Here you can revel in memories with us or get a first impression of CircusDanceFestival.
Some program points can still be experienced now in the CDFthek!
CircusDanceFestival 2024
Artists Performances
Overhead Project (DE) , Zandle/Eisele/Huneck (Ö/NL/DE), Circumstances (BE), Laura Murphy (GB), Diana Salles (DE/BRA), Fliegwerk (DE), Sina Kiekbusch (DE), Kira & Anders (DE), a movement of humans (DE), Selbstauslöser (DE), Jugendrunde LATIBUL (DE)
Cooperations
LATIBUL Theater- & Zirkuspädagogisches Zentrum, Zentrum für Zeitgenössischen Tanz / Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, Zirkus On, Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln, Bundesverband Zeitgenössischer Zirkus (BUZZ), Initiative Feministischer Circus (IFC), Around about Circus, Theater der Zeit, ARTE, Café Güzel & Träum Weiter
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With 2024, we can look back on a wonderful 5-day festival with 5,000 spectators. Under the motto "Re-Inventing Circus", performances, discussions, film evenings and concerts focused on the circus itself, with perspectives on heritage, tradition and renewal.
This year, the focus was on an outstanding selection of five international works from the fields of circus and dance, which mesmerised audiences at packed performances. These included two German premieres, the new productions by Piet Van Dycke and Laura Murphy.
A separate symposium on the topic of heritage and renewal was organised by the Federal Association of Contemporary Circus, bringing together people from new, contemporary and traditional circus and giving rise to discussions dedicated to the mutual understanding of the different forms of circus and their respective performers.
As part of the festival's campus programme and related to the theme, the one-week "Archive Lab" took place in cooperation with the German Dance Archive Cologne. The ArchiveLab is an artistic-reflexive research lab for dance and circus students and practitioners. During the lab, the 14 participants from a total of 4 different countries had time and space to engage with various materials from the archive.
As part of the International Visitors Programme, in cooperation with the NRW Kultursekretariat, 9 cultural professionals from around the world visited the festival and came into contact with the local scene and international artists.
The Initiative feminist Circus hosted a film and discussion evening with live performances based around the film Clown*esses and in the presence of director Jana Rothe.
Another special event was the Circus Garden, organised for the first time by the LATIBUL Theatre & Circus Education Centre, which attracted around 2,000 visitors on Whit Sunday, who attended the free and open-air activities on the festival meadow and enjoyed performances, a hands-on programme, ice cream and candy floss.
For the first time, a concert programme was also curated as part of the festival, with guests such as Femdom, Justice, Jam for Breakfast, Fabian Laute and Adahsoe. The wonderful festival atmosphere on the site on the banks of the Rhine was accompanied by daily workshops. The whole atmosphere invited you to linger in our cosy deckchairs with a cool drink and a slice of pizza in your hand.
To accompany the start of the festival, the new issue of our VOICES magazine on the subject of clowns was published again this year, providing deeper circus-theoretical insights into the history of the clown, examining what makes him a political figure and providing insights into the examination of decolonial and feminist clown practices.
CircusDanceFestival 2023
Artists & Companies
Knot on Hands (NL), Compagnie Barks - Bastien Dausse (FR), Sinking Sideways (BE/DE), Elena Zanzu (IT/ES), Piet Van Dycke (BE), Alexander VanThournhout (BE), Muovipussi (FI), Alice Rende (BR/IT), Marija Baranauskaitė (LT), Viktor Černický (CZ), Overhead Project (DE), Ensemble from ESAC and ZZT, KoEFFEKT, Young Ensemble Circus Schatzinsel, Less Kuerdas (DE/IT), Yotam Peled & The Free Radicals (IL/DE), Mikail Karahan (DE), Art for rainy days (LT), Rotem Greenberg (IL), Josefina Colli (AR), Zhao Kuan Ting (BE), Cie Kumquat (DE/FR), Ici'bas Company (CH/CA), Installation: "Mr. Skeleton" by Martin Zimmermann (CH)
Cooperations
Latibul, Federal Association of Contemporary Circus (Bundesverband Zeitgenössischer Zirkus, BUZZ), Initiative Feministischer Circus (ifc)
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Over Whitsun 2023 the CircusDanceFestival now took place for the second time as planned live and with audience. Numerous international artists and companies were able to inspire our largest audience to date on a total of 12 stages in Cologne with an 8-day program of contemporary circus and dance. Thematically, the focus in 2023 was on the political body, the grotesque, architecture and the environment.
The opening weekend in Cologne's city center was particularly special, with the Haus der Architektur and the grounds around the Joseph-Haubrich-Hof being occupied for two days by pieces by international companies dealing with space and architecture. The core program took place the following week on the festival grounds in the north of Cologne and at selected outdoor venues. On the festival grounds, there were sold-out evening performances in the Dreimaster and Viermaster tents, three evenings of the so-called 360° Shorts, each with three short pieces by international up-and-coming artists adapted to this circular stage, pieces on the meadow at the Rhine and in the Aphitheater, a permanently open installation tent, as well as a diverse discussion program and two films in the open-air cinema.
