Springback publishes views and reviews of new dance from all over Europe – by contributors all over Europe. All our content is available to the public for one year only, but Members can access the complete catalogue any time.
Ann Van den Broek: Creating Joy
Netherlands
A polished kinetic, aural and videographic walk around joy, guided by Flemish choreographer Ann Van den Broek
Present futures
Going digital in 2020 has been a natural step for a festival founded to hybridise physical and virtual realms
Guest episode: dis[]tanz podcast
Observing and considering how a performance-protest in Athens came to inhabit both the real and the online worlds
Hamid Ben Mahi: Chronic(s) 2
France
Revisiting a work twenty years on, hip hop dance artist Hamid Ben Mahi finds that the fundamental things still apply, as time goes by
Beyond the visual: Johanna Hedva’s Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain
As live arts migrate to the screen, Claire Lefèvre wonders whether a book might more fully register and reawaken the aura of live performance
Dance+: Permanent Vacation
Dance brings a moment of presence within the waking dream of a world adrift
Circulating artists, defunded infrastructures (audio)
Don’t just blame Covid for this crisis: restructuring the cultural field had already led to more artists and fewer resources
Circulating artists, defunded infrastructures
Don’t just blame Covid for this crisis: restructuring the cultural field had already led to more artists and fewer resources
Ultima Vez: Hands do not touch your precious Me
Belgium
An online premiere from Wim Vandekeybus, Olivier de Sagazan and Charo Calvo that ventures into mythic worlds
Screening times
As Covid has brought screened dance and screendance into close proximity, four screendance curators look at the dynamics between them
Screening times (audio)
As Covid has brought screened dance and screendance into close proximity, four screendance curators look at the dynamics between them
Wanjiru Kamuyu, An Immigrant’s Story; Smaïl Kanouté, Never Twenty One
France
Edgy performances at the edge of Paris that take us beyond our own horizons
Teresa Vittucci, Michael Turinsky, Claire Vivianne Sobottke: We Bodies
Germany
We Bodies is an hour-long performative question on monsterhood, exorcism, domination, docility – and more
Life sentences: on reviewing and renewing (audio)
Can performance reviews escape from the sentences of the courtroom or the classroom, and live a little more?
Life sentences: on reviewing and renewing
Germany
Can performance reviews escape from the sentences of the courtroom or the classroom, and live a little more?
Visible and erased: the case of the ‘Alzheimer’s ballerina’
What does the viral video of a former dancer with Alzheimer’s disease suggest about the dancer, about disease, about us?
Dance+: Giri/Haji
The BBC/Netflix crime drama Giri/Haji is another sign of mainstream media turning to contemporary dance for inspiration and innovation
Adrien M & Claire B: Faire corps
France
A rapturous fusion of sensation and motion, imagination and engineering, and body with light
Marcos Morau: Sonoma, Surrealism and me
Spain
Threads of history – artistic, cultural, personal – lie beyond the exuberant images and costumes of Marcos Morau’s new work Sonoma
The leap into the abyss and the need to heal again
Greece
Anastasio Koukoutas spoke to some recent dance graduates to find out how they feel about their future, in the face of the coronavirus crisis
Dancing virtually into the London Film Festival
United Kingdom
Alongside dance documentaries, the new LFF Expanded strand is taking steps into virtual dancing
Danser Brut – outsider dance
Belgium
A wide ranging exhibition across two museums in Belgium affords fascinating visions of the idea of ‘outsider dance’
Dance+: Act of Love
Animal courtship dances transformed into human choreography by Russell Maliphant, to advertise condoms
kinkaleri: is it my world?
Italy
How a public relay by Italian group kinkaleri turns into a fruitful question: have we become estranged from the world we created?
