Container is a format for intense and intimate choreographies that serves as both a challenge and a platform for artistic growth for choreographers, while offering audiences a refreshing, intimate experience of contemporary dance. Originating from a closed-door workshop, it has evolved into a format that opens up new possibilities for integrating artistic development, creation, and outreach.
Emerging from the workshop Practicing Choreography and the book Inventory of Choreographic Choices by Reut Shemesh and Matthias Quabbe, this format was driven by an interest in testing and refining one’s own choreographic tools. The aim was to explore new forms of creative expression and to develop artistically outside the context of productions. In 2024, it initially was a choreographic collaboration with Fang Yun Lo and immediately showed its seamless blend of choreographic practice, exchange, and outreach, leading to its first public performance in 2025 as a duo with Johannes Wieland as part of the Tanztausch Festival.
The setup is simple: Over the course of two days, two choreographers and two groups of dancers work together to each develop a short choreography, which they then swap and ultimately merge into one. The principle is: joyful choreographing and dancing, quick decisions, no second-guessing, and no fear of failure. The choreographic process begins with an idea that is decided upon collectively on the first day; it is direct, raw, and uncompromising. The result is as clear as it is astonishing: a joyful process of collaborative, dynamic creation involving everyone, and short, powerful, high-quality choreographies.