Irene

Report:

Being part of the ATLAS program was incredibly enriching. Co-creating a space over five weeks with my group taught me how to build mutual support and solidarity. We shared a constant flow of listening, openness, and above all, inspiration to discover new ways of seeing, thinking, creating, and expressing ourselves day by day. The program exposed me to diverse cultures and opened doors to collaborations during the festival and for the future. Setting up a WhatsApp group was essential for logistical information and, importantly, for beginning to weave a network among us.
On a creative level, the combination of workshops, research projects, performances, and so many creators gathered in one place encouraged me to dive deeply and fluidly into a continuous creative process. I was able to implement what I was learning in my piece, and at times, new perspectives emerged that led me to explore further.
I loved the studios, each with its own energy and atmosphere, influencing the creative process in unique ways. For me, it was important to recognize just how much having a dedicated creative space impacts the artistic scene and development—a space that embraces the creator's wild ideas and brings together others on similar journeys in their own ways. Having 24/7 access to this space and sharing this time with others provided a steady support system, fostering an active and vibrant creative community. It gave me a solid base amid all the movement.
The performances I saw allowed me to see myself reflected in them, learning so much about what I would like to explore professionally and creatively. They also strengthened my confidence to explore without judgment or demands for perfection, encouraging me to simply allow the artist within me to emerge. I am currently still developing the piece I created under Angélique’s mentorship. This piece allows me to share what I discovered and continue questioning, both with other creators in my country and, potentially, in various programs within and beyond Mexico.
Angélique's mentorship was one of the aspects I value most. She guided us to know ourselves better, generously shared her knowledge and experience, and supported us through the vulnerability of creating a new project. She accompanied us to the very end with extraordinary humanity, sensitivity, insight, warmth, and decisiveness. There’s no doubt that her mentorship was exactly what I needed.
Finally, ATLAS gifted me this truth: "Create your own pathway." I am still exploring it, and it gave me the confidence and assurance to keep nurturing this magic even beyond the program. ATLAS opened doors for me to forge my own way, and from the moment I was accepted, it impuls my dance. I learned how to communicate my artistic work and build a supportive community that helped me finance this journey and experience. Now, I return to my country with so much to share as a gesture of gratitude for their support and trust.
The only thing I felt was missing was a closer connection with the guest companies and artists—a space for conversation to learn more about their creative paths and processes, as well as how they became involved in festivals like this. Or even a space where programmers, cultural centers, or residency organizers could see our final work, allowing us to connect directly with places that could potentially support our professional development in the future.
I feel deeply grateful to the entire IMPULSTANZ team, my fellow participants, the artists who shared their creative and research worlds, and to Angélique Willkie for her guidance and support.

Jade Albasini

Report:

ATLAS report
Immersing oneself in an environment as stimulating as ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival is an experience of all superlatives. I strongly recommend movement artists to experience it!

Sense of collectivity
Choosing Angélique Wilkie as my mentor was a great decision. With her aura and knowledge, she managed to bring together many choreographers from around the world in a cohesive manner. I learned a lot by her side and surrounded by my peers. I especially retain the importance of using collective intelligence at every stage of a production's work. This special connection between international movers will last.

Impact on my practice
Nourished by the advice and workshops accumulated at ImPulsTanz, I presented an excerpt of a choreographic research on the dissociative state. While in my practice, I tend to start from storytelling to go into the body, this time I let myself be guided by the body to bring out the story. It was an excavation on memory loss. How the body takes over when the mind is elsewhere. By reorienting my methodology, I have opened up expanded dramaturgical tools.

Absorbing art 24/7
What a unique sensation to dig into so many dance stimuli during five weeks. I will carry many inputs within my practice. To enhance a few: let’s talk about the Pro Series with Raja Feather Kelly, director of the New York-based company the feath3r theory. This intensive two-week immersion around his research project ANGST (Myth, Madness, Montage and Melodrama) was a revelation. His cinematographic, empathetic and pop culture vision reinforces my own artistic path. The quality of my colleagues’ proposals within ATLAS also deeply moved me. So many universes manifesting at once!

Tis Aly

Report:

It takes work to define an experience like Impulstanz with its various possibilities of inhabiting space, like the imaginary, the social, the physical, and the inner and outer spaces open throughout this time. Atlas program is an experience in itself for its characteristics, like a research project in combination with the various activities of the Impulstanz festival, along with the exchange with many other peers, inside and outside the program.

The mentor is an important figure in the design of the research project and Angelique Willkie is a great and skilled person to take this hole as such an amazing human that brings things together. As such, it’s important to acknowledge that the number of participants overloads the mentor's work, actually giving a reduced time for mentorship. The group is also a factor in the connection and maintenance of the mood and emotional/ mental health within this extensive and intensive time, principally when comes to the final weeks and the pressure of showing something hits the walls. So, a good relationship and management of group dynamics is important to the course of the program, which ought to come from the group itself -Yes, it takes work.


Atlas is designed to be an educational program and somehow the title doesn’t fit the curriculum. Personally, the program presents itself more like a training program, that allows the participant to take part in Impulstanz while one develops its research in relation to other peers and luckily a few hours of mentorship.
The positive points are the flexibility of one choosing their trajectory during the festival, the various possibilities within the Impulstanz festival, workshops and performances, the relationships that can emerge from this time, and a hot summer in Europe. Thou, prepare yourselves for even hotter summers, global warming is not a prospect of the future. The engagement of the Impulstanz festival team is great and deserves to be acknowledged.


Points that could be improved - the commitment of the festival with the program, and the studio showing time - The program could be a possibility of showing case the work of choreographers and makers, but needs to have another frame - the last week of the festival can be very exhausting for both organizers and participants of the festival.
The number of studios and their availability gets smaller from the 3rd week, giving not time/space enough for all participants of the program - Another aspect is the lack of assistance from the festival in terms of documentation and support during the studio showing time -which passes to the group the responsibility for such tasks. Which should be revisited by the program’s organization.


Even though there is an agreement that English is the language used, it is still a gatekeeper, then some people might be out of important topics, and participation and social justice are again reduced by the participation of fewer. Other methodologies should be used to include and diminish the importance of language proficiency in the activities of the group, mainly in the feedback sessions

Anna Anderegg

Report:

Anna Anderegg
www.annaanderegg.com
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When I first applied to ATLAS, I was eager for exchange and new impulses. I anticipated an intense period of artistic and physical exploration. However, shortly after applying, I found out I was pregnant, and by the time the program began, I was eight months into my pregnancy, which significantly changed how I could participate. From the beginning, the organization team was very supportive, but the physical transformations added an unexpected layer of complexity to my engagement with the workshops. I had envisioned fully immersing myself in physical and expansive practices, but I needed to adapt and find alternative ways to engage, respecting my body’s new limitations.

Luckily, I was going through this transformative time alongside a vibrant community of artists. This environment encouraged me to explore themes of adaptability and vulnerability, both in my practice and my relationships with others. Rather than focusing purely on movement, I became drawn to quieter, introspective modes of participation. This shift ultimately deepened my understanding of my creative process.

Throughout the five weeks, I had the chance to engage in workshops centered on care work, minimal movement choreographies, presence, and more. The challenges I faced in the workshops became valuable lessons in adjusting my artistic intentions to the reality of my present situation.

The mentorship aspect of ATLAS, however, presented some difficulties. There were clashes with the mentor and within my ATLAS group that were poorly handled within the organization. While I found the mentorship aspect of ATLAS disappointing compared to the quality of workshops available in the program, navigating these challenges within the cohort forged a strong bond between us.

Overall, ATLAS was an empowering experience. I am confident that some of the connections I made have the potential for future artistic collaborations.

Madeleine Backen

Report:

I found my time at ImplusTanz participating in the ATLAS program to be a very immersive experience. The open access to performances, studio time, workshops, transport and parties allowed for a sense of freedom in creating the timetable and schedule that worked best for me. While at times this was incredibly overwhelming and I felt as if I was pulled between too many elements, I did find knowing this level of absorption was only for a short period of time made it manageable and exciting.

Now that I am back home re-entering the contemporary dance environment in Sydney, Australia, I do feel as if this experience of soaking up so much wonderful art surrounded by such a wide array of beautiful artist has left me with a determination to continue to dive deeper into my own practice and creative endeavours. While my program in particular wasn't completely smooth sailing and required extra mental energy that wasn't available to me or the other participates in my program, I was still able to gain so much from my time in Vienna. I greatly appreciated the wide range of workshops to choose from, spanning across so many different styles, with varying teachers. I believe my training and interests have now been heavily influenced by the workshops that I took part in and I wasn't anticipating how much this was going to have an impact on me. I am very grateful for this opportunity and will remember and cherish the time that I spent there forever.

Katie Baer Schetlick

Report:

The ATLAS program as a whole— taking workshops, experiencing performances, attending meetings, fitting in studio time, socializing, developing work, providing and receiving feedback —was intoxicating, too much, not enough, full of joyous collisions, confronting, HOT, stimulating at its peripheries (and interstices), and, thus, itself a sly teacher.

Much of what I will carry with me (and have) is the result of my time with my cohort (Zoe, Alex, Siobhan, Emilia, Mercedes, Nathaniel, Emily, Kora, Leon, Véronique, Simone, Tis, Irini, Irene, Polina, Andreas, Tash, Olivia, Anu, Ana, In Hye, Jade, Sylvie, Carlye, and Lucy) AND Angelique Willkie, our mentor. Angelique created a space for us to survive (and thrive) inside the seeming, and often real, overwhelm of the program. Her mentorship extended beyond the studio and modeled a way that we might be together differently. It was clear, in the end, that this too supported “the work” itself. Our feedback sessions therefore felt rich and oozed with critical care. We kept each other fed; we kept each other hydrated; we kept each other grounded; we kept each other hopeful; we kept each other REAL.

There were several workshops that made me feel truly re-romanticized about this thing we call dance and when I found them I felt lucky (sometimes this took a few tries). The workshop and performance aspect of the program did not feel integrated with the other facets of the ATLAS program, mainly the development of work and opportunities for mentorship/feedback, so I had to make those connections for myself to not feel like I was trying to do two different things to their fullest. The crafting of the experience as it was happening actually became the lesson and a lesson that I am still reflecting on and learning from.

JC Bailey

Year: 2024
Program: atlas
Coach: Marco Berrettini
Nationality: Australia
Country: Australia

Report:

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Zoë Bastin

Report:

Participating in the ATLAS program at ImPulsTanz dramatically changed the course of my career. As an artist who operates between dance, visual art, and academia, the opportunity to engage with some of the best dance thinkers in the world was an invaluable experience that has shaped the artist I aspire to become.

Coming from Australia, a place often geographically isolated from the broader international dance community, ATLAS provided me with access to a diverse array of choreographers and creators. This included not only the chance to take workshops and collaborate with artists from all over the world but also the privilege of receiving mentorship from the brilliant Angelique Wilkie. Her insights, rooted in both theoretical and practical frameworks, had a significant impact on my understanding of choreography and dance as a critical tool for inquiry.

Being immersed within a collegiate group of 26 choreographers from around the world was a truly enriching experience. I formed lifelong relationships with these artists, sharing ideas, inspiration, and creative energy. These connections have already begun to bear fruit—I am traveling in 2025 to collaborate with several of these choreographers to create new international works. The relationships I made in Vienna have expanded my global network and my understanding of what dance looks likes around the world.

While at ImPulsTanz, I developed a new choreographic work, What Appeared to Be Abundance at a Distance. This piece interrogates the tension between the image of a body and the essence of the self within that body. I explored where representation ends and selfhood begins, examining the performer-audience relationship as a dynamic contract. In this exchange of gazes, the audience is not merely a passive observer but an active participant drawn into the choreography itself. The work also investigates how social conformity and the instinctual desire to belong influence movement and perception.

Immersed in the rich cultural landscape of the festival, I was able to deepen my artistic voice, push the boundaries of my practice, and build connections that will continue to resonate within my work. ATLAS has expanded my horizons and shifted my trajectory as an artist, for which I am immensely grateful.

