The Freedom of Dance – From Laban to Pina Bausch
Anne Linsel Pinas Perlen
11/20/2025, 8:30 PM

Academy members recall the emergence of artistic dance as a free form on a par with classical dance, which laid the foundations for contemporary dance. The fact that these paths also intersect in their biographies and can come together here to deepen understanding is a leitmotif of the programme. Susanne Linke, Reinhild Hoffmann and Arila Siegert reflect on how their careers were shaped by the protagonists of expressive dance. Pina Bausch followed in their footsteps, and her dancers talk very personally in a film about their paths to dance; author Norbert Servos relates this to individuation and freedom.

The history of the expressive dance movement, including that of many artists who are almost forgotten today, whose paths were interrupted by National Socialism and war or whose lives ended, is told in John Neumeier‘s dance collage Die Unsichtbaren (The Invisibles) with the Bundesjugendballett, finding its own aesthetic language for this in a movingly authentic way. The piece can be seen for the first time in Berlin at the end of the programme (4/5 March 2026, Haus der Berliner Festspiele).