ÉTAPE DANSE
A cooperation project between France – Germany – Italy to support new choreographic creations
Étape Danse is a trilateral project for international choreographic residencies that aims to promote the new promising creations of significant choreographers of the contemporary scene from France, Germany and Italy. The program, initiated by the Bureau du Théâtre et de la Danse à Berlin, was born from the collaboration between Fabrik Potsdam, La Maison center de développement chorégraphique national Uzès Gard Occitanie, Théâtre de Nîmes and Associazione Mosaico Danza joined them in December 2018.
In 2019 Mosaico involved the Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo – PDV (Circuito Regionale Multidisciplinare del Piemonte) – Lavanderia a Vapore, in order to make the project sustainable, providing selected artists with a professional work space, contributing to their artistic growth, and promoting intercultural dialogue between guest artists and local companies. From 2021 Interplay involved also Torinodanza Festival / Fondazione Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale, thus further increasing the financial support in support of contemporary dance.
The project thus develops its international vocation in the best possible way, coming to support every year 3 talented companies selected: one French, one German and one Italian.
EDITION 2025
SELECTED ARTISTS
MADELEINE
STEFANIA TANSINI [IT]
Madeleine is a choreographic project that investigates the relationship between places and the human figure. A body crossing landscapes, moving through different spaces, is a common experience. Everyday experiences that belong to us effortlessly and are directly related to the body’s movement through space – the origin of the choreography – and how places influence our being. Madeleine expands this sensibility toward landscapes, what surrounds and accommodates the body, and in the body accomplishes a process of connecting apparent boundaries.
Dancer and choreographer, Stefania Tansini is a graduate of the Paolo Grassi Academy. She has worked for Romeo Castellucci, Cindy Van Acker, Simona Bertozzi, Luca Veggetti, Enzo Cosimi, Ariella Vidach, Motus. She has embarked on a path of research on the body that she pursues through choreographic and performative projects. She is the winner of the UBU 2022 award in the category “best performer under 35” and is an artist associated with the Fondazione Teatro Grande of Brescia. Stefania Tansini’s works have been presented in numerous festivals, including Romaeuropa Festival, Festival FOG in Milan, Festival di Sant’Arcangelo, Festival Gender Bender in Bologna, Festival La democrazia del corpo in Florence, and Festival Interplay. In 2023 Stefania was the winner of the Bando Air for L’ombelico dei limbi, in 2022 the UBU Award Best Actress/performer under 35 and in 2021 Network and Critics Award for La grazia del terribile, to name a few.
From 21st to 29th August 2025 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
From 1st to 12th December 2025 – Residency in France – La Briquetterie CDCN
UN PEU POUR MON COEUR
DALILA BELAZA [FR]
Born from an encounter that took place in Algeria in 2019 with Lous Castelous, a folk dance group, the choreographic project is developed on a process of study and creation that raises human and artistic questions around the concept of encountering otherness, in the strictest sense of the term, by getting involved in new connections. Thus, the trip to Algeria does not represent a return to the origins, but rather a call to revisit what constitutes the identity of the choreographer, namely the encounter between two tensions: the sense of rhythm and the sense of narrative.
From 21st to 29th August 2025 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
From 29th September to 5th October 2025 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
ONE STRIKE SALVATION
Yotam Peled & Nitzan Moshe [DE]
One Strike Salvation is a contemporary memorial ceremony blending dance, text and song. Performed by two migrant artists, it explores the tension between belonging and displacement, nostalgia and identity. Through the use of objects charged with collective memory, it deconstructs tradition, heroism, and the body’s role in grief and celebration.
Yotam Peled, born in 1989, is a choreographer and performer with a background in visual arts, athletics, and capoeira. He began dancing at 21 and later studied contemporary circus. Since 2015, he has been based in Berlin, working internationally as a freelance artist and leading the ensemble Yotam Peled & the Free Radicals.