Koraljka Begovic

Report:

Even thinking about how to put unforgettable and so amazing experience of ATLAS programme at Impulstanz into words seems impossible.
Thinking about how it all started and what my expectations and maybe even desires were… well Impulstanz and ATLAS programme managed to exceeded every possible expectations or even desire for the time in Vienna. 5 weeks of the most intensive artistic and human experience were so special that I will carry those sensations, thoughts, ideas, collaborations and friendships forever.
Being able to participate in a programme and to meet incredible inspiring human beings and artists went so far beyond all my ideas of how it could look like.
The intensity of the programme, although it can seem overwhelming at some point actually brings up a huge amount of energy, shifts perspectives, ideas and knowledge in a way that it somehow changes us forever.
I was really lucky to share this experience with a group of 26 incredible individuals who were my family, my friends, my anchor and support in those 5 weeks. Sharing countless hours of dancing, learning, biking around Vienna, seeing incredible number of shows, working on our own projects, supporting each other with feedbacks, talks, cuddles and understanding was extremly special and fullfilling.
The most important part of the experience was collaboration and clossness with our incredible mentor Angelique Willkie, a person that brought all of us together and showed us and guided us not only in artistic development but also in deepening empathy and support in us as human beeings, challenging our habits, behaviours and beliefs in a most sensitive and soft way possible.
The time at Impulstanz definitely changed my personal and artistic life. First, the experience was far beyond anything I went through before. The connections with people, many great workshops that I took part in, possiblity to be guided in a creative process was enriched with a huge number of performances that I visited. But meeting friends and colleagues from all over the world left me with biggest mark and sensation of gratitude.
My body and mind changed during those 5 weeks, I challenged myself like never before, my stamina, technique and even thoughts about my body and movement shifted. I was gudied and ecouraged to approach my work and research differently than I was used to with new knowledges and a new spark for creation. It feels like I got completely new teacher in my life – myself, enriched with all the experiences, support, love, friendships and shared ideas with my peers.
Personally I know I started friendships that will last forever, sharing that experience where we all lived in kind of a bubble, eating, cooking, drinking, biking and dancing together for 5 weeks like a big family. It was great to also meet other people, dancewebers and participants of another Atlas group and festival visitors, staff etc.
For the artistic life and experience I think the outcome will actually show itself in following months and years while tending to all the connections we managed to create.
I am already working on possible collaborations with some od the friends and colleagues from Atlas group, and also It was great to be more involved and to meet all of you from Impulstanz.
My huge gratitude goes towards Rio, Sara, Tina and Val who were our incredible support and guardians during those weeks.
I am also very thankful for the opportunity to be in this exact group thanks to my mentor Angelique, and also to the Croatian Ministry of Culture and media that made it possible with the support I got.
Digesting all the experiences from Impulstanz and Vienna is still happening, even after 3 months and I know I will always come back to those weeks in my mind and heart.
I would definitely recommend ATLAS programme to any young or middle career dancers and authors to enrich their life and art.

Laura Brisson

Report:

My name is Laura Brison, I am a dance artist based in Montreal, Canada. I took part in the ATLAS programme in ImPulsTanz 2024 with Marco Berretini. I strongly believe that ATLAS is an experience all creators and performers should experience once in their career. It a milestone in my career.

I greatly appreciated the impact that the components of ATLAS, more specifically the workshops and shows, had on my creation practice. I think the ATLAS programme is perfectly balanced in creation/dancing/witnessing in a sense that you constantly experience the different aspects of creation in one day. It created a creative flow that was extremely interesting and beneficial to creation, in bringing new tools or visions to my own project, extending the workshop into my research etc. Sometimes, taking a break for my own project and even the festival itself, that happens to take place in a city with great museums, to come back with fresher eyes.

Another discovery for me was to meet so many artists from around the world, and exchange their perspective on dance/art/performance. Being at the beginning of my career, it was freeing to realize that there are as many ways to do art as there are artists. I started to understand the importance of finding my way to do things, emerging from my desires, preferences, values, instead of seeking for « the » way.

In terms of mentoring, I unfortunately did not experience what was adverted in the programme description, because of lack of connection to my mentor and situations that we experienced in my group. Being an emerging artist in performance and creation, I could’ve benefited a lot from the guidance of a mentor, which I didn’t experience at all. I learned more about dramaturgy and creation through the workshops I took than with my mentor, which means that I had to palliate to this lack in the mentoring aspect via the workshops. This is one of the only regrets I have from ImPulsTanz.

ATLAS, because of its intensive and fast paced schedule, was very challenging. This condensed experience forced me to reflect on what is necessary to have in my practice to make it sustainable and fulfilling. In ATLAS, I learned to adapt, to set boundaries, to dare and to take care. These reflections are dear to me and I actively incorporate them daily in my practice.

As sad as I was that this experience came to an end, I came back home with a hunger I had never felt this much before for more creation, discoveries, connections and daring. I might never be able to recreate its intensity, but I’m surely seeking now to bite and dare into art as much as I did in ImPulsTanz. ImPulsTanz helped to get closer to the kind of artist and dancer I seek to become.

Leon Börgens

Report:

ATLAS. I don’t know where this name for the program comes from. But I can relate to its meaning as in Greek mythology: The entity that carries the world, or rather the sky and all the stars that it contains.
The ATLAS program as part of ImpulsTanz Festival somehow carries the world of dance. Or at least it aims to do so. Some aspects overran my expectations, others didn’t deliver their promises. I surely did feel supported during these five weeks of exploring, dancing, creating and exchanging. It was incredibly intense, overwhelming, beautiful and rich. Mainly it was our wonderful community of sparkling, caring, loving and soulful dancers from all over the world that made the whole experience so special. Our ATLAS family! Particularly it was thanks to the wonderful Angelique Willkie, who guided us with so much care and love and helped us to become a group where everyone could have their place and live this experience fully, while having a safe space to come back to. Angelique was an exceptionally great mentor to all of us. I cannot be more thankful to her! Unfortunately, the possibility and time for individual mentoring, dramaturgical and chorographical advice on our personal projects was very limited due to the logistical structure and time resources of the program.

Overall, ATLAS gave me the opportunity to dive deep into the world of dance, to be fully emerged in the realm of performance art in its diverse magnitude as it doesn’t exist elsewhere. I could just dance all day and explore so many different practices and approaches; see an infinite number of performances, move, share and exchange with so many other artists from diverse backgrounds. That really was a unique and special experience, it broadened my horizon, gave me new inspiration and motivation. It also brought up many new questions; about my vision of this art, my own practice and body, what dance means to me, how it relates to the world and how the world relates back to it. I gathered more concrete insights, whether delightful or not, about how this scene functions and all the global, cultural, and financial politics behind it.

It remains an enormous privilege that I am aware of and very, very grateful for!

Sometimes, it felt like a universe of possibilities, of shining stars and inspirations, of cheap glitter and expensive but accessible glamour in the spotlights. Being able to fly around freely in that space, being part of this pulsating ImpulsTanz organism, having kind of unlimited access to everything, felt like a dream. For the time being, it gave me the illusion of a utopian bubble where all doors are open and only laughter, love, art, celebration and dancing exist.

But of course, there were also black holes where pre-existing ideas and concepts, visions of oneself and the world got sucked in, got ripped apart, remixed and thrown out again. It was an overwhelming puzzle to do, especially for Atlas participants, trying to manage all our interests in workshops, performances and social life and suit them into one schedule, while still creating space (out of nowhere) to work on a choreographic project of our own. It was basically an impossible task to do, which resulted in recurring FOMO, lack of sleep and sore muscles that needed to be soothed on top of it all.

Now, looking back, it was a powerful lesson; having to put together one’s very personal mosaic, feeling into what really matters to me and where my interests actually lie; to listen to my own needs, sometimes stick to them and other times flexibly adapt. In the end, it all makes sense and trained me how to create real connections with people and ideas, find meaning in dance that harmonizes with my values, time and the other surrounding bodies in motion.

At times, it felt like a big soup. We were all swimming in it, or rather biking on our pink bikes, being cooked in sweat, tears, blood and other body liquids. A steaming hot and spicy soup! Our beautiful and diverse bodies as the main ingredients, randomly blended from different countries and cultures. Plenty of new exciting flavors that create even more curiosity and desire. An explosive mix of fragrances, stimulating creative, experimental and erotic energy. It was a dense soup with so many different tastes, that became difficult to distinguish. Somehow, we all became One. Everything and all got just thrown in and mixed under layers of impressions and inputs from the many shows, workshops and encounters. Sometimes, when everyone was just longing for a refreshing splash from the Donau river, it was good to take a break; to dilute the soup a bit, get fresh air, rehydrate, breathe and sober up (not really). Surrender to being cooked seemed the best strategy to me. Allowing myself to just absorb, let it all transform, myself, my body, my ideas. Then see what will come out of it. The savoring and acknowledging of the outcome, the actual learning process, only started for me after the festival, with time to reflect and digest it all. I am very happy about the few notes that I took along the trip to remind me of the many experiences and versions of myself that I went through. I recommend keeping track of that.

What remains is incredible gratefulness; for all the beautiful people that shared everything and hold together, for the most amazing mentor Angelique, for the super power coordination team, Sara, Tina, Val and Rio, for all the artists and teachers that gave so much, for all the other people that hosted spaces for recovery, talks and party, for the sun, the Donau river, for that time and summer of my life !

I am definitely different now than before. I am refreshed and shaped by many unique experiences, and I am enriched by an international network of wonderful artists and dancers, that have inspired me so much and that I know that will contribute tremendously to the beauty of life with their art and dancing. You all have a big place in my heart, and I hope we will cross paths again!

Tommy Cattin

Report:

Tommy Cattin is a Swiss and Italian dance artist who works as a free-lance performer, choreographer and dance teacher.
As a professional dancer and choreographer, Tommy has both danced or showcased his works in many countries in Europe. He has taken part in different festivals and danced on the stages of the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Teatros del Canal in Madrid, at the Danish Opera, Theater Basel, the House of Berliner Festspiele, at the Wiener Festwochen, amongst others.
For the last years, Tommy has also been involved in different creation processes and has been given the opportunity to teach several workshops and dance classes in Switzerland, France, Italy, Denmark, Spain, and in the UK.
Dance and movement is the main medium explored by Tommy Cattin. However, it is important for him to integrate in his research and creations an open and interdisciplinary approach of the performing arts, interweaving dance with all other artistic forms that can respond to it, complement it, flesh it out, sublimate it and evolve in line with its time.

​Being part of the ATLAS program in 2024 proved to be a significant opportunity for my professional development as a performing artist and choreographer. Beyond the satisfaction of being selected and recognized as an independent artist to participate in the program—a feeling not to be minimized—I was thrilled to connect with new dancers and artists from around the world, experience an unquantifiable number of performances, and join in many workshops. These opportunities are often difficult for me to access due to financial limitations, so I was excited to dive into learning again, and my expectations were truly met.
I felt I could fully benefit from what this program offered, particularly at this stage of my journey and my age. Having several years of professional experience behind me, with its ups and downs, has made me deeply aware of the reality of this field, and it allowed me to understand what I wanted to gain from this experience. This awareness also helped me navigate the vast array of available workshops responsibly, focusing on my artistic and personal needs so I could make the most of my time there.

Meeting artists from various backgrounds was especially meaningful. It provided a chance to share perspectives on the challenges of freelancing as an artist, regardless of where we live in the world. Engaging in artistic discussions around performances and workshops was also stimulating and gave me new insights to shape my own artistic stance.
Witnessing so many pieces within a short timeframe allowed me to step back and experience art as a spectator, not only as a creator. Without analyzing the programming choices, I felt that encountering such diverse works was valuable for nurturing my artistic reflection—dramaturgically, for instance—regardless of my opinion on each piece. This process unquestionably informed the creation I was working on in the studio.

Returning to creation in such an inspiring environment was revitalizing. Presenting a phase of work at the festival’s end adds intensity to the ATLAS experience, and it’s necessary to accept that this aspect will limit how much one can engage in the festival’s other events. I didn’t find this limiting, as I felt a renewed freedom in how I wanted to add value to this creation project. Comparisons to other programs were not relevant for me.
After several recent professional disappointments in freelancing and the challenges of sharing my work, participating in ATLAS truly restored my confidence and renewed my desire to create—well worth missing a few performances and workshops to focus in the studio on my new piece. A negative point though, already highlighted in the final exchanges with the festival, is the lack of skills and professionalism of my ATLAS tutor, whose mentorship has been equal more or less to none and/or unproductive at all.
Although I initially began with my mentor, Marco Berrettini, he proved to lack the skills needed to coordinate and support a group, manage conflict, or foster a safe, collaborative environment. My mentorship ultimately came indirectly from artists I met in workshops and colleagues I encountered throughout the program, who supported me throughout. Some of them will remain valuable friends.