Domokos Kovács & Petra Nagy: Do not feed the polar bears
Hungary
Two Hungarian creators on their response to environmental questions in conception, production and performance of their latest work
Dance+: Moonrise Kingdom
In Wes Anderson’s 2012 film, two runaway pre-teens dance on the empty beach of an unknown land called love
To sit or not to sit? The question of movement direction
United Kingdom
What do movement directors do? A new collection of interviews shines a light on an overlooked craft
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Radouan Mriziga: 3ird5@w9rk
Belgium
The intersection of nature with culture – a garden – forms the setting for a site-specific duet by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga
Faye Driscoll: Guided Choreography for the Living and the Dead
Germany
Choreography through headphones, motionless performance within our heads, self-isolation and fantasy – Faye Driscoll’s ’audio choreography’ gets inside you
Talkabout: Urban dance languages at Peepshow Palace
Netherlands
A dialogue on content, context and tradition in urban dance at a corona-proof performance season in Amsterdam
Forward steps
Germany
Rather than longing for the past, some dance artists are using the pandemic crisis to imagine futures for performance
Local leads the way: Pelzverkehr Festival, Austria
Austria
The Covid crisis is shifting focus from the international to the regional – but festivals such as Pelzverkehr have already been there for years
Unknown waters: Berlin’s Tanz im August after Covid
Germany
Tanz im August director Virve Sutinen on rethinking the festival for post-pandemic times
Being together apart: the hollowing of the post-quarantine public
Greece
A public performance ‘practice’ in Athens responded to the coronavirus crisis – but did ‘The Crater’ rethink or recreate its underlying conditions?
Dance+: Protein synthesis – an epic on the cellular level
A mind-blowing, free-spirited dance film that is both scientifically exact and culturally far out
Peeping Tom: The Missing Door, The Lost Room
Spain
Works in mysterious ways: two pieces by Belgian physical theatre company Peeping Tom
Pere Faura: Rèquiem Nocturn
Spain
Pere Faura’s extravagant tribute to Bob Fosse mixes mortality with showbiz and mundane life
Sands of time: capturing Bausch’s Rite of Spring before lockdown
A rehearsal for a performance that never was: École des Sables’ version of Bausch’s Rite of Spring catches a moment in time
www DANCE: partying from IRL to URL
The mix of Covid, digital connectivity and our deep-felt human drive to dance together have reconfigured our dancing spaces
The rise of the online dance class in lockdown
The offer, the reach and the uses of online dance classes are expanding during lockdown – and beyond?
Strange times
United Kingdom
The coronavirus lockdown induces strange visions of our absence. Dance is an art of presence. Can we reconcile their values for the sake of the future?
A virus in the system
Covid-19 is prising reality from normality. What thoughts and feelings arise from this fissure for our Springback network?
New Choreographers Festival Athens
Greece
A Springback spinoff at the seventh New Choreographers Festival
Gaspar Noé: Climax
Gaspar Noé’s Climax is thrilling, stylish and harrowing. Its story is prefigured in the extraordinary opening dance scene
Crystal Pite/Jonathon Young: Revisor
United Kingdom
A farce in the fog of post-truth, post-dramatic abstractions… Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s Revisor trails a string of questions
Daniel Linehan: sspeciess
Belgium
Exploring co-existence and ‘becoming-with’, Daniel Linehan’s new group piece radiates radical softness
KDV Dance Ensemble: Las Casas Invisibles
Germany
A new company are the first contemporary dance show to headline at Berlin’s iconic electronic music venue Funkhaus
A stage in the gallery: Dimitris Papaioannou’s Sisyphus/Trans/Form
Italy
Dimitris Papaioannou’s first site-specific work for an art gallery, at Collezione Maramotti
On and off the platform: dunaPart5, Hungary
Hungary
New voices at the Hungarian platform for performing arts – and new battles over state support and control
From company dancer to co-director to CODA: an interview with Stine Nilsen
Norway
Former co-director of Candoco (UK), Stine Nilsen returns to Norway as director of CODA Oslo International Dance Festival
Mårten Spångberg: 46
Belgium
The advocate of ‘post-dance’ performs a solo – hashtagged #lonelyformalism – that reassembles his own choreographies
Jann Gallois: Samsara
France
All rise: choreographer, curtains, dancers and spirit ascend in a piece about worldly bondage and higher powers
The Continuous Network: capillary action of dance into galleries
United Kingdom
A four-year UK collaboration between Siobhan Davies Dance and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art asks: why take dance into art galleries, and what can happen when you do?
Dance+: Dancing in the schoolyard
T-step on the tarmac? An innovative school principal goes viral with his plan to get kids moving
![Daniela Cruz in Cristina Planas Leitão’s UM [unimal]. Photo © Susana Neves](https://springbackmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ununimal_©Susana_Neves-3_web-450x300.jpg)
PT19: On being, enduring and becoming the performing body
Portugal
Controlling, uncovering and being the performer’s body, at the 2019 Portuguese Platform for Performing Arts
Hodworks & Unusual Symptoms: Coexist
Hungary
Fearless performers brace themselves in a questing, questioning work by Hodworks (HU) and Theater Bremen (DE)
Moving audiences: the Montag Modus event series
Germany
Berlin curator Léna Szirmay-Kalos on developing new formats for showcasing performance outside the theatre
Postdancing in the dark
Sweden
Posting from the POST-DANCE-ING conference in Stockholm 2019, Anna Kozonina asks: how did it work, what did it do?
