The team from the German Dance Film Institute Bremen is recording the event at the Aalto Theater Essen / Germany.

The German Dance Association invites you to a glittering dance gala on
Saturday, February 28, 2026 at 6 p.m. at the Aalto Theater in Essen.
This year’s program showcases the great diversity of dance:
Guests include the Berlin State Ballet, the MiR Dance Company Gelsenkirchen, the choreographer and dancer Thomas A. Bradley, and the Urban Dance Department & friends.

As part of the dance gala, the German Dance Prize 2026 will be awarded to choreographer Christian Spuck. Honors will also be bestowed upon dance scholar Prof. Dr. Gabriele Brandstetter and Butoh dancer Tadashi Endo (posthumously).

Visitors can expect an exciting and diverse gala program:

WATER is a powerful opening act in which the Urban Dance Department & Friends bring the essence of urban dance to the stage. Featuring 13 local and international dancers, Souhail Jalti’s choreography blends hip hop, popping, and breakdancing with contemporary urban expression.

The world premiere of NOT BUTOH SOLO by choreographer and dancer Thomas A. Bradley is both a reference to Gabriele Brandstetter and Tadashi Endo and a reflection on the artist’s enduring fascination with Japanese Butoh.

The Berlin State Ballet presents three pieces by choreographer and this year’s prize winner, Christian Spuck: With Beethoven, Spuck captures the mood of the second movement, “Adagio un poco mosso,” of Piano Concerto No. 5.

Nocturne, with its fusion of classical and contemporary elements, particularly represents Christian Spuck’s choreographic style. Christian Spuck premiered the ballet Romeo and Juliet in Zurich in 2012. His interpretation of the balcony scene, the balcony pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet, is among the most moving moments of the piece.

The MiR Dance Company Gelsenkirchen presents excerpts from the captivating two-part work Hasard & Boléro by Sita Ostheimer, featuring music by Yehezkel Raz and Maurice Ravel, and an excerpt from Millennials by choreographer Marcos Morau. “Millennials” explores how, in the era of the digital revolution, the internet and social networks have fundamentally changed society.

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The dance gala will be opened with a welcoming address by Wolfram Weimer, Minister of State for Culture at the Federal Chancellery.

The evening will be hosted by Vivian Perkovic – known, among other things, from the 3sat magazine Kulturzeit.

The dance gala will be offered with interpretation into German Sign Language (DGS).

“Orange Is Not Alone” is about people, about feelings, about differences. It’s about colors, about encounters, about togetherness. In this dance theater piece, eight dancers with and without disabilities move on stage. They move in spaces. They move in, they move within, they move together. They move out, they move into another space.

Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Sometimes chaos, sometimes a storm. Together somewhere in a party cellar. Dancing together, like they’re really going wild. They hold each other, they belong together. They are very close, they are connected. They play, they take each other seriously. Not still like a statue, not boring. Everyone is important, no one is excluded. Everyone sits in the corner. Blue like friendship, pink like soft and chewing gum, green like longing, yellow like an open window, purple like a paint box, black like the night. Skin like a person, feeling and transparent. Orange wants to be seen, Orange belongs in the group. Maybe we’ll go out onto the balcony and watch a rainbow scatter. Maybe we’ll find a space—for me, for you, for us. Maybe we’ll find it here.

Neele Buchholz (born 1991 in Bremen) is a freelance dancer and actress with Down syndrome. She has performed on stage more than 300 times both in Germany and abroad (including “T4. Ophelia’s Garden,” directed by David Stöhr) and has appeared in film productions (including “Eldorado KaDeWe,” directed by Julia von Heinz). She began her career in 2013 as a permanent dancer with tanzbar bremen e.V. Since 2022, she has worked full-time as a freelance artist. The themes of equality and love often play an important role in her artistic work.

Tomas Bünger studied classical and modern stage dance and was a long-time member of the Bremen Dance Theatre. He subsequently completed an inclusive dance teacher training program in New York and was a guest lecturer at the University of the Arts in Buenos Aires. He worked regularly in Bangladesh for many years with the support of the Goethe-Institut and was an artistic resident in Togo, Romania, and India. He received various teaching appointments. The focus of his choreographic work is the human being as dancer and their relationship to the world.

The ensemble of “Orange Is Not Alone” was selected following a casting call by Neele and Tom in a joint audition.

