Vienna – the danceWEB Scholarship

After danceWEB had to skip this event last year, we are pleased that the danceWEB Scholarship took place. For one month Onur Agbaba a young and very active Choreographer and dancer living in Berlin went to Vienna in July to participate in this so much invigorating scholarship with the additional opportunity to participate in the ImPulsTanz Festival of Vienna.

Thank you Onur for such a enthusiastic report which shows us how much this scholarship helps to develop your skills.

Onur Experience report danceWEB Vienna 2021, Onur Agbaba
While doing danceWEB

14 hands are on my body, lifting me up in the air. 14 hands holding my body against gravity and carrying me across the room. I don’t know where my head is, where my feet or my stomach are. This is a scene from Maria F. Scaroni’s workshop Body&Material. And that’s roughly how danceWEB felt to me. You don’t know exactly where your head is, where your hands and feet, where your stomach is. Like being in the air all the time. To be in the air and not feel gravity is something of a utopia. And that’s what danceWEB is. A utopia in a spatially and temporally limited space. And to be part of this utopia is a privilege. And I ́m more than grateful to had the possibility to be part of ImpulsTanz Festival 2021.
In front of me are fve notebooks that I scribbled over during my time in Vienna. Notes, drawings, poems, names, questions, love songs, etc. Everything I saw, heard, tasted, felt, smelled in these fve weeks, everything that my senses were occupied with during this time. And that was a lot:
somatics/healing/learning from each other/magic moments/collectively/ breath/touch/rave/political activism/witness power dynamics/decolonial practice/community/institution/landscapes/bad performances/good performances/joy of dancing/archive/Didier Eribon/yes/no/maybe/who taught you pleasure?/who taught you to have fun?/queer identities/closing your eyes/imagination/just yes/yes to everything/not not dancing/gesture/partner dancing/techno/loneliness/fnding into yourself, into your body/he asks me if I want to dance with him/what felt good today?/language/intuition/shared moments/friendships/dancing as a radical act of pleasure/feeling as a radical act of pleasure/standing/kneeling/posing/going down in four steps/coming up in three steps/rest/resting to transform/reset/new feelings/deep observation trance dance/shit a dance/pee a dance/choreographer/power relations/thinking of dance as a shared idea and concept/laughing strategies/crying strategies/waste dances/folk dances/care practices/treat yourself with good food/walking exercise/sitting together/resting together/swimming pool/hiking/celebration/hospitality/body&philosophy/the concept and the idiot/

A big thanks goes to Rio, Hanna, Sara, Lina, Anne & Frédéric <3 thank you! And a second big thanks goes to Tanja Liedtke Stiftung who made it possible for me to attend ImpulsTanz 2021 as part of danceWEB.

Onur Agbaba