Fringe cuts from Edinburgh 2019
United Kingdom
A week of dance at the Edinburgh Fringe, as seen by Lena Megyeri at the 2019 NICritics programme for independent writers
Dance+: Kung Fu Hustle
Slick, stylish, violent… the Axe Gang in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle know how to cut a figure on the dance floor – and off it…
Florentina Holzinger: TANZ, a sylphic reverie in stunts
Austria
Pitching witch against fairy, Florentina Holzinger’s TANZ bares the corporal discipline and punishment of romantic ballet through brutal parody and spectacular stunts
La Ribot / Dançando com a Diferença: Happy Island
Germany
You can see the trees on Happy Island. What about the wood?
New directions home? ImPulsTanz 2019
Austria
Lena Megyeri reflects on the crisis of objective in contemporary dance at Vienna's contemporary dance festival.
Radical empathy and real engagement: Take Me Somewhere 2019
United Kingdom
Dance artists at Glasgow’s genre-crossing festival of experimental performance take you beyond performance itself
Gunilla Heilborn: The Wonderful and The Ordinary
Germany
A work in which the ordinary surpasses the wonderful leads to wonderings about words
Oona Doherty: Hard to be Soft – A Belfast Prayer
Germany
An attempt to heal the trauma of the collective Belfast body produces very mixed results
Slow and gentle: Santarcangelo Festival 2019
Italy
Performances at the 49th Santarcangelo Festival stir our sense of being and embodiment
Dance+: Happy Together
A tango scene in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together invites our hearts into the spaces between separation and togetherness, fiction and reality
Six of their sex: female dancemakers at ImPulsTanz 2019
Austria
A choreographic variety of women’s work at ImPulsTanz Vienna
Earth moves: contemporary roots at Sismògraf festival
Spain
The old made anew: three contemporary choreographers reworking folkloric heritage at Sismògraf Festival
Julidans NEXT, Amsterdam: performers steal the show
Netherlands
Julidans NEXT offers new opportunities for both artists and audiences
Vote for dance: Antistatic Festival 2019, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
The 12th Antistatic Festival called a #VoteForDance – but how did the performances poll with our reviewer?
Hack me tender: Mette Ingvartsen’s Red Pieces
Austria
Orgies, utopias and joyful existence in Mette Ingvartsen’s Red Pieces
Dance+: The Favourite
In place and out of time: dance anachronisms in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite (2018) are part of a fickle world
Already there? An interview with Ginevra Panzetti & Enrico Ticconi
Italy
Italian choreographic duo Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi on powerplay and physical rhetoric – past and present
SPRING Utrecht 2019: ‘In many ways, the future is already here’
Netherlands
Name it, hashtag it, experience it… The SPRING festival in Utrecht dives into dance, performance, installation, god, politics, gender – and the future
Dance+: Dogtooth
The distorting mirror of dance reflects an intimate reality of adolescent vulnerability in Dogtooth (2009)
Sofia Mavragani: Afterwords
Greece
Mouth movement makes for an intriguing choreographic experiment, but Anastasio Koukoutas doesn’t quite swallow it
Caught in the act of seeing
Greece
Look, then look again. Anastasio Koukoutas on altering visions in three contemporary dance pieces from Greece
Nicole Beutler Projects: 8: Metamorphoses
Netherlands
What’s the measure of a man? This performance questions what we are even measuring when we say ‘man’
Dance+: Echoes, Ode to Silence
Andres Arochi’s short film uses dance to revisit Luis Barragán’s masterpiece of modernist architecture
Rakete Festival 2019: from Mama to Mother Earth
Austria
At the intersections between the personal and the panoramic – a new generation of dance artists at the Rakete Festival, Vienna
Queer Darlings 2019, Sophiensaele Berlin
Germany
Camgirls and drag queens, chatrooms and cabaret: two surprising pieces from a festival of feminist and queer performance
Albert Quesada & Zoltán Vakulya: OneTwoThreeOneTwo
United Kingdom
An experiment in choreography and staging that is definitely ‘not flamenco’ – but neither is it something else
Imagetanz 2019
Austria
Up close and personal with a lot of orifices at Vienna’s 30th Imagetanz Festival
Dance+: La Joie de Vivre
Wedged between independence and genocide, a Cambodian dance scene shows that loving life is precious – and takes practice
At work: Jesús Rubio Gamo
Spain
‘It was dance and music that saved me from loneliness. ’ Spanish choreographer Jesús Rubio Gamo talks about the turning point that led to the creation of Gran Bolero (2019)
