Just in Time

Workshops by choreographers and artists deufert&plischke

The Goethe-Institut presents the worldwide interactive project Just in Time. From Berlin to Singapore to Los Angeles, participants have shared their love and memories of dance in their everyday lives -- in the clubs, the streets, at home, in the shower -- through personal letters or media posts. In workshops with renowned German choreographers Deufert & Plischke, children, adults and students ages 10 to 95 have come together in workshops to combine their favorite personal movements into a performance. Experience this one-of-a-kind dance project in Dubai.

The project JUST IN TIME by the German artists deufert&plischke is about what dance means to us. It is a group reflection on the individual relationship to dance. How is it done? 

In each city deufert&plischke meet different communities - from professional dancers to elderly people, from schoolchildren to people suffering from disease or people with physical and intellectual impairments, from social projects to university libraries - and ask workshop participants to write down or draw their favourite (dance)movements. This serves as a warm-up to get into discussions about dance, as well as into writing and drawing.

Next, everybody is asked to “write directly to dance” in the form of a letter and to include their personal and intimate experiences of dance, be it moments of happiness or frustration or embarrassment, inclusion or exclusion; all experiences are valid.

At the end of a series of workshops a ball or meeting is organized; deufert&plischke ask everyone who participated in the workshops to join together for a final dance. This event is a chance for everybody to come together and dance their favourite movements that were written down by the other participants. 

The participants share and reflect their experiences with the art form of dance. Each participant will attend a workshop and the final presentation of the project at the German Pavilion at EXPO 2020. 

All age groups, all abilities, everybody is very much welcome in this process. Diversity is demanded. Everybody can apply.

Interested? To register, send us your favourite moves from your smartphone, through Instagram or TikTok or send us an email to Beata.Stankevic.extern@goethe.de with a short information about yourself.

 

About deufert&plischke 
Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke have been the artistic duo deufert&plischke since 2001. By radically fusing life and work, they have spent two decades creating choreographic works without individual authorship that go beyond the established framework of dance and performance (2012 “InsTanzen”, 2014 “Niemandszeit”, 2016 “Just in Time”, 2020 “A worn world”). Their work has been presented at the Tanzplattform 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2018, as well as at the Tanzkongress 2009 and 2019. They have been visiting professors at the JLU Giessen, the UDK Berlin and the University of Hamburg. They have also been professors at the UDK Berlin, where they helped to establish the bachelor degree course in “Dance, Context, Choreography” at the HZT, a programme they subsequently ran for many years. deufert&plischke are currently members of the advisory board for the Tanzkongress 2022 and for the Kunststiftung NRW. In 2020 they became part of Forum Habitat, a long-term transdisciplinary exchange project between Canada and Europe on the topic of “Vivre Vieux” (living with age). Their work focuses on integrative and social models of choreography, as well as on participatory performances. They combine art and mediation in their artistic goals, a view which is shared by many people, irrespective of social, language and gender barriers. Together with the producer Felix Wittek, deufert&plischke founded Spinnerei Schwelm in 2021.

Artists about their project
JUST IN TIME started in 2016 as a dance heritage project. The idea behind it is to consider dance history as an instantaneous and local phenomenon written by people from their memories, experiences and desires. This project creates a collective and messy imaginary world which is created hand in hand by the amateur, the left-out, the other, the kid, the professional. The aim is not to claim an alternative history, but rather to add a chaotic and open source to the clean and curated trajectory of the so-called dance history. The most fulfilling aspect of this project is the culmination of the project as a whole. At the end of the series of workshops we hold a ball in which we ask all the people who participated in the workshops to join us for a final dance. This event is a chance for all the people we have met to come together and dance the favourite movements that were written down by the other participants. We enjoy this experience very much especially since we get to meet people from all diverse kinds of backgrounds and talk about dance. We are continuously building a growing resource from all the letters of dance we have received in Berlin, Tel Aviv, New York, Düsseldorf, Los Angeles, Brussels ... and all the places that this project will travel to in the future.

 

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