I leave ATLAS strengthened and inspired, but also proud to have gained a clear sense of myself as an artist with ideals, values, and responsibilities to which I am committed as both a professional and a citizen.

Tommy Cattin

Andreas Chanis (aka Hannes)

Report:

I had a great time with ATLAS in Vienna. It is an exciting program that allows you to experience an extended variety of performances, artistic encounters and practices. It is also overwhelming as a microcosmos but it contains many privileges that ought not to be taken for granted.

Even if I can be critical towards the performance programming choices of the festival, under the ATLAS program, the sense of playground is unquestionable. The workshop schedule and content is very strong and allow different experiences which can enrich an artist of any kind. Having a studio that you can access to reflect physically and integrate knowledge into your practice directly is extremely beneficial, despite the intensity and tiredness of a full calendar. The independent studio space also works as a hub for the group to come together and create a comradery that is supportive to the whole journey and allow relations to continue after the festival.

I have only the best to say about mentor Angelique Wilkie. It is refreshing to have a mentor who knows where they stand, what they do and what they can give. The big group is obviously exhaustive for the mentor and personally it made me withdraw from getting attention or time from Angelique, even if and because we had a strong connection and I could understand the intensity she was going through. I think for the future, a system of support for the mentor would benefit the program in total.

On the organisational side, I was grateful to the coordinating team of ATLAS, like Sarah and Val, who did their best to be communicative and attentive. Our accommodation was in principle okay but the weather conditions made it also an unbearable place to be in with the heat. There could be many solutions to this that I think would make the experience of living and working in Vienna and in the festival a much better experience.

Overall, I would definitely recommend ATLAS to others, since there is room to navigate to your interests and develop your craft. The research presentations were very informative for me and my project, although the time to work on them is very short. Keeping expectations low on this helped, but this depends on where you place weight in and what you want to get out of it. The diversity of people around offers feedback and exchange that can be constructive to your work and directions of development.

Thank you for having me and I hope to visit the festival again!

In Hye Choi

Report:

When I applied Atlas2024, I was in front of the door to restart my career
as a choreographer and a dancer.
When I out the dance company, I couldn’t go on my work With my family tragedy. And my rib also had broken at the same time.
I was in sabbatical years, and did a research about my trauma and about mourning in the performance, In several years.

I visited ImpulsTanz In summer 2023, and joined workshops. Workshops and performances were so impressive to me. It made me to want to do something with my dark side story.
At that time, I was depressed cause the society that erase the death and there is no mourning community. I had felt the capitalism deals the human being as a machine as no die. But we all will end someday and we all will lose the important being. So I thought my generation need the mourning for ourselves.

In Atlas2024 program, I could share my story with sincere people. And they gave me warm hug and listen carefully every moments. With That experience told me what I needed.
I modified my project plan of Atlas, I opened the ending of my project and did a real experiment during the residency.
And I could find a possibility of movement/dance methodology for trauma body and people who lose some important thing.
In these days, I share my Atlas project with people who experience loss and trauma in workshop.


I recommend you this Atlas program with:
1. Talking about dance, do dance, see dance with artist peers everyday. This is the best thing you can do in Atlas.
2. ‘you can live in dance studio of your team as a home. That will change you different.
3. Every travel guide us to meet a new person and a new place, and it can change you and your life any different ways.
If you have a heart but no answer for your artist career, come and taste!!

Lucy Dillon

Report:

I feel incredibly grateful to have been a part of ATLAS 2024 with Angélique Wilke. The generosity, criticality, creativity, and silliness of our cohort was a main source of joy and inspiration during the summer. Each artist in our ATLAS group was asking questions and in the middle of an investigation, and being a part of that explorative space was an amazing fuel for my own making. Months later, I still feel energized by our community and what I learned from these artists.

Taking so many workshops with artists from different perspectives reinvigorated my dance practice. Particularly Peter Jasko’s ‘Deep Movement Consciousness,’ Be Heintzman Hope’s ‘Stripper Gollum,’ Isabel Lewis’ ‘Communal Epic Fiction,’ and Marta Navarida’s ‘Bounce workshop.’ I felt challenged, motivated, and uplifted throughout my summer in the studios. I feel incredibly privileged to have danced, learned, and collaborated within the festival and how lucky to live with groups of people and in spaces that care about movement and are so curious about the body.

Angélique Wilke was an amazing mentor. She took time and great care for each of us as individuals, and also facilitated our bonding as a group. Peer-to-peer mentorship was equally valued and respected in our cohort. It felt like Angélique’s workload was extremely significant for one person. Solutions like building more time to kick-off ATLAS before the festival itself starts, a smaller sized cohort, or somehow spreading out the ATLAS Happenings more would ease this burden. I am incredibly grateful for Angélique’s mentorship and felt affirmed, challenged, and truly seen in our conversations. I feel more confident in my direction as a maker and clear in my goals because of her guidance and the support from my ATLAS peers.

A big part of the summer and my experience at ImPulsTanz is everything that happens outside of the studios. Days by the river, biking around Vienna, vegan ice cream, celebrations, so much sweat, not enough time to cook or do laundry, naps on the studio floor, and resting in the park. I wish I could have paused and soaked it all in more, but it’s hitting me months later that these in-between moments were the most special. It was a huge privilege, and many of us in my ATLAS cohort were lucky to receive funding from institutions in our Western nations in order to attend the festival. I hope that in the future ImPulsTanz makes a greater effort to facilitate funding support, or offers scholarships, to students who are not able to find funding at home in order to increase access and build a more equitable, diverse festival.

My experience at ImPulsTanz was a beautiful blur or one long never-ending, sleep-deprived, adrenaline-fueled fantasy. Thank you to Angélique, Sara, Tina, Val, and Rio for the incredible amount of work and care and thank you to my ATLAS cohort. I have so much gratitude for the bonds I made and the chance to hone my craft and voice, and I continue to feel the ripples of this wild experience.

Alex Dobson

Report:

Impulstanz ATLAS FEEDBACK REPORT

Alexandra Dobson

ATLAS with Angleique Willkie 2024

When I think about it, I realize I’ve pinned one significant memory or event to each year of my life: 2023 – Sydney World Pride; 2022 – a nonstop year, followed by big heartbreak; 2014 – got Tumblr famous. For 2024, the word that comes to mind is Vienna. But the year isn’t quite over yet so there is still time for that to change.

I live in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia, and in the past, international trips have always felt strangely unreal. Not “unreal” as in cool or amazing, but unreal as if I hadn’t actually gone anywhere; travelling felt like a dream that just faded when I got back home. I couldnt feel any evidence in my body that I had been somewhere else. This recent trip felt different.

Before diving into five weeks in Vienna, I was coming off the back of a few months of sickness from covid and flu, and a year and a half of managing a low blood-pressure condition. Honestly, my main goal going into the festival was pretty simple: don’t catch covid, keep my symptoms stable, and avoid burning out. Managing this meant sacrificing days of workshops and nights of partying, which was tough - a little heartbreaking. An all-or-nothing, “sleep-when-you’re-dead” mindset was drilled into me during my education, and I have been practising it for years. But this time, I tried to balance my curiosity, creative challenges, and desire to connect with others with taking care of my mental and physical health. I think I did ok.

To be mentored by Angelique Willkie was a dream come true. I first met Angelique in her Release technique workshop at Impulstanz in 2022, and again when she was a guest teacher at the University of Melbourne. Our encounters have existed on a timeline of managing my low blood pressure symptoms, and now taking part in her ‘Personal Dramaturgies’ workshop in 2024 encouraged me to realize my body’s context- which is constantly shifting and changing. I am grateful for her mentorship which serendipitously appears in parallel with orientating my own journey of physical health. Her ability to gently prompt my honesty and vulnerability in the creative process was inspiring and invaluable. I feel as though being at Impulstanz has generated much creative energy within me.

Within the Atlas programme I had intended to continue the development of the work Gush- a duet using multiple mediums with various collaborators. Due to the nature of the programme and being alone in the studio my idea pivoted into developing a new solo work. Developing this work was exciting and felt like an essential shift in my creative process. I intend to develop both versions of the work, and I am excited by the new trajectory and creative energy that the ATLAS programme has brought me to.

Being immersed in a dance scene outside of Australia is energizing. It's refreshing to be exposed to new experiences, cultures, and contexts. Being immersed in the Impulstanz environment challenged me as an artist, as a dancer, and as an audience. I found that I was always searching for more context: Why particular work is supported and programmed, why my ATLAS peers enjoy or dislike work, how work sits within the cultural and economic context of a place. I’m still searching for this context- I haven’t found any answers to these questions. However, I am grateful to Impulstanz for accepting so many Australian artists to join ATLAS in 2024.

Peace and Love, folks x

Paula Dominici

Report:

We danced and guessed what it was: they said the process of being lost but knowing exactly where you are, to feel and express, body intelligence on display, extending whatever is left in bodies

We exchanged thoughts about art and life and I got to know someone by learning about their routine

Multiplied knowledge while driving together

Carried books

Listened with closed eyes

Recognized and got surprised

Thought about objects, value, power, distance and proximity, gaze, bullshit, presence, tendu, luxury, stage, nonsense, mentorship, my broken bag, a bouquet of flowers

driven to change, expand, put attention, scream, decide, fail, question, react, do, explore, listen, receive

without being practical

Carlye Eckert

Report:

I am grateful to have been part of the 2024 Atlas Program at ImPulsTanz this past summer. Experiencing the festival firsthand was an absolute delight, as it is an extraordinary achievement and offering from/to the dance world.
The Atlas Program provided a unique way to immerse myself in the festival's ecosystem, blending my experience as a seasoned professional with the excitement of a first-time participant. I felt a great sense of autonomy in shaping my experience, paired with strong support from my cohort of 26 artists, our mentor Angelique, the Atlas Program team, and the festival as a whole. I am especially grateful to Angelique, who guided us with care and sensitivity, helping us remain grounded in our individual goals, limitations, and the nature of the festival. The Atlas team's emphasis on clear communication, accessibility, and transparency was notable and truly fostered a sense of support—something not always common in similar settings.
During our group debriefing in Vienna, several suggestions were discussed. I’d like to highlight a few areas that, if adjusted, could enhance future participants’ experiences:
Mentorship and Dramaturgy:
Every moment spent with Angelique, whether in a group or one-on-one, was deeply enriching. However, my two individual sessions with her amounted to only two hours, during which we explored my work dramaturgically. Given the structure of the program, I would suggest clarifying to future participants that this is not an in-depth mentorship program. While Angelique’s input was invaluable, the program could set realistic expectations about the level of dramaturgical engagement possible within its framework.
Lodging:
As someone who traveled from the United States, I appreciated having accommodations arranged. However, the lodging was uncomfortable and lacked proper ventilation, which posed a health risk during 95°F (35°C) heat. The accommodations provided the bare minimum of essentials and participants had to spend out of pocket money for dishes, fans, bedding, and more. If I had known, I would have found my own accommodations. I strongly recommend considering alternative accommodations in the future to provide a more comfortable environment for participants.
Reflecting on the Artistic Impact:
Reflecting on how the Atlas Program influenced my artistic trajectory, I find it a bittersweet experience. While I wouldn’t trade it for anything, I felt that its momentum stopped short of achieving a truly impactful outcome while in Vienna, and possibly beyond. I believe the Atlas Program could better support artists by treating them as artists-in-residence rather than students. With some adjustments, like fewer participants and an altered program schedule to start, the program could better serve, capture, and showcase the creativity and perspectives of the professional artists invited to participate.
To this end, I feel it was a missed opportunity that our work was not promoted to the wider festival community, nor were presenters or other persons of interest invited to our final showings. These showings, which could be scheduled before the festival concludes, would be an excellent platform for the artists’ work to be highlighted and celebrated, and would open up possibilities for networking and the continuation of work.
I hope that my feedback highlights some areas for improvement in what is already a strong and valuable program, that I will never forget. Again, I am grateful for the opportunity to have participated in Atlas, and I look forward to returning to ImPulsTanz again soon.

Polina Fenko

Report:

ATLAS 2024 for me was full of sweat and tears, bike rides and pillow cushions in the first row for those, who come to performances last minute.

This festival offered an abundance of workshops, performances, connections, experiences.
What helped me to go through it? Well, people and facilitation of our mentor - gorgeous and wise Angèlique Willkie. At the introduction workshop for the ATLAS group she has offered us the most important thing she could: she awakened in us interest towards the practices and works of each other. This created a bond, a community of enormous communal support and artistic exchange. I would name it as the most precious thing: creation of microcosmos (regulated by notions of care and curiosity) within the structure of the bigger festival (that you cannot control or regulate).