Nitzan Moshe, born in 1994, began her dance training at a young age, and accomplished a one-year internship in Bat-Sheva Ensemble. She worked in Vertigo Dance company, and as a freelancer with makers such as Roy Assaf, Sita Ostheimer, and company Idem. In 2019 she relocated to Berlin and began her collaboration with Yotam Peled, first as a dancer and recently as a co-choreographer.
2024 EDITION
SELECTED ARTISTS
AMƏN
EMANUELE ROSA & MARIA FOCARACCIO [IT]
From the Hebrew word amen meaning “to be sure, to be true,” AMƏN explores the notions of authenticity and appearance, the blurred boundaries between education, culture and nature. The work navigates between drama and irony, examining identity, gender and the complexities of male and female in one body.
EM+ represents the project combining the choreographic practices of Emanuele Rosa and Maria Focaraccio [IT/DE] – Emanuele and Maria began their co-authorial journey in 2020. Their work starts from the archives of ballet and contemporary dance to meet the languages of visual and performing arts, constantly opening up to collaborations with numerous artists.
From 22nd to 30th August 2024 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
From 4th to 15th November 2024 – Residency in France – La Briquetterie CDN
ABOUT LAMBADA
COLECTIF ÉS [FR]
In November 1989, the top song on the German charts was Lambada by Kaoma. Taking as its starting point the correlation of these events over time, About Lambada connects the fall of the Berlin Wall with Lambada, the borders with bodies moving together. It asks: How can the pop anthem, Lambada, bring us together (again)?
About Lambada is a physical study of the Lambada, an international musical, dance, social and political phenomenon.
Ten years ago, Collectif ÉS started their project with the goal of building their own utopian vision by attempting to write together, collectively. Through their various productions they have reexamined and bet on the notion of collectivity, realizing that utopia.
From 3rd to 8th June 2024 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
From 22nd to 30th August 2024 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
VASTA
LINA GOMEZ [DE]
VASTA is the research journey of the play “Unravel” by and with Lina Gomez, which draws strength from the ancestral power of heritage that vibrates through the voices and bodies of women from different generations. In collaboration with Luciane Ramos Si/va (BR), Ana Lessing Menjibar (DEI ES), musician Aduni Guedes (BRIDE) and the two late grandmothers Cenith Antonia Serrudo (CO) and Rosa Tulia Garcia (CO).
Lina Gomez takes the stage again after fourteen years of working on cultural practices of dance and the persistence of the body in history. She draws inspiration in her work from her own Afro-Brazilian and Colombian background and traditions, inviting the audience to connect with her legacy and to reflect on how it is possible to create community and identity nowadays.
From 10th to 16th June 2024 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
From 22nd to 30th August 2024 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
2023 EDITION
SELECTED ARTISTS
DANSE MACABRE!
JACOPO JENNA [IT]
DANSE MACABRE! is an austere invitation to dance into the unknown, a quest through a visionary mixture of dancing bodies, film, electronic music and light. The performance aims to investigate the relationship between choreography and video, seeking a visual score that exposes the performers’ physical memory and the viewer’s free associations.
Danse Macabre! features the collaboration of dancer Ramona Caia, on stage with 3 other dancers, musician Alberto Ricca, aka Bienoise, and visual artist Roberto Fassone.
From 16th to 24th September 2023 – Residency in France – La Maison CDCN Uzès Gard Occitanie
From 25th to 31st August 2023 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
FAIRE FLEURIR
COLLECTIF HINTERLAND [FR]
FAIRE FLEURIR brings together a dancer, two musicians, a pile of stones and a rich environment of light and shadow, under a veil that defines the limits of a surprisingly taut space – the fabric functioning as a very low ceiling. Sitting all around this cave without walls, the audience witnesses a forced tilt to the ground. Everything here takes place at a level that prevents the human being from standing up. In this underground shelter, in this secluded and secret place, some people gather and learn to crawl.
