JOIN

Join is a project in which dance students and professional dancers work together to share what they know and love about dance. According to one critic, it is nothing less than the pure joy of movement, which drives and demonstrates what solidarity can mean.

The central question is how dancers with such diverse experiences can merge to present one performance? How can top dancers and students dance together without a uniform standard determining the interaction?
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The answer lies in the dance itself: The dramaturgy is driven by sudden blackouts, which lends an immediacy and surprising quality to scenes, while constantly challenging the audience's perception.

A special element of Join is the ‘dive’: a spontaneous moment in which a dancer experiences a deep emotion – joy, defiance or intensity – and does not seek to keep it to himself or herself, but instead projects it into the space, the performance and the audience. The music, composed by Emanuele Piras, combines atmospheric sounds with recorded sounds from the scenography, creating an auditory landscape.

Ioannis Mandafounis (Athens) studied at the Paris Conservatory and danced with renowned companies such as GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Nederlands Dans Theater II, and The Forsythe Company. Since 2004, he has developed a rich choreographic career, working with international institutions like Lyon Opera Ballet, Grand Théâtre de Genève, and the Royal Danish Ballet. He was part of the Frankfurt-based collective mamaza and leads his own company in Switzerland.
-|- Mandafounis has developed a choreographic method rooted in audience participation. His work is driven by a constant search for innovative ways to involve spectators, aiming to offer an authentic and profound experience of dance that brings people closer to the art form. In 2024, his piece À la carte was nominated for the German theater award DER FAUST.

choreography Ioannis Mandafounis
dance Dancers of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company, Dance students from the Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts
choreographic assistance Pauline Huguet
dramaturgy Philipp Scholtysik
music Emanuele Piras / Maestrale
stage and lighting Ioannis Mandafounis
costumes Thomas Bradley
rehearsal director Smaralia Karakosta
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rehearsal director with the dance students Samuel Young Wright
production Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company
in cooperation with HELLERAU – Europäisches Zentrum der Künste
with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
funded by Zero programme of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media)