Before coming to ATLAS I expected this program to be focused mostly on my personal creation, but during the festival I realized that this space is designed for using your own research project as a lens, as a digestion tool, as a mediator between your own practice and the practices that are offered by brilliant artists in their workshops. Under Angèlique’s mentorship I had started research On Lullabies and Collective Fabulations. In this specific project I was interested in how a lullaby as a very intimate format can become a collective space for fabulation?

I had an amazing time working with Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones, Maria F. Scaroni, Sara Shelton Mann, Guy Cools, Jassem Hindi, Ivo Dimchev, Angèlique Willkie among others. A possibility of meandering through so many practices gave a chance to also focus on ways of facilitating. In my personal understanding dance is about creation of space/ spaces, so there is nothing more important to be able to infuse space and practice with something that will enable dance to crystallise out. Both good and bad (forgive me for such categorical distinction) also vastly contributed to my dramaturgical practice: it’s always interesting to ask why certain things work and why they don’t. But I have to admit, there are certain contexts, where facilitation mechanisms are so impregnant in the bodies of experience of facilitators (like in a workshop of Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones) that you can only perceive it as magic.

Apart from dance and performance practices, this program was very much about people: I gained a stunning community and network of like-minded curious artists, whose body-minds provoke and challenge you in many ways. I feel that with many of these people I wouldn’t be able to meet otherwise, and now I cannot imagine my life without them.

Sooooo last but not least, I need to admit even though I’ve signed up for too many performances (please don’t do that), this routine of seeing so many works every day for 5 weeks for sure generated a profound comparative lens for spectatorship practice.

The biggest gift of this experience is a comradeship of critically thinking dance artists, who share the same boat with you and who are willing to change the course and the conditions for the sail.

Mercedes Ferrari

Report:

Atlas seems to have happened a very very long time ago. And that's a bit how I experienced it: like a bubble in time, in the middle of my year, where everything that happens outside the Impulstanz seems to be suspended. While you're there, you're running from one workshop to see a performance, from one theatre to a museum, or just cycling around Vienna. It's an intense, beautifully intense experience, and I can't think of any other way to experience it. When you're there, it's about surfing the wave and, if possible, enjoying it.

I was lucky enough to have participated in Danceweb the year before, a challenging and learning experience. That allowed me to live Atlas with a bit more enjoyment and give less space to the FOMO that this immense festival always generates, no matter where you are.

It was a fabulous summer, full of dance, new friends, inspiring encounters with artists I admire and hope to collaborate with, partying, dancing, chatting about dance, dancing, and growing in each new encounter.

Now, a few months later, when I think about what is left of that experience, what prevails is a deep sense of fulfilment and gratitude towards each person with whom I shared that time Thanks to them, I continue to grow personally, artistically and spiritually.

Thank you Angelique for making this experience such a bubble of love, care and meaningful work!
Val, Sara, Tino and Rio thank you for all your dedication, listening, and commitment!
And to all my Atlas peers, we are an amazing group, I love you all!

David John Grech

Report:

Workshops

I would like to firstly give a great big thank you to Risa Steinberg from Limon and Birgit Gunzl from Countertechnique. With reference to Risa, her commandment of the classes were so definitive and asserted with a sense of postive enforcement discipline wise that gives one an encouraging sense of trying to complete the obstacles that come with physically training yourself to be a better dancer. The fact that she tried to remember everyone's names before each and every class is something that no teacher had done throughout the whole month. Countertechnique was very challenging however Birgit was very understanding and reassuring the fact that not everything has to be exactly and that applying yourself to a certain flow can result in making new moves that can help with the structure of a dance.
Also, I found Guy Cools intensive in week 2 ReWriting Distance as such a broad and eye opening workshop that helped me become more liberated in the understanding of improvisation as a tool for enacting a sequence of works that can be applied when working on my own performance. His knowledge and way of portraying an exercise for one to put themselves in different elements by using their imagination was very helpful and I would like to thank him too. For Ivo Dimchev's workshop Trash Off, I enjoyed myself however I found the element of teaching to be abit complex in terms of structure, maybe it was me at times not understanding the methodology of how to apply myself throughout the workshop. Release technique with Marta Coronado was worth a try but I was out of my league. For the costume workshop with Lee Meir I enjoyed the fact that we got to apply costumes for ourselves and imaging a scenario that we can apply for both our groups and other groups respectively. However I do think that more props and visual aids can be applied for this workshop as a feedback from my end. Maybe even a session where one can participate with others on campus. Technosomatics with Frederic Gies was one of the coolest things I've done, especially since I come from a background of techno as a DJ. An open sapce eyes closed processing those sounds in such a meditative way felt so liberating.
The research project by Lester st Louis and Nikima Jagudajev was a bitter disappointment I'm afraid. First day was 6 hours of introducing ourselves, a waste of time to be honest. A game that was formulated with alot of mixups and lack of effort from their end. The second day with the motive to formulate this game theory that will be showcased in Mumok was not done in a proper process and by the 3rd day from 24 people we were down to 12. No wonder. Also most people were coming late so the fact that it was meant to be a group project was even more of a confusing process to begin with. By the last day there was no proper direction and there wasn't really any positive that I can think of. I think it was more of a research project from their end that we were their guinea pigs rather than students being aided to facilitate their way through improvisation of instruments and improvising the element of sound into a cohesive performance from different styles. Albeit the fact that they are great artists in their respective sector, they are terrible project facilitators.

ATLAS

I will be honest, I was disappointed. For a start we went up 4 days earlier to have a collective interest of how Marco Berrettini can give us an exercise structure day by day by preparing us for the following weeks. For this he came with a warmup video of line dancing and an exercise with the track Misery Train. From then on, he was not prepared for anything else and at one point asked us to give him examples on what kind of exercises we can do. This is what I denote as someone who is telling other people to do a job that they are getting paid for, a slacker in other words. By the second day nothing else was done whilst the group of Angelique were constantly absorbing different techniques and learning more whilst we ended up wasting our time. Also I had to cancel my intensive workshops in week 3 as there was some plan to do this group project that was initially mandatory so my workshops got cancelled automatically which I was quite upset about. After when it was too late to rebook for these workshops, we were told that it wasn't mandatory once most of the class realised that he should have focused more on our one to one projects. I only had one meeting with him which at least he was helpful. It is a shame he didn't focus more on his student's needs and was more self absorbed in his appearance for an ensemble of Around the World. During the performances, there were also some unnecessary clashes that he created from his carelessness. Leaving before one of our students shows was to be shown when he knew it would start at that time, inviting over individuals who have sexual harassment allegations cases pending. This was meant to be a safe space and Marco failed to take the consideration of the performers into context. For someone to do a speech performance on the day of the reception and openly admit that they don't remember their students names but thank one guy who is taking care of the rehearsal space only is spitting in each class member's eye and subtly saying I couldn't care less about you.
From the co-ordination team, I have kinder words to tell you. Sara, Val, Tina and Rio were all very helpful and they brought about a positive to the process of getting from one show to another, helpful information about anything that has been lost or misplaced and a great job done with the organisation of the festival from that end. Maybe the student accommodation can be much closer to Arsenal though, especially for those who don't ride a bike such as myself.

Emily Gualtieri

Report:

ATLAS 2024

The first thing is the heat. The impossible heat of this city, the concrete, the deficit of air, the mid-summer July heat. I thought I was going to die. I can honestly say that I sweat more in those first three weeks, than I have in my entire life. I had to shower several times a day just to regulate my body temperature. And the moment I’d exit the shower it was a matter of seconds before I was drenched again. I bought a fan, my only saver those first few days, and I drank a lot of smoothies, and litres and litres of water.

In all honesty, I was pretty terrified to be part of ATLAS and ImPulsTanz. I was nervous, almost paralyzed, to imagine dancing after many years of only directing and choreographing with my voice and forgetting about my body. I had been so overrun and consumed by the administrative and logistical overload of running a contemporary dance company, that I nearly forgot why I was in dance or the love and drive I had for it.

It was a hard transition. It was a direct deep dive: everyone meeting, talking, and sizing one another up. We had presentations already on Day Two. Nerves, judgement, all hit me like a ton of bricks crashing down on you faster than the speed of light. And then you decide. You decide in that moment how you want to encounter these next five weeks.

I leaned in, into my myself, into others, into thoughts, perspectives, and I listened a lot and carefully. I saw nearly 40 shows and 7 were pretty incredible. But it was my alphabet group and ATLAS mentor Angélique Willkie who shifted my perspective on my practice - and by shifted I mean encouraged me to create from a posture of listening, create from the gut, identify the feeling and go towards that rather than obsess about form. I took workshops with Doris Uhlich and Isabel Lewis who reminded me about beautiful and uncomplicated approaches to creation, and Claire Lefèvre's workshop on care reminded me that care is a part of our practice as artists and not to undercut it.

But the most amazing part was the group that I was a part of: watching them, listening and engaging with them outside the studio on the way in and out of the theatre and often talking about the real blocks and dilemmas one faces when creating on oneself. It was refreshing. I had the chance to be fully immersed in art, craft, process, questioning and I loved that with every inch of my being. I didn’t think about bills or money or due dates and it allowed creative momentum to flow and wash over and in me. Somedays I would go off to the museum and it was equally as incredible as ImPulsTanz, I learned so much there and had quiet and space around me to let things connect and dissolve.

I would also like to acknowledge the incredible work of Sara, Tina, and Val who really rocked at all the logistics and managing of ATLAS and Danceweb. I am incredibly grateful to have had this experience and am brining so many creative nuggets back to my practice and will continue to carve into the meat that I started cooking there.

Lucia Gugerli

Report:

according to wikipedia, an atlas is a collection of maps. The "dance trail" I created during this summer certainly makes a completely different map to anyone else's. They all are very different, though most likely have sites in common: the territory of amazement, a forest of social interactions, a WHAT THE F"CK cliff, fields of exhaustion and emotionality, path of "I'm so glad I've met you" and a trail leading into the unknown.

I think the following would have been helpful for me to know:

-don't plan on getting too much done outside of the program (such as writing applications or maintaining a healthy relationship)
-bike exhaustion will set in, don't underestimate distances, avoid unnecessary commutes
-having a guest visiting might be really difficult to accommodate
-you'll be surprised
-don't expect anything from your "mentor"


the biggest impact this experience had on my artistic situation is certainly that I now feel like part of a global network. I look forward to finding out where these connections will lead.

Milo Harper

Report:

20 October 2024

It has been two months since I left Vienna after ImPulsTanz 2024, and I am still trying to process and untangle my experience. Full and draining, yet nourishing, ATLAS was important but challenging. Many of the components that made my experience emotionally taxing were unique to myself, our cohort, and mentor. However, I also struggled with the way ATLAS is structured. On paper, ATLAS promises the attendance of workshops, research projects, limited one-on-one coaching, 24/7 studio access for project development, creative exchange within the ATLAS cohort, admission to all ImPulsTanz productions, and entry to all ImPulsTanz parties. What I did not know when applying is that, yes, ATLAS includes access to all of these components but does not facilitate participants deciding what to prioritize. When applying to an experience, I expect it to be possible to engage with everything the programme promises. However, it is physically impossible to utilize all of the opportunities ATLAS provides. Because this was not explicitly stated or explained, I spent the 5 weeks trying to utilize everything available to me, and therefore, existing in a constant state of failure and exhaustion.

ATLAS is marketed as a choreographic training programme, but my experience was that the creative component is pushed to the side because of how many other opportunities are available to ATLAS participants. It feels to me as though ATLAS is in the midst of an identity crisis. At the moment, it is attempting to achieve all that danceWEB achieves on top of facilitating the creative process. This is simply unattainable for both ATLAS leadership and the participants. When applying, the element of ATLAS that excited me most was the opportunity to develop new creative work while immersed in such a vibrant environment. I anticipated taking workshops and seeing performances, but primarily spending my time exchanging ideas and feedback in my cohort and benefiting from the once in a lifetime experience of being with a group of artists from all over the world. I anticipated feeling inspired and creatively active. However, in reality, we only spent the first three days together as a cohort and had very little time to see each other throughout the festival. Instead of feeling inspired and creative, I felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and drained from workshops, research projects, and performances.