Organized by the Federal Association of Contemporary Circus (Bundesverband Zeitgenössischer Zirkus, BUZZ), "Setting the stage: circus promotion of tomorrow" was an information and networking event for people from the field and interested parties. In addition, "Circus Magazines, Media and its topics" was a roundtable discussion on circus media. Our cooperation partner Initiative Feministischer Circus (ifc) held a workshop entitled "Circus and its resources for discrimination awareness" and a panel discussion entitled "Beyond status quo". We also worked together to significantly develop the festival's awareness concept. New this year was a further cooperation with Latibul, which carried out various mediation formats as part of the "Points of View" format, in which people were able to share what they had experienced in the performances with each other and, in some cases, classify them in a playful way. In addition, two companies performed in our young talent format "Young Savages", also in cooperation with Latibul. The university cooperation between the École Superieure des Arts du Cirque (ESAC) in Brussels and the Center for Contemporary Dance (ZZT) in Cologne was also successfully continued.
To coincide with the start of the festival, the fourth issue of the VOICES magazine entitled "Re-exploring the grotesque" was published, again in cooperation with the publishing house Theater der Zeit. Here, too, authors deal with bodies in circus and dance and explicitly address the historical heritage of circus. The magazine includes scholarly articles, interviews and conversations.
CircusDanceFestival 2022
Artists and companies
Overhead Project (DE), Laura Murphy (UK), Benjamin Kahn and Cerish Menzo (BE), Jörg Müller (DE/FR), Tumbleweed (BE), Ben Gonen and Crispin Bade (IL/DE), La TRIBU Performance (CRI), Luuk Brantjes (NL), Sandra Hanschitz (DE), KoEFFEKT (DE), Cirque Intense Ensemble (DE), make a move collective (DE), Installative Performance: Julian Vogel (CH)
Cooperations
Latibul, Initiative Feministischer Circus (ifc), ARTE
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Over Whitsun 2022, the CircusDanceFestival went live and with an audience for the first time as planned. On the grounds of the Latibul and the meadow area adjacent to it, a diverse program could be seen on 6 different stages over 5 days.
The core program consisted of performances of internationally known artists, an installative performance, selected films and audience discussions on contemporary circus and dance. Under the motto "Re:thinking objects", artists from both disciplines were invited to explore objects, the body as object and its interplay. The VOICES magazine was also published under the same title.
On the festival grounds, the 360° stage came into its own for the first time as an outdoor venue with three double-bills. With a performative city intervention we moved through Cologne Riehl. In the open air cinema, a selected film program was shown in cooperation with ARTE, including two of our own productions about Julian Vogel and Tacho Tinta. Audience discussions were held with some of the performing artists, a roundtable discussion on VOICES magazine was opened and a meet-up of the Initiative Feministischer Circus (ifc) on the topic of discrimination-free circus was offered. Three circus workshops were also given throughout the site. The cooperation with the two universities ÉSAC from Brussels and ZZT from Cologne was also successfully continued and the jointly developed piece was performed. The young talent format "Junge Wilde" celebrated its premiere in the Junge Wilde tent in cooperation with Latibul.
CircusDanceFestival 2021
Artists and companies
Overhead Project (DE), Svalbard (SE), 3x Eva (DE)
Cooperations
Latibul
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In 2021, a digital festival was set up in the context of the pandemic restrictions. The invited artists played live in the tents of Latibul for a streamed audience.
The VOICES magazine was published for the second time.
In addition, the digital symposium "Re-Writing-Circus" took place, where participants could engage in the digital conference room in Gather Town, which was built especially for the CircusDanceFestival. On the one hand, the symposium reflected on the multiple meanings of dramaturgy in the context of contemporary circus. On the other, it was devoted to the practice of journalistic and scholarly writing about the Contemporary Circus.
Throughout the year, four residencies were awarded to different companies.
CircusDanceFestival 2020
In its premiere year 2020, the first edition of the CircusDanceFestival should have taken place at Whitsun on the grounds of Latibul. Due to a pandemic, the planned program had to be cancelled and an alternative had to be found instead. With the online magazine VOICES a replacement program was worked out in a few weeks, the publication was arranged in time for the actual festival start in a live stream format.
VOICES was born out of the idea of offering festival artists a platform and visibility beyond live performances on stages and in tents. A magazine as a mouthpiece for what has moved and troubled the artists in these times, for the issues that were important to them and especially for the issues that their pieces - usually "live" - deal with.
It was the desire for encounter that led us to conduct online conversations with the artists. These written conversations can be found in the magazine.
In addition to the conversations, we also wanted to invite the artists to experiment with currently possible forms of artistic creation.
This resulted in several "Carte Blanche" commissions. In this case, the "Carte Blanche" is an invitation, free in content, length and form, to develop a video work for the magazine within three weeks. These works can now be seen in the CDFthek.
Despite the pandemic, five one-week work-in-progress residencies were awarded to various companies during the summer, and work-in-progress shows were also held for each of the selected companies where the respective measures allowed: Overhead Project, Leila Millard & NuR, Roman Skrada, Erin Skye, Maria Madeira & Laura Schönlau.