Valeska Gert Guest Professorship 2026/27: Nach
The Powerful Margins. Dance of Struggles and Bodies of Resistance
28 Oct 2026, 7 pm

As a dance artist with a background in Krump, Nach explores her identity as a dancer and as a woman, whilst defying restrictive categorisations. Having grown up in Bobigny, France, in a family with Senegalese, Cape Verdean and Vietnamese roots, she recalls the constant presence of music and dance as part of social and community life.

As the Valeska Gert Guest Professor, Nach is dedicated to practice-based research into the power of the marginalised, their narratives and their independent, self-assured and resistant creativity. Can protest dance unleash liberating and political power through the writing of movement, the development of choreographic scores and the telling of stories? What is the relationship with historical and personal archives? How can we break free from inherited attitudes and traditional bonds by writing new scores? And if so: what exactly defines a score?

Every semester, a dance or performance artist is invited by the Akademie der Künste, the Freie Universität Berlin and the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to work together with students in the dance studies master’s programme applying a practice-oriented approach. The content of the seminar is introduced at the beginning in a lecture, the outcomes are shown to the audience in a presentation at the end.