ATLAS is a brilliant idea that I fully believe in. It has the potential to be the inspiring electric shock that many artists find themselves in need of at one point or another in their careers. With some restructuring and clarifying of the ATLAS identity, I think it can be something incredibly special for creatives who are looking to grow and learn about themselves over an intense 5 week period. If ATLAS is indeed a choreographic residency, participants need to have less freedom in how they spend their days and instead, need structure around daily creative practice, mentorship, and peer feedback.

I grew an enormous amount at ImPulsTanz 2024, both as a person and an artist. I am overwhelmingly grateful that I was able to attend and can say, without a doubt, that I am a different person than I was before the festival. I met lifelong friends, participated in a workshop and a research project that each brought me immense joy and shifted how I think as a creative. I watched 35 performances in the span of 4 weeks, a level of exposure to contemporary dance and performance making I have never had before in my life. This kind of artistic exposure helped me hone in on what it is that interests me in performance and inspired a massive artistic growth spurt. This growth spurt has been so big that, over two months later, I am still untangling my time in Vienna and the artist I am in the process of becoming.

Paula Higa

Report:

The Atlas program, nestled within the Impulstanz: Vienna International Dance Festival, offers a truly unique experience. In 2024, applicants were presented with a fascinating choice between two esteemed choreographers. I, personally, was drawn to the mentorship of choreographer Marco Berrettini. It's crucial to delve into the mentor's bio and proposal before applying, to fully grasp their individual approach. Remember, each mentor brings their unique leadership style to the program. In my case, I embraced the process with all my heart, extracting as much as I could from the experience.

My mentor, Marco, and I engaged in numerous discussions that fueled my intellectual and creative curiosity. Marco's unique approach to the creative process, shaped by his decades of experience, was a revelation. He posed critical questions, pushed me beyond my comfort zone, and ultimately, enhanced my creative process. His compliments at the end of our journey together were a testament to his profound impact on my work.

As you embark on this transformative journey, I urge you to keep your professional goals at the forefront, echoing the wisdom of bel hooks. The program unfolds swiftly, so it's vital to prioritize your professional aspirations over personal sentiments. Atlas is a platform for professional growth and creative exploration. If you feel you're not ready for this level of choreographic commitment, I recommend considering other programs.

The workshops I attended, led by high-caliber professionals, have significantly contributed to my professional development. Valentina Schisa and Elisabetta Violante, in particular, were exceptional in introducing the group to Ismael Ivo's repertoire. Their ability to adapt to the group's energy level and adjust the daily routine without compromising the workshop's quality was genuinely inspiring. These workshops have expanded my knowledge and inspired me to push my boundaries as a dance educator and artist, instilling in me a renewed passion for learning and growth.

On the other hand, I regret that I had to drop Rasmus Olme's late afternoon workshops due to a time conflict. However, I was glad I could take his morning workshop. Rasmus's knowledge and passion for the material he introduced to the participants were evident. His workshop was a valuable experience that I wish I could have fully participated in. The experience of missing out on some workshops, while enriching in its own way, also serves as a reminder of the value of time and the importance of making the most of every opportunity. Jermaine Browne and Eleanor Bauer were stellar, too.

Overall, I had a fantastic experience at Atlas and Impulstanz. A team of excellent professionals carefully curated the workshops and performances, and I was impressed by the overall organization of the festival. As a dance educator and artist, finding a place to compile all my research interests in one location is complicated. Impulstanz seemed the perfect venue for me to achieve my goals. Impulstanz is considered the most important contemporary dance festival in Europe. You just need to know how to make the most of it.


Paula Higa, MFA/PBT
Associate Professor & Resident Choreographer
UVM - School of the Arts
Theater and Dance Program
Burlington, VT 05405
http://paulahiga.com

Gabriella Jozefina Imrichova

Report:

My experience at the ATLAS program in ImPulsTanz was deeply impactful, allowing me to explore my practice in wildly surprising ways and connect with a broader network of artists beyond Australia.The program gave me space to experiment, challenge myself, and engage in a broad mix of dialogue around my work, and the work of others.

The program provided a well-rounded fertile environment to expand my artistic research. Through a mix of workshops, independent time, and most importantly the dialogue with the other participants I was able to push my practice into new areas that previously would have been quite intimidating to me. I found value in the discussions and feedback I received from peers which encouraged me to think even more deeply about how my inquiries might manifest in my live performance work. I took advantage of this environment to really experiment with new ways of working, and push into new performance modes.

One of the highlights of ATLAS was connecting with the other artists. The program curated an environment where we could informally and openly share ideas and discuss each other's work. The mix of perspectives inspired me to reconsider my approaches and take a few big risks that I might have been too timid to take back home.

There were moments of discomfort, especially in terms of existing within a larger community 24/7. The program encouraged me to lean into that discomfort, even if it felt difficult to do so. Leaning into discomfort ultimately has became a valuable part of my growth here and what I have taken back home with me.

My time at ATLAS allowed me to re-connect with my practice, connect with like minded artists across the globe, and build relationships that I hope will be ongoing. I’m eternally grateful for the experience and how it’s helped me move forward in leaps and bounds with my work and my confidence as a maker. ATLAS was life changing It will definitely be a defining step in my growth as an artist.

Thank you to the whole team who is making this happen. It's utterly insane what you are all pulling off.

Lots of love,
Gabriella

Irini Kalaitzidi

Report:

31 Oct 2024
London

My ATLAS experience is kept within a notebook, that now -more than 2 months later- is still at the bottom of my backpack, with me, everywhere I go. I touch it as if it is something sacred, loaded with memories and quotes, and rarely revisit it for a proper read. Instead, I often thumb through the whole notebook hoping that the quick passage of the pages will reveal an animated biker captured within my notes, scores and doodles.

ATLAS allowed me to focus on articulation and flow rather than accuracy. It was not necessarily about the content of these 5 weeks, but about being in a constant move while trying to be attentive to the moment. Eleanor Bauer in week #4 gave us the prompt “attention follows movement follows attention follows movement” and it felt like giving subtitles to my time in ImpulsTanz. Having 2-3 workshops per day, at the Arsenal A or E or C+ or 3 or G, or TQW studios, followed by a rehearsal at Rennweg 79-81, followed by 1-3 shows, at Mumok or WUK or Odeon or […], occasionally followed by a night out at the Lounge. And throughout this storm, my attention was put into the articulation and the connections between these keypoints. The food, the hugs, the chats and the sleep that would fuel me for the next activity, the rides that would take me to the next location.

This all manifested through a 20min solo creation “Occupied with Traffic”.

I am grateful to every member of our ATLAS group for constituting The Alphabet; Angélique Willkie for being a mum, a glue and a mentor; Maria Scaroni for massaging our feet and our hearts; Sophia Rodriguez for awaking the extrovert soloist within me; Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones for generating a space for love and witchcraft; Stephan Peeps for revealing the joy of House to me; Guy Cools for introducing dramaturgy as a dialogical practice; Isabel Lewis for dissecting erotic sociability through language and gaze; Rio for compiling an excellent workshops' programme and the most iconic outfits; Sara, Tina and Val for coordinating the madness through caring.

Till next time,
Irini

Milena Keller

Year: 2024
Program: atlas
Coach: Marco Berrettini
Nationality: Switzerland
Country: Switzerland

Report:

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Natasha Kohler

Report:

Kia ora,

My name is Natasha Kohler. I am a freelance dancer and choreographer from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand). Alongside teaching dance, general movement, and pilates, I am a dancer, choreographer, and co-director with Auckland-based dance collective ‘Dance Plant Collective’. I was incredibly privileged to be accepted into the 2024 ImpulsTanz ATLAS program with the incredible Angelique Willkie and spent 6 weeks in Vienna over July & August seeing 25+ shows, participating in inspiring, physical, and thought-provoking workshops, and connecting with my colleagues in Angelique’s ATLAS group;25 other artists from around the world, all at the festival for different reasons. I initially applied for ATLAS to challenge myself, upskill, connect with new artists and hopefully come away from the experience feeling fueled to create. I live in a relatively small country and felt the urge to surround myself with inspiring people with new, unique, and possibly different ways of dance-making.

My artistic work in Aotearoa ranges from stage/theatre contemporary dance/theatre performances to site-specific movement scores and improvisations. I believe dance is a tool for growth, self-discovery, reflection, initiating conversation, and positive change in our current world climate. I love to collaborate with human bodies and the more-than-human world so coming into this experience I was intrigued and excited to take part in workshops that focused on eco-somatics, or generally a more somatic approach to dancing and dance-making. The work I dove into researching during my time in Vienna is called ‘body of earth’ and is a work in development that has evolved over many years. The work seeks to bring awareness to cycles of life, and the degradation of humans and the planet. The work aims to explore how we can live in alignment with the natural world around us.

I took many workshops in ImPulsTanz and received something interesting from every single one of them. The workshops I took were: Becoming Tender - Axis Syllabus with Kira Kirsch, Un/folding and Rewilding - entering the eco-somatic f/old, Happy Together - Contemporary Dancing with Stephanie Cumming, No Neutral Canvas: a personal dramaturgy by Angelique Willkie, Catabatics with Alexander Vantournhout & Emmi Vaisanen, Centrifugal Empowerment and Skid Technique with Damien Jalet and Aimilios Arapoglou, floating {ribs} academy (somatic delirious lesson) with Anne Juren, and haunted landscape/s - about inner and outer landscapes with Claudia Bosse.

ATLAS was a jampacked experience, although it is what you make it yourself, the possibilities available makes it a wonderful opportunity to connect with others and much of my inspiration came from those around me. Seeing how each artist approached their research and dance-making was intriguing and played into my own process immensely. On the other hand, although ATLAS IS a social jampacked time, I still felt like I could take the time to be alone, work solo, and independently when I felt I needed it, which felt like just as much of a priority on occasion. The change in scenery and pace felt challenging yet important to my growth as an artist. It was truly potent. Coming back to regular life back home felt intense and loaded with possibilities. ATLAS enriched me with the tools in which to question my art, to make bold decisions, and to appreciate every experience for what it is.

Mirthe Eline Labree

Report:

ATLAS Impulstanz 2024 was amazing, overwhelming, challenging, inspiring, moving and unique.
It gave me a powerful boost in strength, freedom, confidence, and creativity. Over several intensive weeks, I immersed myself in 13 different workshops, reconnecting with my body and my identity as a performer. There was barely time to analyze or overthink; my body simply led the way. Overall, I am very positive about the ATLAS program and highly recommend it to physical makers/dancers/performers. Although I would recommend deciding on how you want to structure the weeks, and just also have fun with it; otherwise, it can quickly become overwhelming. Really try to follow your body in all this, also if it wants to rest or swim in Donau or whatever.
A big plus is the amount and variety of workshops available, which allowed me to explore many different techniques and perspectives. This is truly enriching and unique about this experience. Additionally, meeting fellow artists from around the world was incredibly meaningful. I felt a deep connection with people who shared similar creative visions, despite coming from diverse backgrounds. These connections led to many valuable international contacts and exchanges, which continue to benefit me now and will undoubtedly do so in the future. It was truly an honor to meet and exchange with them all. Another plus was having the freedom in how you want to create and shape your own work and access to studio space, although I didn't spend much time in there to be honest, cause I was taking in all the workshops.
However, one major drawback was the mentorship provided by Marco Berrettini. His coaching fell far short of expectations. Throughout the program, our entire group raised multiple complaints about his lack of engagement and professionalism. Recognizing this early on, our group quickly alerted the ATLAS organizers, and we ended up creating our own feedback sessions, supporting each other’s work independently. Although this fostered a strong sense of resilience and mutual support, it was disappointing to have paid for professional coaching that was not delivered, particularly as other groups were receiving mentorship as expected. In the meantime we sent a detailed letter and discussed these concerns in depth with the organization of ATLAS.

Anu Laiho

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For me, attending the ATLAS 2024 program with Angelique Willkie and the 25 other artist was such a fantastic experience and opportunity. I have said to several of my colleagues since leaving Vienna, that it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime, life changing experiences. I am amazed how well-curated (or accidentally assembled) our Alphabet Group was. I think I stand a little taller, firmer and more experienced in my artistry. I feel connected to a wonderful group of artists all over the world, who I know will be a resource and a safety net for me in my dancing future. The combination of 5-weeks of intense togetherness, of workshops, of research projects, of performances, of parties, of making artistic work was crazy, but so worth living through.

