#3 RETHINKING DANCE IN ACADEMIA
Beyond Academia? How Dance Rewrites Research
Performative Talk with Prof. Dr. Mariama Diagne and 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, explore how dance as a practice, an art form, and a discursive field has impacted an academic field of research over time. Drawing on their professional trajectories, they reflect on what it means to study dance in institutional settings — universities, art academies, theatres, or museums — whose foundations lie in imperial and centralist knowledge structures: Which concepts, expectations, and scholarly forms shape access to the field? Building on this, they ask how the landscape is shifting today: at a moment when embodied practices, non‑academically formed perspectives and collective forms of learning and artistic methods are gaining importance and bringing new forms of knowledge into view. At the centre lies a fundamental question that reaches far beyond the discipline itself: How do we not only research dance, but how does dance transform what we call “research”?
Entry free & without registration!
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 will feature jee chan and Cheng-jung Tsai. More information on the LA PALABRE Space can be found here.
#4 DECOLONIZING THE BODY IN DANCE
Cuerpos de Tierra - Earth Bodies
Workshop with Martha Hincapié Charry
September 11, 2026, 1-3 pm | German/English
STUDIO, Radialsystem, Berlin
Tickets will be available soon.
The Cosmic Body
Workshop with Dr. Rajyashree Ramesh
September 11, 2026, 3:30-5:30 pm | German/English
STUDIO, Radialsystem, Berlin
Tickets will be available soon.
Amazonia 2040
Lecture-Performance with Martha Hincapié Charry
September 12, 2026, 4-6 pm | English
SAAL, Radialsystem, Berlin
The Cosmic Body
Lecture-Performance with Dr. Rajyashree Ramesh
September 12, 2026, 4-6 pm | English
SAAL, Radialsystem, Berlin
Tickets will be available soon.
On Unarriving
Performance by Sage Ni‘Ja Whitson
September 12, 2026, 6:30–7:15 pm | English
STUDIO, Radialsystem, Berlin
Tickets will be available soon.
What do we mean when we talk about bodies? Contemporary artistic approaches challenge the notion of a “neutral” body in Western dance, revealing it as historically and culturally constructed. In Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems, the body emerges not as a malleable object, but as a carrier of memory, relation, and meaning. The artistic practices of Dr. Rajyashree Ramesh, Martha Hincapié Charry, and Sage Ni’Ja Whitson present the body as a site where history, emotion, knowledge, and environment intersect: In The Cosmic Body, Ramesh conceives of the body as part of cosmic orders; in Amazonia 2040, Hincapié Charry views it as an ecofeminist territory in which (de)colonial and ecological issues are inscribed; and in their performance On Unarriving Whitson, who lives in Berlin as a fellow of DAAD Artists-in-Berlin, approaches dark matter and dark energy as sacred and cosmic technology. Movement becomes a practice of reconnection — with territory, cosmology, and community — and at the same time an act of resilience and resistance.
LA PALABRE Space — Tea, Reading & Resting Room
September 12, 2–9 p.m.
KUBUS, Radialsystem, Berlin
Tea, Reading & Resting Room with artistic interventions. The programme at LA PALABRE Space is curated by Arantxa Ciafrino. On September 12th, LA PALABRE Space will feature the dancing project Coole Kinder. 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.