About us

“Connecting with someone in a collaborative way has a lot to do with the way in which our senses react. A glance, a gesture, a code – we all act more or less consciously (…) as co-conspirators when we seek to make something new with other people (…) Whatever we’re doing, our collaboration is infused with energy, imagination and subversive power.” Gesa Ziemer

Our IDENTITY and MISSION

TANZKOMPLIZEN is the first production studio in Berlin exclusively and continuously dedicated to bringing dance to the stage for a young audience. We develop new pieces and formats from different genres of dance and put the emphasis on a wide array of choreographic and thematic styles. We also perform guest pieces and established shows.

We invite artists, spectators, young people and collaborators from many different fields and disciplines to develop, perform, discuss and reflect on pieces and formats relating to dance in all its diversity, by turns controversial, funny, radical, cross-cutting, mundane, visionary, primeval, timid, magical, loud, quiet, glamorous and sensual.

Our ORIGINS

TANZKOMPLIZEN is one of several pillars that make up the TanzZeit e.V. initiative, which was founded in 2005 with the aim of bringing children and young people into contact with contemporary dance. Through this production studio, which was borne of a cultural outreach project, TanzZeit has been offering families, classes of schoolchildren and multigenerational audiences a specific venue in Berlin since 2016, focusing on the collective experience of watching dance.

By joining TanzZeit and TANZKOMPLIZEN together, we have created a place of cultural bonding. Shared experience gives rise to mutual exchange and a lasting connection between the audience and the theatre, and between the theatre and the wider world.

As far as we’re concerned, inviting people to watch dance means seeing our audience members as co-conspirators and sparking an encounter that, by addressing interests and differences, opens the way for new artistic scope in dance and creates prospects for a wide spectrum of society.

Our WORKPLACE

We have a fixed venue, but we’re also dance nomads. We put on dance productions at Podewil and perform mobile pieces in schools and public spaces. We devise dynamic formats for discourse – digital, analogue and hybrid. We provide a venue for the TanzZeit Jugendcompany, which puts on performances by young people for young people. We work closely with TanzZeit school classes to pair up the practice and perception of dance in a meaningful way. Through our intergenerational Kompliz*innenjury, we map a range of perspectives on dance across society. We mediate dance in various forms before and after the pieces. We operate locally, but have a network of partners across Germany and further afield.

Our COMMITMENT

We forge partnerships with people, venues and institutions that enable us to expand upon our multi-faceted content and strategy. As an institution at the interface between culture and education, we see dance as a unique art form that celebrates the body and its expressiveness, but we also believe it to be a political and social phenomenon that can address and overturn structures of injustice. We want to raise awareness of dance among young people and are committed to achieving greater cultural, political and social recognition.

The TANZKOMPLIZEN team

Livia Patrizi (Artistic Director)
Thomas Dörschel (Project Management)
Amelie Mallmann (Dance Mediation)
Laura Kraus (PR)
Lisa Sziedat (Production Management)
Martin Pilz (Technical Management)
Tim Winter (Artistic Project Development)
Hanna Laurisch (Assistence)