From 29th May to 3rd June 2023 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
From 25th to 31st August 2023 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
ECHO FIELD
JAMES BATCHELOR [DE]
Echo Field is a new collaboration between Berlin-based Australian choreographer/performer James Batchelor, Amsterdam-based performer/dance artist Arad Inbar, and artist/3D graphic designer Leeza Pritychenko.
One of the main curiosities of Echo Field is the connection created by sharing movement or dancing together, and how the digital world mediates this relationship. This residency project will focus on how the moving body and the digital image can support each other, with a desire to experiment with a range of different tools that echo the movement between live and virtual environments.
From 29th May to 5th June 2023 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
From 16th to 24th September 2023 – Residency in France – La Maison CDCN Uzès Gard Occitanie
EDITION 2022
SELECTED ARTISTS
HEALING TOGETHER
DANIELE NINARELLO [IT]
Beginning with the “silent protests” conceived and created during the period of isolation, HEALING TOGETHER was born, a choral play dedicated to the collective process of protest and liberation in which the performers indulge in a mutually constructing space in which their vulnerable bodies can be exposed.
24 October – 6 November 2022 – residency in France – La Maison CDCN Uzès Gard Occitanie
16-28 August 2022 – residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
LESSONS FOR CADAVERS
MICHELLE MOURA [DE]
LESSONS FOR CADAVERS is a performance for three dancers. The project asks questions about the complex relationship between living and dying in the contemporary world and its current necropolitics. In the rehearsal process and in the performance itself, personal stories, dreams, death instructions and choreographers from the past are explored, which are understood as archaeological sites.
These will mainly provide a non-Western perspective on remembering and forgetting the dead in times of globalization and technological mediation.
May 30 to June 6, 2022 – residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
Fall 2022 – residency in France – Théâtre de Nîmes
BLACK/WHITE
HAMDI DRIDI [FR]
From the hip-hop he practiced in Tunis, to his training with Maguy Marin in Rillieux-La-Pape, within the CNDC in Angers or even, as part of the Master Exercise in Montpellier, Hamdi Dridi does not seem to be constantly refining his personal language by rubbing shoulders with new contexts, new forms or aesthetics. In this development full of hybridizations, the worker’s gesture has become one of his recurring resources. Making connections between music and dance, exploring possible spaces between movement and meaning, abstraction and the tangible: other points of focus in his choreographic approach.
From May 16-26, 2022 – residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
From August 16 – 28, 2022 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
EDITION 2021
SELECTED ARTISTS
RIGHT
CARLO MASSARI [IT]
Are we ready for the sacrifice? Obviously not our own! It will always be up to someone else to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community; perhaps to a virgin, the most fragile and naive … And who has the right to choose? The old, the wise and the elect, obviously. But are we sure that elderly hold within them the power of absolute wisdom and the authority to decide what is right for others and what is not? By what right? It is about justice and someone will be executed, once again, to honor the Gods. RIGHT wants to represent the final chapter of the three-year macro-project of C&C Company on the theme of “human bestiality”: the award-winning BEAST WITHOUT BEAUTY and the more recent LES MISERABLES were the first two chapters that were produced during the last year. Furthermore, the co-production with COB Compagnia Opus Ballet (directed by Rosanna Brocanello) shows the opening of C&C Company towards long-term international planning.
23-27 May 2021 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
16 -28 August 2021 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
7 SPELLS
HERMANN HEISIG [DE]
Hermann Heisig continues the study of the long 7 SPELLS project, recovering the residency of 2020. His work develops a practice of the simultaneous connection of voice and movement. The central idea is to conceive the voice as the soundtrack of the body, and at the same time the body as the materialization of the voice. Hermann Heisig lives and works as a choreographer and performer in Berlin, began to take an interest in choreography as a self-taught in the late 1990s in Leipzig, has developed an idiosyncratic movement vocabulary and is stimulated by elements of loss of control, as well as comedy, voluntary and involuntary.
