Tanz ohne Behinderung
an offer for people with special needs

„Basic elements of dance technique and improvisation with/out music will be our frame. Experiencing the body will be understood as an interaction of „space, time and movement experiences“ and dancing as a possibility for experience, representation and communication. Contemporary dance is a constant try to press this time of life hard and get a hold of it.
The warm up will be done partially and totally, static and moving, with technical elements and with improvisations with/out music. Warming up breathing and working on simple technical sequences and choreographies lead to improvisations with/out music and basic creations of solo, duo, trio etc.“

Maud Paulissen & Fabiana Pastorini
Maud Paulissen and Fabiana Pastorini
Maud Paulissen and Fabiana Pastorini share a lively dialogue about and mutual visits in dance classes for people with special needs.


Maud Paulissen-Kaspar
Maud Paulissen-Kaspar, born and grown up in the Netherlands, studied music and dance in Maastricht, Netherlands, and Vienna, Austria. She has been teaching a long time in professional educations for dance, acting and rhythmics, including the Conservatory of Vienna, the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (Vienna), and the Janacek academy for Music and Performing Arts in Brünn, Czech Republic. For many years she has been a member of the dance advisory board of the city of Vienna. She has been working as a music therapist for a long time, for ten years she has been more involved in dance for people with special needs and supports a "people first"- group in Vienna.

Fabiana Pastorini
Fabiana Pastorini was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina). She received first lessons in dancing at the age of nine, attended the National Dance School parallel to her high school years and obtained a Bachelor degree in Pedagogy. She specialised on Modern dance, learning the two most important techniques - Graham and Horton - 1988 in New York. In Germany she met Ismael Ivo for the first time in 1991, resulting in a collaboration for a span of several years.

Since 1992 Pastorini resides in Vienna. She teaches and choreographs at the Ballet School of the State Opera of Vienna, the Conservatory Private University of Vienna, the Ballettseminar Wolfsegg, Tanz für Europa and in various European cities.
For several years now she works as guest teacher at ImPulsTanz in Vienna, teaching Dance for health and integrated dance for groups of people with and without disabilities.
She followed an invitation to Argentina by EMA, an association to help patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, to work with them.
Studying Kinesiology helped her to develop her Dance for Health technique. This unprecedented system has the goal to help people become more aware of themselves.

In 2011 she completed her training in Integrated Breathing Therapy. Her interest in the healing methods of the Quetchuas Aymaras (descendants of the Inkas) in her home country, led to regular visits in North Argentina, where she could deepen her connection to her roots. The inseparable connection of this culture with her surrounding brought her to invite more and more people to dance at pristine places, in the midst of nature. This led to a new series of week seminars, which brought participants to a natural stage setting, such as beaches, mountains, deserts and rivers and facilitated the strengthening of the connection to this source.