The gentle, firm and insightful mentoring of Angelique. Nearly 30 performances, 9 workshops, reseach projects, intensives. Meeting and working with artists like José Agudo, Laura Aris, Sophia Rodriguez, Alexander Vantournhout & Emmi Pitkänen, Guy Cools and Eleanor Bauer. All of the beautiful ATLAS performances that were shown at the Happenings at end of the festival. Some that I could be a part of in the process in one way or the other, some that I witnessed from the outside. Everything has effected me as a human and as an artist.

The ATLAS program gave an amazing platform to develop and present my research and my artistic practice. I have never created my work in such a soft, supportive environment. My only sadness is the lost video documentation of my solo, but the development of the project has still made it possible to move my dancing life forward after attending the program. The experience is there, even if the moving pictures are not.

There were performances I loved, I liked, I disliked, I hated. Workshops that were great, workshops that were a miss. A good amount of joint excitement and some sprinkles of respectful disagreements. Idling by the river and dancing at the parties. There were moments of negotiation with my own limits, my own capacity (some bits of FOMO). Every single part, a piece of a wonderful experience.

Living festival life is not easy for 5 weeks, and not everything was (or probably ever can be) completely perfect. But it is an experience I felt I could build to look like how I wanted it. Change it when I needed to. Get hugs, even a shoulder to cry on, when it was needed. It is sad that our group will probably never gather with every single one in one room again, but I know I will cross paths with each and every beautiful soul in the future.

Véronique Langlott

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The ATLAS Program has been an incredible and highly enriching experience for me, serving as a pivotal step in my career. I found myself at a bit of a standstill in my mid-career phase, feeling the need to see things from fresh perspectives and explore alternative approaches. This program offered exactly that. It allowed me to return to the mindset of a student: learning, questioning, and returning home with a wealth of new, practical tools to apply in both theoretical and practical contexts.

The chance to connect and collaborate with such a diverse and inspiring group of artists truly challenged my perspectives and approaches to work. The program introduced me to a range of new viewpoints and ways of approaching choreography and dance. Through the workshops, I was able to expand my "toolbox" with methods and ideas that have given me renewed energy and the ability to view my own work from multiple perspectives.

Exchanging ideas and experiences with artists from varied backgrounds was particularly valuable, as it provided me with a professional network I had been seeking for quite some time. The program’s extensive variety of workshops and research projects enabled me to delve deeper into my interests while also experimenting with new approaches, styles, and methods that were previously unfamiliar to me.

The guidance from our tutor, Angelique, was immensely beneficial, helping me to focus on core questions within my choreographic practice and to address issues I’d struggled with for years. Her mentorship was truly transformative.

One of the most impactful aspects of the program was the opportunity for each participant to create and present a solo work. This experience allowed me not only to develop a deeper understanding of my fellow participants but also to observe a rich diversity of choreographic methods. The open-studio format for the ATLAS peer fostered daily exchanges of ideas and feedback, which facilitated the growth of new connections. I gained a great deal from these interactions, as I had the chance to learn from so many talented individuals and to explore a wide array of artistic approaches and mindsets.

I wholeheartedly recommend this program to anyone looking for fresh perspectives and eager to connect with new people and ideas.

François-Eloi Lavignac

Report:

ATLAS is a whirlwind of creativity, collaboration, and self-discovery, and my experience was a testament to its transformative power.
The festival itself was nothing short of chaotic—in the best possible way. Between daily workshops, performances, and socialising, there was hardly a quiet moment. Adding to the intensity was the sweltering summer heat, which seemed to amplify the energy and movement of the festival even more. This constant whirlwind kept me fully present, demanding I engage with each moment, pushing aside any lingering doubts to fully live and experience the festival’s offerings.
The heart of the ATLAS program was the people. Being surrounded by a community of talented, passionate dancers and creators from around the world brought a depth to each interaction and left an indelible mark on my journey. Some of these individuals, I am certain, will remain lifelong friends. Together, we shared struggles—from the natural challenges of an intense creative program to the broader questions about our individual voices and roles within the dance industry. Yet it was inspiring to see how, even in the face of adversity, our group united, finding strength and resilience that amplified our collective experience.
The focus on dance, performance, and theatre helped me reflect deeply on my own practice. Engaging in such an immersive environment, I found myself reconnecting with what dance means to me personally and contemplating its role in the world at large. This experience helped me overcome certain insecurities and limitations I had placed on myself, allowing me to find a new sense of agency in my work. Observing the creativity of my peers, learning from them, and simply letting go of preconceptions were all part of an invaluable learning process that ATLAS encouraged and facilitated.
Reflecting on my time at ImPulsTanz, I realize the five weeks were about fully embracing the present moment. My mantra became “live this to the fullest and reflect later.” With that mindset, I allowed myself to be immersed, to let go, and to learn in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The ATLAS program was not only a growth experience for me as a choreographer but also a time of profound self-discovery and connection, enriching my life and work in ways that will stay with me for years to come

Gabrielle Martin

Report:

Wow where do I start, this program is a lot to condense into words, but I will try!
Atlas 2024 for me was an incredible program with an overwhelming number of opportunities for connection, growth and learning. As a member of Marco Berrettini’s ATLAS group I had access to 10 workshops, 2 research projects, rehearsal studios, and all the performances and little extras like merchandise and networking events. There is a lot to navigate in the programs, the workshop bookings, and timetables but the festival team does a fantastic job at organising it all for us. I think like what some other people have mentioned in my group, I found it very hard to find time to spend in the studios as there were so many workshops I didn’t want to miss. I think the beauty of this program is that you really can make it what you want; some people prioritised studio time, while others prioritised making the most of the workshop and performance programs. Either way, the downside of this is that you will have FOMO (Fear of missing out) and feel overwhelmed about not being able to do everything, and my advice is to try and move past this and follow your intuition about what is right for you on that day.

The result of this approach meant that I became a serial workshop-hopper (sorry workshop office!), and found through advice from friends, and just wandering through arsenal seeing what looked interesting and seeing if I could join in. This approach also meant I could tailor my day to what I needed for my personal project, such as voice lessons, or a more physical warm-up based on the day, and I often found myself in a class I never would have expected, like Flamenco, or Ballet. Being from Australia, and out of the Euro-dance-scene I came in with expectations about which teachers I would like, and this completely changed throughout the festival. I ended up getting little tasters of lots of teachers and highlights for me included RubberLegz, Jose Agudo, Carework for exhausted freelancers, Marta Navaridas Performing Prescence, Eric Franklin, Farah Deen House, Guy Cools, and Archie Burnett. I found myself drawn to teachers whose practice sat a little outside of mine, who could put me out of my comfort zone and expand my practice, particularly towards the end of the four weeks. I learnt a lot from choosing the workshop that I knew least about and figuring it out from there. I also found that with such long days the energy provided by street dance workshops was invaluable (and fun!).

My advice to future DanceWeb and ATLAS participants is to do your best at figuring it all out before hand but to not worry too much as you will figure it all out when you get to Vienna. Also bring a big bag to take all your things for the day as you will be carrying things for the whole day for workshops then straight into performances etc! Also go to the dance battle – it will remind you of why we dance!

Thank you to all the incredible people, teachers, and staff I met along the way, and particularly my ATLAS group, who became like family. Despite the challenges of a disappointing mentor experience, we pulled through and shaped ImPulsTanz into an incredible 5 weeks. This project was made possible by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, which supports arts in regional and remote Australia.

Gabrielle Martin

Matina McAneney

Report:

Participating in the ATLAS Programme at ImpulsTanz 2024 has been a transformative experience that has significantly influenced my artistic practice and personal development. This report outlines the key aspects of my journey, including the workshops I attended, the collaborations I engaged in, and the insights I gained throughout the programme.

The workshops offered through the ATLAS Programme were diverse and thought-provoking, covering a range of contemporary dance techniques and theoretical approaches. I particularly enjoyed the Alleyne Dance workshop which challenged me to push my physical boundaries and explore new movement vocabularies. The emphasis on improvisation and creativity encouraged me to break free from my habitual patterns and embrace spontaneity in my performances.

One of the highlights of my time in the ATLAS Programme was the opportunity to collaborate with my fellow ATLAS participants from various backgrounds/countries. Working alongside these individuals allowed me to exchange ideas and perspectives, fostering a rich environment of creativity and support. These collaborations not only enhanced my technical skills but also deepened my understanding of the importance of community in the arts.

The peer mentorship aspect of the programme was invaluable. Engaging with experienced artists provided me with insights into the professional landscape of dance and performance. The feedback I received during individual sessions helped me refine my artistic voice and develop a clearer vision for my future work.

Being immersed in the vibrant atmosphere of Vienna and interacting with a global cohort was a profound aspect of my experience. The cultural exchange enriched my understanding of different artistic traditions and philosophies. I found inspiration in the various performances held throughout the festival, which prompted me to reflect on how cultural contexts influence movement and performance.

Beyond the technical and artistic development, my time in the ATLAS Programme facilitated significant personal growth. The challenges I faced—whether in adapting to new styles or collaborating with others—encouraged me to build resilience and confidence. I learned the value of vulnerability in the creative process, which has reshaped my approach to both performance and collaboration.

In conclusion, my experience as a participant in the ATLAS Programme at ImpulsTanz 2024 has been nothing short of enriching. The combination of rigorous training, collaborative projects, mentorship, and cultural immersion has equipped me with new tools and perspectives that I will carry into my future endeavours. I am grateful for the opportunity and look forward to applying the knowledge and connections gained from this transformative experience in my ongoing artistic journey.

Olivia McGregor

Report:

Sweat, tears, love, pain, grief, joy, fighting and more love.

The ATLAS programme was the wildest of rides. Ebbing and flowing through intensities of the body and mind, social joys and political furies.

The experience sits in its own compartment in my mind which up until now I have been too scared to go into- I think because to reflect means that it is over and I am not ready for that, 3 months later. Which I think is also its role- it will continue to keep existing and informing and challenging and questioning the way we make art and what is important. Our ATLAS group chat is still rife with yearning for reconnection and rendezvous all over the world and I think we were blessed with a mature, passionate and supportive group facilitated by someone equally passionate and supportive.

The saturation of the 5 weeks taught me a lot about myself. My capacities for consumption, generosity and sleepless sweat fueled starvation in the name of dance. Isabel Lewis changed the way I see the world. Keith Hennesy and Ishmael Houston-Jones showed me how I want to, and I am in love/awe with the entire cast of (M)imosa.

I will be forever grateful for this experience.

All that you touch you change.
All that you change changes you.
The only lasting truth is change…
God is change.

- Octavia Butler

Siobhan McKenna

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Atlas is a big time, a full on time, a time to dance, to work, to party, to hang out, to see shows, to rave about how much you loved/hated the shows, to share and to learn. I thought I would be completely exhausted after my time at Impulstanz but I actually feel really energised and inspired. I think this is due to the people, the generosity with which everyone shared. I miss everyone a lot and miss the intensity of the experience. I was ready for that overload of information when I came to Wien, ready to be shaken up and to soak up as much as possible.

As I sit here in my kitchen in Melbourne with my housemates hanging out in the lounge I am reminded of all the people I shared the Atlas experience with. I am remembering the studio at Rennweg, with people lounging and napping on the couches, making endless pots of coffee, talking to each other about their projects and research, trying to decide whether to go to a show or not, whether to go back to Arsenal or to stay on the couch a bit longer. I think of Angélique and how she held us as a group with so much care and attention. I feel so lucky to be part of such an amazing group of artists and to have been guided and mentored by Angélique. The fact that I now call these wonderful people my friends, my peers, fills me with so much warmth and optimism. I now feel I have a community across the ocean which is truely life changing and holds so much potential. I do feel quite far away and I feel a pang when I see some of the group already meeting up in various places again but I can’t wait to reconnect with people again and even though it might not be soon I know it will feel the same because we shared something really unique together.

The opportunity to experience the entire melting pot of ImpulsTanz is invaluable. 41 shows, 11 workshop series, mentoring sessions, showings and more.. for 5 whole weeks(!). On this wild ride I saw shows and did workshops that got me excited, that made me believe in the power of dance again, alongside things that that didn’t. It helped me to recognised my patterns and interests, what I am drawn to and to better understand why. It has helped me to feel a renewed sense of excitement about working with the body and opened me up to new ways of thinking about and approaching dance. Angélique helped me to focus on process and reflect on how I got to where I am rather than the outcome itself. She also reminded me of the joy I feel when vocalising and moving at the same time. Being in a completely new context where people don’t know me or my work revealled to me what things about my interests ring true and are recognisable. This is useful to know so I can choose to lean in or push against them at different times. The festival also gave me more of an understanding about how things work in different parts of Europe, through learning more about where people are from and what their contexts are like and also through seeing shows and doing workshops with artists from different places. This has helped it to feel more approachable as sometimes from so far away it feels incredibly unknown.