14 – 24 May 2021 – Residency in Italy – Lavanderia a Vapore
16 -28 August 2021 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
RIDEAU RIDEAU
ANNA MASSONI [FR]
RIDEAU RIDEAU is a research title, borrowed from a poem by André Breton. As a starting point for this work, the artist wants to focus on the motif of the entrances and exits. “The breath and the voice go in and out in and out of the body, my attention goes in and out of my body, goes out of one body to enter the outside world, empathically enters another body, goes in and out for a day, enter and exit the stage ” – Anna Massoni.
16 -28 August 2021 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
17 – 25 September 2021 – Residency in France – Théâtre de Nîmes
EDITION 2020
The 2020 edition had to be modified due to Covid-19 emergency. In 2020, in Germany, the Fabrik Potsdam hosted in August the three companies, giving to them the opportunity of being part of a wide cultural exchange, a meeting enlarged with the professionals that attended the festival ‘Tanz im August’.
In Italy, Mosaico Danza/Interplay and Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo will host the French and the German company in May 2021, right in proximity with Interplay Festival.
In France the Maison centre de développement chorégraphique national Uzès Gard Occitanie and Théâtre de Nîmes hosted the Italian company in January 2021 at the KLAP Maison pour la danse in Marseille.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Sylvain Huc [FR]
After carrying out his first artistic residency in 2020 in Germany with NUIT, Sylvain Huc recovers his Italian residency in Turin – originally scheduled for 2020 – in May 2021 with the new project WONDERLAND.
NUIT
Sylvain Huc’s desire to work on the theme of “night” is linked to his fascination for this moment of the day. Thinking about the night means thinking about how darkness transforms our perception and our relationship with others. With this new project he continues his investigations on the body as a subject, object, matter and multiplicity of constructions. NUIT is a pretext to explore the elasticity of time.
WONDERLAND
WONDERLAND, inspired by Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland“, addresses the theme of childhood and identity. Alice’s character escapes any kind of classification and defends herself from any attempt to define her socially and politically. After his university studies in History and Art, Sylvain Huc discovered contemporary dance and completed the training program of the CDC (center for choreographic development) in Toulouse in 2003. After several years of work as a dancer for various choreographers he became artistic director of Cie Divergences in 2014. He now runs his own company (Cie Sylvain Huc) and will be associated artist with the CDCN of Roubaix (Le Gymnase) from 2020 to 2022.
17 – 29 August 2020 – residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
ARA! ARA!
Ginevra Panzetti / Enrico Ticconi [IT]
ARA! ARA! it is the image of a rising power that has chosen a bird as its symbol. Not a majestic and fearsome bird of prey like the eagle, an animal often used as a heraldic symbol of power, but rather a bird that communicates fun and tranquility by becoming an exotic icon: the ARA parrot. ARA! ARA! continues to investigate the symbolic power of the flag. The word ARA reveals a second meaning that alludes to the ancient place of sacrifice.
Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi live between Berlin and Turin and have been working together as an artistic duo since 2008. Their research develops in the fields of dance, performance and visual art. Exploring issues related to the historical union between communication, violence and power, they draw on ancient imaginaries by building hybrid figures or images between history and contemporaneity. Both graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and attended the Stoa, a school of rhythmic movement and philosophy directed by Claudia Castellucci. In 2019 they won the Arte Laguna 13 award in the performance and video art section with the site-specific performance JARDIN / ARSENALE, the first edition of the Hermès Danza Triennale Milano Award and the Danza & Danza Award as emerging choreographers.
17 – 29 August 2020 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
11 January – 12 February 2021 – Residency in France – Klap di Marsiglia
7 SPELLS
Hermann Heisig [DE]
7 SPELLS by Hermann Heisig is a research on a practice of the partly-absurd simultaneous connection of voice and movement developed in his latest solo work Singer Machine (2019). The central idea is to conceive the voice as the soundtrack of the body, and at the same time the body as the materialization of the voice.
