Program

Auro Orso is a Berlin-based dancer, choreographer and performer who identifies as Trans and Two-Spirit. A graduate of HZT Berlin, they have presented work at HAU, Sophiensæle and Ballhaus Naunynstraße, and internationally at Crazinist Artist Studio in Ghana, Festival Afro-Prieto-Centrado in Mexico and ImPulsTanz in Austria. Most recently, they performed at the Venice Biennale in Verena Melgarejo Weinandt’s Weaving Connections.
Rooted in their lived experience as a racialized person, political activism and engagement with Indigenous knowledge, Auro’s practice explores decolonial approaches to everyday life, questioning Western and colonial ideas of universality, binaries and propriety. Through performance, workshops and community-based projects, they foster care, healing and collective imagination within Queer and BIPoC communities. Their research draws on somatics, perreo, consent and physical theatre, engaging themes of care, Indigenous futurism and imaginative gender riots. Their solo PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDOS premiered at Tanztage Berlin in 2025.

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Ishmael Houston-Jones’s improvised dance and text works have been performed worldwide. He has received three “Bessie” Awards for collaborations with writer Dennis Cooper, choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and Fred Holland and composers Chris Cochrane and Nick Hallett. Houston-Jones curated “Platform 2012: Parallels” which centered choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism, and co-curated with Will Rawls “Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now.

Makisig Akin (they/them) and Anya Cloud (she/they) love each other. They have been collaborating and imagining together for 15 years. As queer dance artists/activists/educators their work is deeply rooted in the politics of the body and intersectional identity, indebtedness to ancestors and descendants, love, inventing new strategies for being intimately together, and cultivating radical aliveness. Makisig is originally from the Philippines and Anya is originally from Alaska. They co-direct The Love Makers Company and are based between Berlin and Colorado. They are currently funded by NEFA/National Dance Project to create and tour their new work Post-Failure Potentials, which will premiere in 2027. Their work We Are (nothing) Everything is touring internationally. They regularly co-teach together internationally  including at Tanzfabrik Berlin Schüle, ImPulsTanz, Being Touch, Wainsgate Dances, and Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation, among others.

mayfield brooks improvises while black and is based in Lenapehoking, the unceded land of the Lenape people, also known as New York City. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer. brooks teaches and performs practices that arise from Improvising While Black (IWB), their interdisciplinary dance methodology which explores the decomposed matter of Black life and engages in dance improvisation, disorientation, dissent, and ancestral healing.

Sointu Pere is an Afro-Finnish dancer, performer and facilitator based in Berlin. Their movement practice is rooted in improvisation, play, and somatic approaches. Navigating belonging, they use movement to connect and transform. They co-host queer BIPOC movement and music improvisation sessions drawing from drag to explore the in-betweens of being. As a space holder, they cultivate movement spaces that honor multiple embodied knowledge, centering collaborative creation and collective care.

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