About the project
Radio-Choreography is an artistic research project initiated in 2019 by Netta Weiser in collaboration with choreographers, theorists, sound and radio artists. The project explores the poetics and politics of transforming dance into sound, the relations between live broadcasting and muted histories, as well as acts of listening as modes of being together. We create transdisciplinary formats and work across a variety of settings such as: multi-channel sound installations, performative conferences, radio performances, radio compositions, performative lectures, discussions and workshops.
Project overview
The starting point of the project was a critical examination of contemporary dance documentation and archiving practices and their focus on the visual aspects of dance. Curious to explore dance beyond the visible dimension, we wished to shift perspective and ask: how might we access and amplify invisible choreographic knowledge by auditory means? how might the public space of radio become an immaterial stage and archival space for dance? How might we experience dance anew if we recalibrate our senses and listen?
Aiming to develop new methods for dance documentation while following the transgressiveness and frenetic movement of the radio signal, the first phase of Radio-Choreography focused on dance practices which were created by female choreographers in contexts of migration and resistance.
We embarked on a comprehensive research process which included: development of innovative sound recording methodologies and compositional strategies, dialogue with contemporary choreographers as well as archival research; as a result, we created a collection of sonic adaptations to dance practices from different times and places; for example, a radio-choreography based on a dance action by Berlin-based choreographer Dominique Tegho, which took place in Beirut in the context of the Leabease revolution of 2019. The composition combines field recordings from Beirut, together with sounds of the dance reenactment, including sounds of stamping feet, breaths and chanting of protest slogans in Arabic. Another example, is a radio-choreography based on diary entries by Austrian choreographer and anti-nazi activist Hanna Berger. In her diaries from the 1930-40s, Berger describes her life experiences and dance works in vivid and pictorial language, staging a choreography with her words in the mind of the listeners. The texts were found as part of an unpublished manuscript at the German Dance Archives Cologne.
In 2021-2022 the collection of radio-choreographies was broadcasted as a series of five site-specific radio-performances, presented in Berlin, Cologne Tel-Aviv and Vienna; each event included a collaboration between a local radio station, a dance institution and an art venue which hosted a public listening event.
For instance, the first episode was presented in Berlin, and included a radio-performance at the ITI/ Media Library for Dance and Theater which was transmitted live on reboot.fm, and included a Public Listening Event in the frame of Tanznacht Festival.
Further episodes included the following co-operations in Vienna (Tanzquartier Wien, Tonspur Micro Museum for Sound at MQ), Cologne (WDR, Tanzmuseum of the German Dance Archives) and Tel-Aviv (Diver Festival for Contemporary Dance, The Israeli Center for Digital Art).
In September 2022 we presented Radio-Choreography: Hereafter, a two-day event which included a Multi-channel Sound Performance and a performative radio conference, showcased as part of the KONTAKTE Festival for Sound Art and Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
In the Hereafter Multi-channel Sound Performance, we re-composed a selection of radio-choreographies which were created in the previous phases of the project for a 16-piece loudspeaker orchestra. By using sound spatialization techniques and live mixing, we developed new approaches to “choreographing sound”, celebrating the ability of multi-channel electronics to generate a sonic experience of movement in space.
Radio (non)Konferenz was a durational radio event at the intersection of live performance, symposium, and public forum. This 1-day event brought together artists and thinkers exploring critical approaches to history through movement-based and sonic practices. It included a variety of experimental radiophonic formats, such as a somatic workshop, broadcasting of archival material, performances and discussions.
Moreover the research process and methods are often shared in workshops and lectures, for instance at the Composers’ Workshop at Cambridge University (2023), The Berliner Dance Archive Symposium (2022), and The Haifa University Performance Studies Conference (2021).
We are currently preparing for a second season, stay tuned….
About the team
Netta Weiser works at the intersection of choreography, experimental radio and discursive practice. Her works have been presented internationally in performing arts venues such as Tanzquartier Wien, Sophiensaele Berlin, and Villa Medici Rome, as well as in radio contexts such as WDR, reboot.fm and The Israeli Centre for Digital Art. In 2020 she received the Tanzrecherche NRW stipendium for international artists and in 2021 was an artist in residence at the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Moreover, she teaches at the Klangzeitort Institute for New Music and at the Universität der Künste Berlin.
Mira Hirtz is a performance artist, art mediator, and art theorist basing her work on somatic practices. She explores the value of creativity for human beings and non-human beings in many different formats such as workshops, performances, video pieces, and texts. She graduated from the MFA Creative Practice at TL Conservatoire London and from the MA art research at University of Art and Design Karlsruhe where she thought performative research practice. She worked as an art mediator at documenta14, co-curated the program series “How do we care?” at Badischer Kunstverein 2020, is part of the collective ANTHROPOS EX researching about the theatre of the Anthropocene and currently the co-project manager and co-curator of the touring exhibition “Critical Zones”, initiated by the ZKM | Karlsruhe, the Goethe-Institut South Asia, and Bruno Latour.
Anna Leon is a dance historian and theorist. She is theory curator at Tanzquartier Wien and postdoctoral fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she researches peripheralised dance modernities through a focus on ballet in early 20th century Greece. She holds a BSc from the University of Bristol, an MA from Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a PhD from the University of Salzburg. Her first book, Expanded Choreographies – Choreographic Histories. Trans-Historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion was published in 2022 by transcript. She is curatorially engaged in the ongoing projects Radio (non-)conference with Netta Weiser and Choreography+ with Johanna Hilari. She has taught at the Universities of Vienna, Salzburg and Bern as well as SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) and the Institut Français. She occasionally collaborates, as a dramaturg or historiographic adviser, with choreographers including Julia Schwarzbach, Florentina Holzinger and Berit Einemo Frøysland.