Hermann Heisig lives and works as a choreographer and performer in Berlin. As a dancer he has worked for Martine Pisani, Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods, Pieter Ampe, Thomas Lehmen, Begum Erciyas and Corinna Harfouch, among others. From the self-taught beginnings of his choreographic interest in the late 1990s in Leipzig, Hermann Heisig has developed an idiosyncratic movement vocabulary that challenges efficiency and is stimulated by elements of loss of control, as well as voluntary and involuntary comedy.
17 – 29 August 2020 – Residency in Germany – Fabrik Potsdam
EdiTion 2019
In Germany, Fabrik Potsdam welcomed the three companies at the end of August 2019, thus also giving the opportunity to meet the numerous international professionals of the sector present at the ‘Tanz im August’ festival. In Italy, Mosaico Danza / Interplay and Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo welcomed the French company at the end of September 2019 and the German company in May 2020, at the international festival Interplay. In exchange, the German company carried out the residency at the Théâtre de Nîmes in September 2019, while the Italian one was welcomed at the Maison center de développement chorégraphique national Uzès Gard Occitanie in February 2020.
SELECTED ARTISTS
ABERRATION
EMMANUEL EGGERMONT
L’ANTHRACITE [LILLE]
Moral, economic, aesthetic and ecological aberrations … Destabilizing, they can make us smile or revolt. In an attempt to deal with them, this piece questions our ability to cope with upheavals, the sudden loss of cornerstones, and the collapse of certainties. It is conceived as a divergent prism that invites us to accept the fragments of the altered image, without judging their coherence, in order to consider a perspective of reconstruction. Emmanuel Eggermont was trained in contemporary dance at the Centre
National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers. During two years spent in South Korea and his collaboration of more than ten years with Raimund Hoghe, he has developed a particular attention for the essence and for the essentials. With a distinct taste for visual arts and architecture, he has developed a singular language in which expressionist images are mixed with performance. Emmanuel Eggermont is an associate artist at the Centre.
>1st Step August > residence at Fabrik Potsdam
+ 2nd step residence at Lavanderia a Vapore from 23rd September to 4th October 2019
EYE SEA
ANNA NOWICKA [DE]
In Eye Sea, Anna Nowicka invites two performers to communally explore the texture of their dreams. Dreaming is understood here as a parallel, embodied, sensational, imaginary reality, generated by the inescapable being in the world. We are dreaming all the time, as every experience we have triggers an infinite network of memories, desires, feelings, and emotions. Each dancer unfolds personal mythical narratives that create a communally resonating space. Originating from her long-term interest in dreams, imagination, and physical actions, Anna Nowicka in recent years began developing a methodology for artistic creation. Her focus lies on questions of imagination and creativity, and the power of an image to expand the body into its full transformative potential. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the Polish Film School/ Acting Department in Lodz and a practitioner of the School of Images of Catherine Shainberg in New York, deepening the work on dreams with Bonnie Buckner. She lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.
OUT OF PLANET
SILVIA GRIBAUDI CON BASSAM ABOU DIAB [IT/LBN]
Out of Planet focuses on the social and political implications of shaping an identity through contemporary media and means of communication. How does an image become a manifesto and how quickly does it exhaust itself? How to cope with the necessity of being visible, acknowledged, seen, and approved? Irony is the fundamental poetical element joining two choreographers from very different backgrounds. Their movement research originates from Arab folk dance and its common aspects with folk dances from South Italy. Silvia Gribaudi and Bassam Abou Diab met in 2017 on a platform for Italian and Arab artists. They share a similar perspective on the power of contemporary dance to address people and socio-political issues. In a first residency in Beirut in 2017, they created a first structure for Out of Planet. They aim to create a >dramaturgy of the body1st step August > 15 day residence at the Fabrik Postdam
+ 2nd step February > 10 day residence at the Maison CDCN and at the Théâtre de Nîmes