Jefta van Dinther: The Quiet
Germany
Quantum leaps in time… a mysterious world holds on to its secrets
Yukiko Masui / Léa Tirabasso
United Kingdom
A double bill that contrasts mental anguish with physical recklessness
Trash aesthetic: Meet The Symptoms
Hungary
What is waste? Who is trash? Réka Szabó and Dániel Szász of The Symptoms speak about recycling a street performance
At work: Marie Cantenys
United Kingdom
‘The garment is not the outcome, the outcome is everything together.’ Fashion designer Marie Cantenys talks about working with dancer Maya Jilan Dong
London International Mime Festival 2019
United Kingdom
Using language and losing language: Theatre Re, Gecko and Peeping Tom at the 2019 London International Mime Festival
Taiwan Dance Platform 2018
Taiwan
The 2018 Taiwan Dance Platform was ‘made in Asia’, but even more international in scope
Dance+: Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina
A pivotal scene in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is wordless, its drama of love, transgression and death distilled in dance
Jan Martens: Passing the Bechdel Test
France
Jan Martens’ choreography is a canvas that interweaves the action and speech of teenage performers with an impressive array of feminist texts, figures and thoughts
At work: Bára Sigfúsdóttir
Belgium
Icelandic choreographer Bára Sigfúsdóttir on working between reality and imagination
DanceLive Aberdeen, Scotland
United Kingdom
Aberdeen’s DanceLive festival combines a productive dance platform and a conscious aim to connect with non-dance audiences
Dance+: Mauvais Sang
An intoxicating scene from Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang embodies the headlong rush of youthful love and the mystery of its memory
Polyphony, playing and politics: the many voices of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Russia
On voices, parts, and playing parts in the many-limbed choreography of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Oktoberdans, Bergen: minorities dance for a majority audience
Norway
Two programmes at Scandinavia's largest dance platform navigate the exclusivity of an ‘inclusive’ mindset
Towards the ‘ironic spectator’
Apathy as activism: what has become of political art and a politicised audience?
Ivo Dimchev: Som Faves
United Kingdom
A maniacal movement manifesto upends audience expectations in a one-off performance at London’s Chisenhale Dance Space
Dance+: Dead Poets Society
Show, don’t tell! A teacher’s lesson on conformity from an embodied perspective
Black and blue at Festival Les Plateaux
France
Choreographers Ana Pi and Calixto Neto take on ‘black dance’ on their own terms
Favourite jumper: Igor & Moreno, Idiot-Syncrasy
United Kingdom
Caring but not careful – who knew an hour of jumping up and down would touch so many people in so many ways?
Down in one: the single-shot music video
On the appeal and the achievement of the one-shot music video
Dance+: American Psycho
Is that a raincoat or are you just glad to see me? Róisín O’Brien on the choreography of a murder
Tanz im August talkabout #2: portrait of myself as my father (Nora Chipaumire), The Waves (Noé Soulier)
Germany
Springback’s Berlin Three discuss patterns and parentage in two very different pieces at the Tanz im August season
Dansathon: an international dance hackathon
A report from the first ‘international dance hackathon’, a joint venture between Liège, London and Lyon that is more than just a competition
Tanz im August talkabout #1: Inoah (Bruno Beltrão) and R. OSA (Silvia Gribaudi)
Germany
Springback’s Berlin Three discuss body politics and national politics at the Tanz im August season
Jefta van Dinther: Dark Field Analysis
United Kingdom
Two men embark on an expedition inside the body and beyond the mind, in Jefta van Dinther’s psychedelic Dark Field Analysis
Les Brigittines International Festival 2018
Belgium
A many-layered thing: contrasting takeaways of our Springback writers at Les Brigittines, Brussels, reflect the genre-crossing styles of the festival itself
Michikazu Matsune: All Together
Austria
Recollection, reflection and re-enactment make for a memorable evening in Michikazu Matsune’s new piece about people both present and absent
Dance+: Little Miss Sunshine
For the win! Anna Kaszuba on why artlessness triumphs in the dance scene from ‘Little Miss Sunshine’
Rosas: The Six Brandenburg Concertos
Germany
A workbook choreographic exercise builds to a surprisingly exhilarating finale in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s new Six Brandenburg Concertos
Shape of YouTube
Two widely viewed danceworks beg the questions: how does YouTube shape dance? And how do you shape YouTube?