Co-production: Schwankhalle. Funded by the Performing Arts Fund with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Senator for Culture Bremen, the Waldemar Koch Foundation, and Sparkasse Bremen.

With the support of the regional association TanzSzene Bremen, we are resuming our well-established format, the TANZSALON.

As before, it will take place on the 10th of every month at 8:00 pm at TAFI – regardless of which day of the week the 10th falls on.

Many of you have told us how much you missed the TANZSALON as a place of encounter and exchange within Bremen’s dance scene. Since the last time, quite a lot has happened – at TAFI, but surely also with you: new productions, new films, new guests.

We warmly invite you to celebrate the first TANZSALON after the long break with us. The evening’s theme will be TAFI’s latest documentary: “Vulnerably Beautiful. Dance between Elegance and Risk – A Study by Goethe University Frankfurt.”

The film accompanies a medical study on physical strain in professional dance. Prof. Dr. Dr. Eileen Wanke of Goethe University Frankfurt, head of the research project, will introduce the topic.

Drinks will be provided – just bring yourselves, and feel free to bring along new people and friends.

Friday, October 10 at 8:00 pm
Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen
Am Wall 201 / Forum am Wall
Entrance Ostertorstraße, next to the bakery

Translation by ChatGPT

With Vulnerably Beautiful – Dance between Elegance and Risk, the German Dance Film Institute Bremen presents its latest documentary – an impressive portrait of a medical study of professional dance in the field of tension between artistic dedication and physical strain.

The film is accompanied by a comprehensive research project conducted by the Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt under the direction of Prof. Dr Dr Eileen Wanke. Using modern methods of movement analysis (kinematic examination of movement sequences), movement patterns of professional dancers were analysed during training and rehearsals. The focus: the influence of different floors on the body, determined by identical movement sequences with and without pointe shoes on two different types of floor.

The film was shot at the Staatstheater Oldenburg and the Theater Kiel – two theatres with renowned classical companies known for their excellent dance quality.

>The film not only conveys scientific findings, but also personal perspectives. In addition to dancers and Heather Jürgensen, 1st ballet master and deputy ballet director of Ballett Kiel, Prof Dr Dr Eileen Wanke herself has her say in a detailed interview. She explains the background to the study and categorises the results from a medical perspective. In addition, Wolfgang Heuer from Unfallkasse NRW’s stage technology department reports on safety aspects and prevention in stage operations.

Vulnerably beautiful invites you to see dance not only as an art form, but also as a high-performance physical discipline with all its risks and challenges.

Are you between training at an academy and a professional career? Or a professional dancer in Bremen? Then this is your chance! Immerse yourself in the working methods of two international companies. The choreographers and dancers from Of Curious Nature and Zappalà Danza will pass on their tools and moves directly to you – skills that otherwise only company members know. Inspiring guest teachers and an insider panel on how to get off to a successful start in the dance world complete the program.

FINAL SHOWING:
Sunday is the day: Clear the stage! Show what you’ve got and what you’ve created in the workshops. Free entry for all dance enthusiasts. Feel the vibes of the prospective professionals!

DO YOU LOVE DANCE, BUT NOT AS A PROFESSIONAL?
We have something for you too! Find out how dance works as a creative form of expression and how your body becomes an artistic tool. The dancers from Of Curious Nature will show you the basics of their intense movement techniques – skills for your own style!

The German Dance Film Institute team is documenting the Final-Showing

How is artificial intelligence changing the way we work with film, AV media and archives? What opportunities and challenges arise for research, archiving and mediation? The public working session of the Film AV & Media DACH working group, which is taking place as part of BiblioCon in Bremen, is dedicated to these questions.

Under the title ‘AI in Film and Media’, experts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland will come together to discuss the latest developments. The programme includes contributions from the Film Institute Hanover, the FID Media (formerly FID Film, Media and Communication Science / MediaRep) and the AV-Portal of the TIB Hanover – supplemented by insights into local institutions and projects.

A special highlight of the programme is a visit to the German Dance Film Institute Bremen, the world’s largest archive for dance film. The tour will provide an insight into the combination of decades of archive practice with new digital and AI-supported perspectives.

The session is open to the public and invites all interested parties – for information, discussion and networking at the interface of media studies, practice and technology.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)