Ich bin leidenschaftlich anders …

Jury Statement by Mila Lipicar

With solos, duets, trios, and powerful group scenes, 32 dancers create a compelling mosaic of movement. Styles such as House, Hip-Hop, Breaking, and elements of Contemporary Dance flow together and are constantly reassembled, deconstructed, and restructured while being accompanied by a range of musical tracks and guided by a clear thematic focus: people, patterns, pattern people? These ideas are explored through vivid choreographic imagery that moves between loud and quiet, wild and explosive, suddenly restrained and vulnerable. At its heart, the piece addresses the tension between sameness and difference, identity and belonging.

Central to the choreography are questions like: How much of our lives is shaped by societal patterns – consciously or unconsciously? Are we expected to conform? Do others live up to our expectations? And how can we simply be ourselves?

“You’re different because you don’t laugh at Grandpa’s discriminatory jokes,” says a voice from offstage in one scene. These are fragments from a poem written by a former student – personal, poignant words that the dancers pick up and transform into movement. At times, individual dancers emerge from the collective, breaking away from the mass in search of their own space, and are expressing that search through their own movement language. The offstage voice weaves through the piece like a red thread, returning again and again to questions that resonate far beyond adolescence: “Who am I? And where do I belong?”

While on the one hand the theme of the piece touches, affects and challenges the audience emotionally, on the other hand the students’ movement language demonstrates a remarkable level of commitment. Through the creative development of movement impulses, authentic, artistic and emotional scenes were created with which the dancers feel comfortable and can identify. This process reflects a group driven by initiative, curiosity, and the joy of experimentation.

This energy is also noticeable in the dance: The movements are expressive, the emotions tangible, the messages clear.

Thank you, dear dancers, for applying to the Tanztreffen der Jugend with this powerful and necessary piece. You show what becomes possible when dance is allowed to take its place within school and how new spaces can open as a result.