I hope I have brought a little bit of the essence of Atlas and ImpulsTanz back to Melbourne with me. In some ways I feel like I am still digesting the experience and I think it will feed me for a long time. A big thank you to Angélique and to everyone in our amazing group (I miss you all!!), to Sara, Val, Tina and Rio, to the teachers, to the admin team and to everyone else that made Atlas possible. I would live it all again if I could.

Nathaniel Moore

Report:

Atlas report: Nathaniel Moore 2024

At Atlas I was given the possibility to meet gifted and generous peers, the chance to receive mentorship from the wonderful Angelique Wilkie, studio space and a chance to show my work, access to exceptional workshops from a global dance field, access to performances from high profile dance companies, and the chance to socialize nightly with everyone at the festival. All put together this created an unforgettable summer dance vacation, with equal parts work and play, where many friends were made along the way.

There are many routes to go on in one's Atlas journey, and the one I opted to choose was the social. Impulstanz can be an overwhelming experience, as a participant in the scholarship program is positioned like a child in a candy shop and its all too easy to get sick from all the sugar. One has to make choices on what to prioritize: the studio work on one’s own choreographic project, workshops with dance teachers, seeing and studying performances, or the entire social apparatus that includes networking and friend/community making.

For me, I chose the social.

Having heard before the troubles of Impulstanz, which could be summed up as the pressures of the market and the potential of being seen, getting a job, creating a future, etc, I decided to steer clear of ambition. Instead I opted to pour my energy into making friends, because I really like people and I felt that for me it was a time to make friends and let go of work. This could also be that I live in Brussels, which is saturated with the dance market, and when living here I am in work mode normally which takes priority over many other aspects.

Choosing the social for me meant going with the flow of the festival. Being a sheep and deliciously following the crowd of the people I chose to become close to. I found it very grounding to have people i knew in most workshops that I did, as it created a sense of continuity throughout the 5 week experience. A chance to be in consistent dialogue of comparison and analysis about the experiences we were having. Further, I found that this exact strategy of diving into the social appeared in my choreographic experiment as well. The work I made through Atlas is called “Cuddle space,” and while being at first influenced by radical black theory and the work of Phanuel Antwi, in Atlas the work transitioned to a general investigation of what passes between bodies in the intimate encounter of a (metaphorical) cuddle. The dance occurred within the social body of the audience, and produced a sort of palpable intimacy which was equal parts melancholy and funny. The orientation which produced this dance really came from how I chose to deal with organizing my experience in the festival as a whole.

If you are reading this and thinking about going to Atlas, first I would say go, its a great experience which you won’t regret. Second, be aware of how you choose to structure your experience, as everything you do will shape the work you produce. Studio time is limited, and the work you create will likely develop in the workshops you take, the people you speak to, the time spent at the river swimming, the celebrating in the lounge, the amount of time you give yourself to sleep, and what you expect to get out of the festival. All of these things inform what you create, and the studio time is just a very very small faction of the experience. I wish you luck, enjoyment, ease, adventure, pleasure, and much much much curiosity.

warmly,
-Nathaniel

Dan Mussett

Report:

I will be honest. I came away from Vienna with the feeling that I'd been run over by a bus. Or maybe several. Flattened, destroyed, mangled and morphed, with most if not all of my energy squeezed out of me.

Impulstanz is a bit like the beehive of contemporary dance. It hums with activity, runs like a well-oiled machine, and has a strict yet invisible order to it. I think I saw the best and the worst parts of the dance world buzzing around inside it, things that inspired me, and things that stung me, made me recoil and want to run away.

The performance programme felt a bit like a Best Of of the dance dinosaurs. I wonder at what point festivals such as these don't just book the next performance by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Wim Wandekeybus, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui et al just because, but try to challenge these artists to go beyond their brands and push boundaries. Or move over, and let audiences be spellbound by emerging work that is truly innovative, arresting, engaging and accessible. We should stop buying into brands, and start truly engaging with work.

The festival should also step up and call out those choreographers and leaders who do not do enough to ensure that the people working for them are treated fairly, with dignity and respect. The work that we see on our stages in the festivals of tomorrow should be work that is built on these values, and not work built around a scaffolding that is rotten with toxic leadership and power abuse.

Negativities aside, some of the best work I saw on the festival was that made by my Atlas colleagues. Oh it was great, work that was smashed together in the thin gaps between workshops, performances, parties, biking across the city, doing groceries, trying to get enough sleep so as not to pass out. There was a rawness about much of the work, a quality of hammering something out without quite knowing what it is exactly that you're hammering out. I'm still wondering if becoming successful - with all the comfort and security that comes with it - automatically saps this raw energy out of many artists. Should making good art always entail some form of precarity, a sense that this work almost didn't come into being had the conditions been different?

But maybe those thoughts are for another day. Let's just say that I was blown away by work by Irmas Brasil, Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira, Francois Chaignaud. It gave me hope that artists who are not afraid to rock our foundations are still present and given a place on such a big stage as Impulstanz. Thank you to these artists for being so brave and unapologetic.

I'm also eternally grateful to the many teachers and workshop facilitators whose path I was blessed to cross during the festival. Thank you particularly to Archie Burnett and Sri Louise for making me realise why the hell I started dancing in the first place, and why I still need to keep doing it. My cynicism was given at least a couple of hours off during those hours of waacking and line dancing, my body doing nothing else than allowing itself to move without having to think about what movement means, or how it can be utilised to benefit my work and my career.

Before I did Atlas, many told me that it would be a catapult to my career. It's now some months since the buzz of the festival. The activity of the hive has gone quiet, and what I think I'm becoming aware of as I write this is that in all honesty the festival made me realise that I don't really want to keep trying to make a career out of dance anymore. The endlessness of unpaid work (yes, I see a summer spent at Impulstanz as work), the burnout culture that we are all sustaining by throwing ourselves into 'opportunities that lead to more opportunities', the lack of real care and not just the empty discourse of care that permeates not only this festival but our whole sector, I'm just not sure that I want a life which is at the mercy of such forces anymore. It's tiring. It's exhausting. And, quite frankly, it's unhealthy.

I realise that many of these reports will be rosy-eyed and praise-laden. Even though I'm grateful for having been able to go to Impulstanz, my first concern is to try to be honest about what I saw and experienced. I hope this honesty lands on receptive ears.

Valentine Paley

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>>> Bio

Valentine Paley is a dancer, performer and choreographer. She formed herself in contemporary dance in Switzerland (Le Marchepied, Lausanne) and in France (CDC - Centre de Développement Chorégraphique de Toulouse). Since 2009, she works on her own research. She conceives and performs choreographic objects (plays, outdoor performances, performative installations) in Switzerland and abroad. She collaborates with various venues and festivals such as the Théâtre Sévelin 36, the TU - Théâtre de l’Usine, the Théâtre Oriental-Vevey, La Fête de la Danse and La Fête du Slip.

As a performer, she works with Jasmine Morand, Claire Dessimoz, Louise Hanmer, Cosima Grand, Oliver Roth, Audrey Bodiguel, Julien Andujar and Ernestyna Orlowska, among others.

Loving collective adventures, she is a founding member of the Vevey Collective RATS and of the association Fréquence Moteur who produces her projects.

https://www.frequencemoteur.com/

>>> ATLAS 2024 impressions

Dear readers*,

I'm sharing these words with you from my home in Vevey, Switzerland, a few months after taking part in the ATLAS programme 2024.

Participating in such an intense ImpulsTanz programme is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This blew my heart, my body and my mind, in every possible way. I was ultra-stimulated, artistically as well as socially, physically as well as intellectually, in dance studios as well as outside, in the brevity of an interaction as well as in long, in-depth conversations.

For me, the most important aspect was the teaching and formative dimension of the programme. In the middle of an artistic career, to be able to dedicate five weeks of your time to taking classes and workshops is an immense privilege. I was able to explore unknown areas of myself, doing pole dance without slut-shaming, making room for different emotions to coexist, twerking badass, sweating in the house dance class, anchoring myself in buto. Thank you to the teachers and choreographers for the generosity of their teaching and all the critical and reflective tools on their practices.

I didn't like the oppressive, police-like atmosphere in Vienna, but I loved the pockets of freedom breathed into me by the artists I met: teachers, choreographers, performers, colleagues from the ATLAS and DanceWeb programmes and other class participants. I was touched to see dozens and dozens of people dancing together, involved in different projects, enjoying the subversive and contaminating power of dance. I was particularly moved by the Rhythm is a Dancer evening (freestyle dance contest), whose incredible energy still carries me.

The peer-to-peer exchanges between the two ATLAS groups and the DanceWebers were also very nourishing. They were useful in helping me to process the various difficulties encountered during the festival, which were the focus of many of our discussions with colleagues: financial insecurity, inequalities and privileges, accessibility and inclusivity, the free work continually provided by the artists in our industry, insecurity, the mental health of dancers, and sexist and sexual violence.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Milena Killer, who has accompanied and continues to accompany me in my life and my research, and to express my gratitude to my colleagues in the ATLAS 2024 class with mentor Marco Berettini and to all those in the ATLAS 2024 class with mentor Angélique Willkie.

Valentine Paley

Emilia Clara Pujadas Desperes

Report:

It was such a great experience that even two months later I find it difficult to measure everything I have experienced and to put into words the personal and artistic growth that this step through Impulstanz has given me. The ATLAS program exceeded all my expectations, even the ones I didn't know I had.

"I wanted to come to the festival 12 years ago and today I can be here," I said in the first meeting with the group and Angelique, our incredible mentor. In this conversation, where everyone introduced themselves and in addition to their name (and pronoun, which is not common in Argentina), they had to answer - or comment - "why are you here?"

Luckily, I was not the only one who answered, "I don't know what I'm doing here" and "What am I doing here?" Without realizing it, being part of Impulstanz was something impossible for me, and my subconscious was making me say what I might not have dared to show.

Angelique was the dream mentor. I didn't know her before. At the time of the application, her invitation challenged me, and then I could delve deeper into her proposal by participating in the workshop and being accompanied by ATLAS. As artists, we cannot pretend that we are not immersed in the historical-political-economic context of our countries and the world, we are not neutral and our voice (body, stories to tell, etc.) has an important value for culture and the construction of the world.

From an economic point of view, it was a very big effort for me to be in Vienna for 5 weeks (self-financed), because I did not receive any institutional support, neither private nor state, due to the liberal politics of this moment in Argentina... "there is no money", they say.

I have been working for 10 years with my independent dance group "Lalala Danza" in Buenos Aires, and also in other creative groups such as "GPS", directed by Mariana Bellotto, among others. But when I received the email telling me that I had been selected for ATLAS, I couldn't believe it. It


"There was (almost) nothing left of what I presented," said the text of my presentation on August 10th in the performances at Rennweg Studios. I wanted to explore the construction of meaning through the image in dance, the construction of narrative and the dramaturgy of the body, how to tell stories from dance without the need for words. Anyway, it was there, but in the background.

I had a research topic, many ideas to try out, I had even thought of a structure for the performance, a scene script... but more important was everything that began to come through me at the festival:

Starting with the language. The last time I studied - and spoke and wrote - English was in high school, when I was 17 years old (now 34). From one moment to the next I was communicating, meeting new people, listening to stories, telling mine, taking classes, watching performances... all in English. That's another effort, my brain exploded. The risk of misunderstanding or not expressing myself well was constant. It was stressful, but also fun, and it was a decision to surrender to that feeling.


Another thing I didn't understand (but for the better) was time: "There is a time-space dedicated to creation," I thought. And it surprised me. Because in Buenos Aires it is practically impossible to have time and space to dedicate 100% to creation. In the midst of the economic crisis it is very difficult to dedicate this time to art, every free moment is to work a little more, but only to earn a little more money, not even for leisure, sad but true. At that time I didn't understand what to do with all this enormous study for myself, for my research project. "How can I work under these (new) conditions?" Sorry, maybe this isn't news to you, but I can say that I learned a lot from it.

