Beyond Academia? How Dance Rewrites Research

Performative Talk with Prof. Dr. Mariama Diagne and Prof. Dr. Sandra Noeth
with interventions by Isabel Kwarteng-Acheampong
September 11, 2026, 6–7:30 pm | German
SAAL, Radialsystem, Berlin 

In this conversation, Sandra Noeth (HZT) and Mariama Diagne (LMU), both professors in the field of dance and performance research at German universities, explored how dance as a practice, an art form, and a discursive field had impacted an academic field of research over time. Drawing on their professional trajectories, they reflected on what it meant to study dance in institutional settings — universities, art academies, theatres, or museums — whose foundations lay in imperial and centralist knowledge structures: Which concepts, expectations, and scholarly forms shaped access to the field? Building on this, they asked how the landscape was shifting today: at a moment when embodied practices, non‑academically formed perspectives and collective forms of learning and artistic methods were gaining importance and bringing new forms of knowledge into view. At the centre lay a fundamental question that reached far beyond the discipline itself: How do we not only research dance, but how does dance transform what we call “research”?

LA PALABRE Space — Tea, Reading & Resting Room

September 11, 2–9 pm
KUBUS, Radialsystem, Berlin

Tea, Reading & Resting Room with artistic interventions. The programme at LA PALABRE Space is curated by Arantxa Ciafrino. On September 11th, LA PALABRE Space featured jee chan and Cheng-jung Tsai. More information on the LA PALABRE Space can be found here.

The series UNEXPECTED LESSONS — Knowledges of Body and Sound is funded by the LOTTO Foundation Berlin. In cooperation with the Betty Center for Movement Research in Dance Studies at LMU Munich.