[8:tension] at ImPulsTanz Vienna 2018
Austria
Don’t expect the new to be comfortable: the [8:tension] platform for new choreography is provocative, plural, sometimes tedious – and often out of the comfort zone
Jo Bannon: We Are F*cked
United Kingdom
Doubt and disturbance come to a climax in Jo Bannon’s powerfully penetrating performance
Beyond borders: Amit Lahav and Gecko
United Kingdom
Gecko’s Amit Lahav talks to Daniel Pitt about straddling genres, insularity and internationalism in British theatre – and being pummelled with love
Dance+: Dirty Dancing
Alexandra Gray on her first time watching Dirty Dancing – and why Baby’s first time on the dancefloor stays with her
Taneli Törmä: COVER – A symphonic poem in three movements
Denmark
A merger of choreography and sound installation, Finnish artist Taneli Törmä’s COVER sensitively explores the kinaesthetic experience of sound.
Rocío Molina: Grito Pelao
Spain
They say that Mother knows best, but does she know how to turn that into a performance?
Danse Élargie 2018: big opportunities, bigger ambition
France
Beatboxing, b-boys, a beach and a balloon enlarge our concept of ‘dance’ in the fifth edition of the multi-disciplinary choreographic competition
Potsdamer Tanztageor: 3 × 3 = 8
Germany
When does 3 × 3 = 8? When our three reviewers go to three performances each at Berlin’s 2018 Potsdamer Tanztage festival
Bausch rebooted: Veza Fernández’s Wenn Auge Mund Wird
Austria
Vienna-based Veza Fernández refracts Bauschian Tanztheater through a contemporary prism
Dance+: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Dancing home alone before going out to do what vampires do. Ka Bradley on a moment of dance in the movie A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Pietro Marullo’s WRECK: survival of the fittest in the age of austerity?
Bulgaria
Pietro Marullo’s ‘elastic performance’ is a staging of the struggle to survive in a precarious environment – and an example of it.
Oona Doherty: Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus
Austria
A riveting portrait of the disadvantaged white male that meshes beauty with damnation
Florentina Holzinger: Apollon
United Kingdom
Dance gets down and dirty – but is it worth the gross-out?
Katerina Andreou: BSTRD
Greece
Can a solo dance piece create, on stage, that much needed room of one’s own?
Timothy and the Things: Hunting (Vadászat)
Hungary
Three men hunting – but for what, for whom, and why? Anna Dohy looks to the wider stage for answers
Jasna Vinovrški: Lady Justice
Croatia
With witnesses, evidence and judgement – is a dance performance a bit of a trial?
Ligia Lewis: Minor Matter
Belgium
Black matters in Minor Matter, a powerful encounter with the myriad concepts of blackness
How to like dance
Australia
Audience clubs are on the increase - why? Luke Forbes on his experience of a new workshop in Melbourne
The wilderness within
Norway
What happens when dance takes nature as its stage? A festival in the northernmost town in the world leads to a changed sense of self, culture and existence
Christos Papadopoulos’s Opus: in search of the dialectics of music and movement
Greece
A textual exploration of a performative exploration in sound, meaning and time
Mònica Pagès watches Likes by Nùria Guiu
Spain
Classical music journalist Mònica Pagès sees a solo about the value of ‘likes’ in an age of social media. How was it for her?
The naked stage of Sanna Kekäläinen
Finland
Riikka Laakso on Finnish choreographer Sanna Kekäläinen, and the subversions and inversions of her 2017 piece Whorescope
Mette Ingvartsen: 21 pornographies
Belgium
Assuming the position is at the heart of this physical exploration of erotica
Vero Cendoya: La Partida
Spain
Beautiful as dance can be, is it really any match for the beautiful game?
At work: Meytal Blanaru
Belgium
Brussels-based Israeli choreographer Meytal Blanaru on the workings behind her work
Arkadi Zaides: TALOS
Belgium
Arkadi Zaides' detatched demonstration of surveillance, digital simulation and border infringements
Hodworks: Sunday
Hungary
Hodworks’ Sunday begs the question: in the age of the selfie, what separates the person and the persona?