International DANCE Festival München: Powerful words and intriguing dance

Tobias Staab’s opening speech and deader than dead by Ligia Lewis
Haus der Kunst, Munich
May 22, 2025

The biannual International DANCE Festival München, often known simply as ‘DANCE,’ returned on May 22 for its nineteenth edition. Over the years it has gained a reputation for presenting a diverse program of work by newcomers, emerging artists, and high-profile choreographers and companies, as well as an extensive supporting and discourse program.

All that continues this year with 19 shows across 11 days and nine venues, ranging from regular theatres to museums and public spaces. For his first programme as festival director, Tobias Staab focuses on the interweaving of contemporary dance with visual art, and on subcultural dance styles from different communities.

Staab certainly achieved his aims in the opening days, the works shown being wide-ranging in style and approach. There were moments that thrilled, moments that made you think. All were superbly performed and well-received by the warmly enthusiastic audiences, with many shows sold out. And there were one or two very unexpected, pleasant surprises too.

In his opening remarks at the Haus der Kunst, Munich’s noted modern art gallery, Staab said he hoped the festival would create a moving and inspiring atmosphere. He said he was happy about the great variety of different perspectives that DANCE offers, “because these differences make a society vibrant and colourful and complete.”

In a moving and powerful speech, he went on to International Dance Festival München: Powerful words and intriguing dance

“It is not an easy time to be an artist at the moment. When I started to work on the programme, the independent arts scene was already in a crisis. And it has become worse… The economic situation in Germany and in many other countries has become difficult and it turns out that, in this situation the independent arts don’t seem to be that important anymore. Long story short: The independent art scene is regarded as a luxury, something that can be done without when resources run low. “

Staab commented how politics seems more and more to function like a commercial enterprise, making a profit, being commercially viable, being a prime reason for being.

“But I feel neither a society nor the arts should be judged by those standards. Art shouldn’t be something that has to pay off. And especially for dance which is traditionally the discipline with the lowest funding. The people who work in dance are used to precarious circumstances. Even the artists, the choreographers and dancers, who are successfully touring their work internationally don’t get rich. Their art is transitory and ephemeral. It emerges and disappears. And, therefore, it cannot be capitalised. This is why dance needs to be protected and supported.”

White noting that the situation is better in Munich than in Berlin, he considered, “The long-term perspectives appear rather dark.” Observing that ‘Tomorrow is cancelled’ would be written on the ground in a performance that same evening, he said that, in Berlin, this already feels so. Following the city’s huge cuts to arts funding, a lot of talented artists will leave the city, the country, or will just stop completely, he believes.

“We are living in harsh times. And I am not only talking about our little bubble. I am talking about the world outside, too. When I started to think about this festival the world was already in a pretty bad state. And it has become much worse since then.

Referring to the conflicts around the world as well as the arts, he said that, “Watching the pain of others is accompanied by a feeling of being powerless. In German we have a word for it, Ohnmacht. It describes this inability to act but also faint, to lose consciousness, to fall into powerlessness. This is what it feels like to live in these times.”

But what can we do, he asked. How can we make the people who run the world, the people with money and power, how can we make them see humans again instead of numbers or geopolitical strategies?

He referred to an open letter written by his friend Lotte van den Berg, with whom he directed an opera at Bayerische Staatsoper recently, in which she said that she is hoping that we can become human again together.

“And it is true. Being human is not a given. Being human is not just there. It is not a state that you can be born into. It is much more of a practice that we have to perform actively every day. And I feel that this is something that we can practice in the arts. Especially in dance, which is the art of human bodies. Human bodies that move together, that relate to each other. In dance humans come together in one space, in which they move, that move and breathe in the same space.”

Closing, he invited us, “To create communities… to move together, to share space, to become human. Not despite, but because of the differences we feel in those around us. Let’s not fall into Ohnmacht, into powerlessness. Let’s not faint. Let’s stay conscious and awake. Let’s look at things as they are. Let’s remain critical. Let’s remain active. Let’s try to become human together; for the coming week and beyond.”

Following Staab’s words, which deservedly received prolonged applause, festival performances opened in the next-door gallery with deader than dead by Berlin-based, American choreographer Ligia Lewis.

Lewis’ divided American and European background brings a particular consciousness of race, although with a particularly German theatre aesthetic. In deader than dead, she seeks to addresses transience and death as the ever-present companions of life through a piece that sometimes disturbs while still being oddly beautiful. It is often hard going. But the utter commitment of the performers, all totally invested in what they are doing, was remarkable.

The room is austere, the atmosphere cool, a carpet of interlocking yellow mat squares on the floor providing a welcome splash of colour. When Justin Francis Kennedy, Corey Scott-Gilbert and Lewis herself arrive through a door at the back, they leap around as if tasting freedom what whatever held them previously. But, very quickly, Lewis and Kennedy come to a state of near stasis, as if stopped partway through a state of collapse, their feet glued to the spot.

As they are slowly pulled down to the floor, the tall Scott-Gilbert continues to move uncertainly. He appears to do quite a bit of watching us watching him. Increasingly losing control of his body, he almost stumbles into the front of the audience, who are seated on cushions. His gestures suggest he’s recalling memories but they are flashes from the past, nothing more. We hear text from Macbeth’s final monologue. “Tomorrow and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”

On the floor, the performers’ bodies resemble sculptures, brought to momentary life by twitching, jerking movement. When they try to get up, it’s always a struggle and they always fall back.

The intriguing moments just keep coming. When the performers create shapes against the walls, they appear like living additions to the plasterwork. You sense they push and want to escape but cannot. When the loose-limbed Scott-Gilbert sheds what turns out to be a wig, he dances more freely as though he has just thrown off whatever weight he was carrying, and is soon joined by the other two

Much of the work is in silence save for the slapping of various parts of the body and thuds as limbs hit the floor. Additional soundscape comes from more speech, and fourteenth-century French composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut’s long complaint about fortune, Tels rit au main qui au soir pleure. Jasper Maralis briefly appears into the scene a couple of times, sings a little, then vanishes again.

For all it is an exhausting watch, deader than dead is also intriguing. Dance, theatre, music, song and other sound combine easily, although the whole does leave one constantly searching for overt meaning.

There would be more from Lewis later in the week.

More International DANCE Festival München reports:
LA(HORDE) in The Master’s Tools
Radio Vinci Park by Théo Mercier/Francois Chaignaud, and ÔSS by Marlene Monteiro Freitas/Dançando com a Diferença
More to follow.