About the project
Radio-Choreography is an artistic research project initiated in 2019 by Netta Weiser in collaboration with choreographers, theorists, sound and radio artists. The project explores the poetics and politics of transforming dance into sound, the relations between live broadcasting and muted histories, as well as acts of listening as modes of being together. We create transdisciplinary formats and work across a variety of settings such as multi-channel sound installations, performative conferences, radio performances, radio compositions, performative lectures, discussions and workshops.
Project overview
The starting point of the project was a critical examination of contemporary dance documentation and archiving practices and their focus on the visual aspects of dance. Curious to explore dance beyond the visible dimension, we wished to shift perspective and ask: how might we access and amplify invisible choreographic knowledge by auditory means? how might the public space of radio become an immaterial stage and archival space for dance? How might we experience dance anew if we recalibrate our senses and listen?
Aiming to develop new methods for dance documentation while following the transgressiveness and frenetic movement of the radio signal, the first phase of Radio-Choreography focused on dance practices which were created by female choreographers in contexts of migration and resistance.
We embarked on a comprehensive research process which included: development of innovative sound recording methodologies and compositional strategies, dialogue with contemporary choreographers as well as archival research; as a result, we created a collection of sonic adaptations to dance practices from different times and places; for example, a radio-choreography based on a dance action by Berlin-based choreographer Dominique Tegho, which took place in Beirut in the context of the Leabease revolution of 2019. The composition combines field recordings from Beirut, together with sounds of the dance reenactment, including sounds of stamping feet, breaths and chanting of protest slogans in Arabic. Another example, is a radio-choreography based on diary entries by Austrian choreographer and anti-nazi activist Hanna Berger. In her diaries from the 1930-40s, Berger describes her life experiences and dance works in vivid and pictorial language, staging a choreography with her words in the mind of the listeners. The texts were found as part of an unpublished manuscript at the German Dance Archives Cologne.
In 2021-2022 the collection of radio-choreographies was broadcasted as a series of five site-specific radio-performances, presented in Berlin, Cologne Tel-Aviv and Vienna; each event included a collaboration between a local radio station, a dance institution and an art venue which hosted a public listening event.
For instance, the first episode was presented in Berlin, and included a radio-performance at the ITI/ Media Library for Dance and Theater which was transmitted live on reboot.fm, and included a Public Listening Event in the frame of Tanznacht Festival.
Further episodes included the following co-operations in Vienna (Tanzquartier Wien, Tonspur Micro Museum for Sound at MQ), Cologne (WDR, Tanzmuseum of the German Dance Archives) and Tel-Aviv (Diver Festival for Contemporary Dance, The Israeli Center for Digital Art).
In September 2022 we presented Radio-Choreography: Hereafter, a two-day event which included a Multi-channel Sound Performance and a performative radio conference, showcased as part of the KONTAKTE Festival for Sound Art and Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
In the Hereafter Multi-channel Sound Performance, we re-composed a selection of radio-choreographies which were created in the previous phases of the project for a 16-piece loudspeaker orchestra. By using sound spatialization techniques and live mixing, we developed new approaches to “choreographing sound”, celebrating the ability of multi-channel electronics to generate a sonic experience of movement in space.
Radio (non)Konferenz was a durational radio event at the intersection of live performance, symposium, and public forum. This 1-day event brought together artists and thinkers exploring critical approaches to history through movement-based and sonic practices. It included a variety of experimental radiophonic formats, such as a somatic workshop, broadcasting of archival material, performances and discussions.
Moreover the research process and methods are often shared in workshops, lectures and wirings, for instance at the Composers’ Workshop at Cambridge University (2023), The Berliner Dance Archive Symposium (2022), and The Haifa University Performance Studies Conference (2021).
We are currently preparing for a second season, stay tuned….
About the team
Netta Weiser works at the intersection of choreography, experimental radio and discursive practice. Her works have been presented internationally in performing arts venues such as Tanzquartier Wien, Sophiensaele Berlin, and Villa Medici Rome, as well as in radio contexts such as WDR, reboot.fm and The Israeli Centre for Digital Art. In 2020 she received the Tanzrecherche NRW stipendium for international artists and in 2021 was an artist in residence at the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Moreover, she teaches at the Klangzeitort Institute for New Music and at the Universität der Künste Berlin.
Mira Hirtz is a performance artist, art mediator, and art theorist basing her work on somatic practices. She explores the value of creativity for human beings and non-human beings in many different formats such as workshops, performances, video pieces, and texts. She graduated from the MFA Creative Practice at TL Conservatoire London and from the MA art research at University of Art and Design Karlsruhe where she thought performative research practice. She worked as an art mediator at documenta14, co-curated the program series “How do we care?” at Badischer Kunstverein 2020, is part of the collective ANTHROPOS EX researching about the theatre of the Anthropocene and currently the co-project manager and co-curator of the touring exhibition “Critical Zones”, initiated by the ZKM | Karlsruhe, the Goethe-Institut South Asia, and Bruno Latour.
Anna Leon is a dance historian and theorist. She is theory curator at Tanzquartier Wien and postdoctoral fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she researches peripheralised dance modernities through a focus on ballet in early 20th century Greece. She holds a BSc from the University of Bristol, an MA from Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a PhD from the University of Salzburg. Her first book, Expanded Choreographies – Choreographic Histories. Trans-Historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion was published in 2022 by transcript. She is curatorially engaged in the ongoing projects Radio (non-)conference with Netta Weiser and Choreography+ with Johanna Hilari. She has taught at the Universities of Vienna, Salzburg and Bern as well as SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) and the Institut Français. She occasionally collaborates, as a dramaturg or historiographic adviser, with choreographers including Julia Schwarzbach, Florentina Holzinger and Berit Einemo Frøysland.