May Saturday, I walk through the crowded and chaotic streets of Boğazkesen into a small courtyard that widens as I move in a funnel shape. This is çakSTÜDYO, the studio of Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası in Çukurcuma. This space and the courtyard in front of it, which the troupe converted from an old car repair shop in 2007, is like an oasis with its benches and plants. I find a shady spot and sit down. Billie Holiday's song ‘ I'll be seeing you ’ is coming out of the open door of the studio, and the softly sung numbers ‘ One, two, three, one two, three... ’. Soon I realise that the workshop is over with the sound of applause. A woman with bushy and dishevelled hair sticks her head out and we greet each other. She is the person I am about to interview: Malou Airaudo.  The students who participated in the workshop leave one by one. Malou also goes out, and finding the courtyard noisy, we go back into the studio. Mihran [Tomasyan] takes us to the studio of phot...

Waiting for Golden Age (Stavros Niarchos Hall - Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens - 17 May 2025)  © Mehmet Kerem Özel The latest work by Greek choreographer and visual artist Konstantinos Rigos, Golden Age , which premiered on 12 April 2025 at the National Theatre of Serbia in Novi Sad as a co-production of the Greek National Opera (GNO) Ballet and the Belgrade Dance Festival, was presented to Athens audience for five performances between 9 and 17 May at the Stavros Niarchos Hall, the main stage of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre used by the GNO. Golden Age , which played to sold-out houses, received full marks from the audience and an enthusiastic standing ovation. In Golden Age , Rigos looks back on his life experience and what he has accumulated in his 35-year artistic career as a dancer, choreographer, founder of the independent dance company OKTANA, movement designer for theatre shows, theatre/opera director, stage designer, visual artist, ar...