To half understand the language was to feel a kind of emptiness, the space between the words receded, the time to understand, translate and find words was stretched. I felt dizzy in this delay, as if I were falling. And sometimes it was literally: I took Damien Jalet's "Skid Technique" workshop, where we literally slid down a 34° slope. Also, in a dance and writing improvisation, falling appeared to me as movement material. I began to observe the fall in each class as a common thread between the workshops I chose.

So yes, almost nothing remained of the idea that brought me to Impulstanz, perhaps it was just a change of meaning: my work was with fall and language. I couldn't ignore what was happening to me. Thanks to Angelique's wise words: "Be honest with my process," I was able to make this decision without stress. And my process had to do with everything I was experiencing, not just the "creative process of my performance.


I appreciate Angélique's dedication, her commitment and respect for others in all levels of existence, both personal and artistic, her humor, her firmness and loving feedback in the creative process, her precise words, her hugs. I appreciate the coincidence that she speaks my language, it was a wonderful detail that changed my experience and made me grow and use this space even more.

Angelique formed a group of 26 people based on their interests focused on their creative projects. 26 strangers who in just 3 days were able to form bonds of friendship and feel like family in just 5 weeks. She guided us to give value to the experience beyond the results. After 5 weeks I don't have a finished performance, but I have friends all over the world, I have danced like never before and I have learned to work alone, to give time and space to my creation, to trust strangers, to get along in another language and in a city, country and continent that was new to me.

Emma Riches

Report:

ATLAS, Viennese summer of 2024.

Shared with: Paula, Francois, Arthur, Maddy, JC, Gabriella, Gabby, Tia, Dan, Laura, Anna, Anya, David, Mirthe, Rebekka, Linda, Tommy, Lucia, Milena, Valentine, Manning, Milo and Paula H.

An opportunity to: be in my body, experience new sensations, open my mind to new approaches, be uncomfortable, push my limits, surprise myself, listen to others, work, sweat, hold space together, work on technique, learn new theories, overwhelm myself with possibilities and think about what is important to me.

Golden moments include: Francois Chaignaud’s ability to viscerally shift a room, pearls of wisdom from Eleanor Bauer, Maria Hassabi’s knowledge of temporal possibility, Lee Meir getting me interested in garments and materials, Kira Kirsch’s incredible depth of anatomical understanding, losing and finding and losing myself again in Isabelle Lewis’ composition structures, Laura Aris shattering my ego in the best way possible, completely and utterly surprising myself in Marta Navaridas’ exercises on performance, reconnecting with somatic practices, presenting 30 minutes of new work, the energy and (literal) heat of the Freestyle Dance Contest, walking out of a performance for the first time (twice), group bicycle races to the next show, late night (early morning) balcony chats and visiting the Lounge again and again.

Advice for my pre-ATLAS self (and you). At ImPulsTanz:
- time is a vortex
- FOMO will try to get you
- it’s okay to walk away
- work hard/play harder
- get comfortable being alone in the studio
- you are capable of more than you think
- share ideas, often and early (tell someone, show someone)
- you won't remember everything. Don't try
- disappointment is inevitable
- stay interested and stay curious
- drink more water
- challenge everything
- don't be too serious!
- dance, then dance some more, then dance some more and more and more

The stats: 35 nights, 12 workshops, half a research project, 41 performances, 88 pages written in notebook, 10 Australians around me, hundreds of new peers from around the world and a handful of genuinely life-changing moments.

Thank you ImPulsTanz for a summer I will never forget. A festival that is by no means perfect, still learning/listening/changing, but nevertheless is host to some of the most urgent and innovative embodied practices from across the globe today.

Sylvie Robinson

Report:

Long snakes of pink bicycles. Thai curry under the bridge by the Danube. Sound massages with Jassem. Fingernails on cardboard. Glitch Choir. Slapping on a compliment. Morning’s instant coffee—naked on the roof. Separating physical and vocal action with Ivo. The old lady who didn’t know that she needed to complete the heart and intervention was eventually necessary. Again at Café Kafka. Learning from Anu's ways. Police altercations. Anne unravelling. Again at the lounge. Ivo’s scooter—stuck in a ditch. Be! Cultivating my hungry ghost. Sexy little dances. The tiny pool to cool. Beg for it. Ballet-ing better with Andrew. JAZZ. My psoas touched under a street lamp. Our mother—Angélique. We—her angels. I’m just busy investigating the swamp of me. Can I try to understand your shoulder? Strip clubs of Vienna. Naptime with Guy Cools. Each bag’s contents. Give me a correction! Inviting the gaze. Weight forward. Knees out. I was born to be a dramaturge. You must remove your bikes from the circled areas. If your project was a house, what kind of house would it be? Boot scootin’ baby. Talk back trembling lips. Shaky legs, don’t just stand there. Can I place my head in your hands? Emily’s eye—bless her. Always in the wrong in Vienna. Slathered in Tiger Balm. I'm gonna have to cancel my ticket. Sleeping at Rennweg Studios. I have a can of tuna. Tiny dog. Big stage. My grandmother always told me my soul was just too big for my body. I love the color purple. The handguns were everything. Ein Spritzer! Bitte! You’re gonna be a star. Fuck Joseph Campbell. Push him off a cliff. Pet me. I forgot my massage roller. You make the room tremble. I mean, the Odeon has a history. The favela too has a history. I am so happy that you know the way. Rhinestone cowboy. Line dancing my way home. Must eat a Wiener Schnitzel before leaving Wien. The tale of the traveling mattress. Bears in the Park. Who are the bears? Where is the park? From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Will you please tap my clavicle? GRAVITY WON'T STOP ME ANYMORE. Make banana cry—I will not forget. I only know that it starts with J. The 4 studio flies who would not let you sleep. The Impossible Tram 8. Just one rollercoaster to close. Stop Being/A Little Bitch: A Choreography by Sylvie. Miss you already.

All my love and gratitude to ATLAS 2024 and everyone I met along the way. It was a dream and a joy to do it with you. May we dance together soon. <3

Samuel Arthur Sicilia

Report:

The last page of my ATLAS notes (written before my final showing) read “let every cell experience this dance without hesitation or judgment.” For me, this notion is the perfect summary of my 5 weeks.

During my time at ATLAS, I shifted away from my initial project proposal and took on a new inspiration, vision, and process. Over 4 weeks I had daily rehearsals to develop my piece “Premature Nostalgic,” a solo work around anticipated nostalgia, revisiting memories, and forced emotional reactions. The process of immersion, deconstruction, reintegration, and identification over this time period allowed for me to delve deep into my work, with day to day opportunities to explore and expand, and to be enriched by the input of my peers and mentor. My individual mentoring sessions were genuinely wonderful. I was given the upmost respect and support in my work while being given constructive feedback and ideas that significantly added to the piece and to my evolving practice. Each session left me feeling motivated, appreciated, and grateful. I feel that in this capacity, Marco was brilliant for me. I feel the same about sessions with my peers. These individuals working as a collective group contributed their practices, knowledge, ideas, and support with constructive feedback and ongoing dialogue. To me, this is what created a sense of “cohort” in the bond of creating and supporting that of others. I felt encouraged to explore new methods and approaches, as well as to shift perspectives and find new questions to ask and ways to ask them. I could have not asked for a more incredible group to share this time with, I adore each person as the human and artist that they are and have a full heart of the connections we made. I would be excited to see even more full cohort meetings to truly enjoy the richness of this exchange! I had the joy of participating in the rapid creation process and performance of “Today, I Save the World,” which I found to be a very cool opportunity! I believe that this performance holds a lot of value and I would be interested to see if playing with the timing of it and preparation around it holds even more potential for it!


One of the largest foundations in my experience was that of my workshops. I opted for 10 technique and rep based classes and truly loved each one of them. My workshops and teachers kindly challenged me to reinvestigate myself in different contexts through passion, commitment, and hard work. Each one of them expanded my mind and body, and gave me tools and knowledge I will never let go of. It was these 4-6 hours a day that bled into my individual rehearsals through my saturated body and constantly expanding curiosity. The ability to experience so many brilliant performances of artists I’ve followed for years and ones knew to me gave me frequent input to digest, and appreciate. Work varied in its relation to my taste, but never lost my appreciation- each performance gave me something unique and valuable. My involvement as a teacher for Public Moves with my workshop “Opening the Skin” was perhaps the icing on the cake. Each session grounded me, bringing me to the point of happy tears every time. I was constantly reminded of the power of this art form and the beauty of sharing it. It was after these sessions my breathes felt even fresher.

I was in pure bliss witnessing the work of my cohort and sharing my own at the end of the program. I would love to see an increase in how these showings are supported and advertised to allow for a larger audience to attend, including from the ImPulsTanz team and guest artists. While we worked as a team to make this event special, perhaps additional assistance can bring this event further! I hold the commitment of the ATLAS team dear and have faith and excitement for their ability to develop innovative and fantastic solutions for continued growth of the program.

When beginning the program, I expressed a feeling of being “stuck” in my dancing and creating, and finding it frustrating. By five hours later this feeling was changing. By five weeks later not just did I become unstuck, I became a new degree of myself. I am so thankful for this incredible experience.

Ana Szopa

Report:

The experience of the Atlas program confirmed my conviction that this is a career path that is exactly what I want to develop. thanks to the caring work with Angelique I was able to observe more closely the work with dramaturgy in choreography. the most important and most inspiring however are the meetings with new people, getting to know so many wonderful creative people in such a short time will undoubtedly be difficult to repeat. I am grateful for the love and support that my Atlas group and other dance scholarship holders have shown.

Moreover, I was able to watch almost hundreds of performance proposals which I would never have had the chance to see in my country, and after watching the performances we could talk for hours with other participants and critically but also carefully observe the dance scene.

observing different forms and methods of conducting research and building choreography still resonates with me. the most difficult thing for me as a neurodiverse person was to reconcile workshops, socialization, parties, my research and time for myself and setting. next time I would definitely seek more breathing space and treat my well-being as a priority.

I think Rio, Sara, Vali Tina did everything in their power to make our program run comfortably and with focus on what is important to us. I thank all impulstanz for this and all the people I met. I think it would be worth experiencing this event and I also encourage people from outside Europe to make it even more diverse and to be able to burst these white bubbles

Rebekka Sæter

Report:

It is a challenge to put into words and describe such a diverse experience as that of the ATLAS program. I will offer some incoherent thoughts.

Starting at the beginning; a naïve, susceptible and open forming stage – an infinite pool of opportunities, teachings, workshops, techniques, input, lectures, sounds, questions, desires, threading spaces, swimming; a paradise of opportunities. A hiatus from adult life with all of dance and choreography’s most incredible (diverse? Maybe not) opportunities, at your feet, litterally. never again will have the opportunity to experience this again, I know it. A paralysing amount of individual and communal choices to be made. Performances, workshop, research or studio time. You choose. Consumption in it’s purest form. Do you let yourself get carried away by the zeitgeist, the energy, the formative wills. You can sleep when you’re dead. Do forces in you rise to the surface to take control, to make choices. you better hope so. Entering the first weeks, workshop bonanza. Me; flu ridden, hot, delirious and feverish, 37 degrees, outside and inside. Vienna is boiling, my blood is cooking, ears are ringing, tongue is dry, no sleep, no rest for the wicked. Bombs in Gaza. Guilt. Nightmares, silverfish-bugs crawling under my bed, ghosts, I escape from myself into cold showers, blocks of ice melting on my belly, watermelon. No newspapers. Migraines, vomiting, rash, fever, riding me like a carousel. Following conversations online from my bed; bike accidents, discontent and confusion, exercise videos, lack of leadership, hot flashes, rants, questions, is it all falling apart? I am miserable and headcrazed infested in concrete jungle Vienna. The city fumes with heat. It must be time to go home. I wake up after two weeks in bed. sweaty. run to the Austrian hills, up 2000 meters. air. I leave my feverish, flu infested body in the mountains. I return with sore legs, sore butt, a will to live in. week 4. my body pumps African fusion with Alaine dance and I house dance for hours. No time to go home, I am home. I sweat, move endlessly, jump, devour gallons of water, laugh, play into oblivion with so many. My shoes break in exhaustion of being twisted and jumped in. victory. I cycle back to the studio after 12 hours of moving, 3 weeks hiatus, I try to do 3 weeks of work in 3 days. madness. I bring in plants, herbs, greek music, robyn, flowers. I twist on the floor, on the ground, in the garden, it gives me a rash. At midnight before the show I realise it’s all shit. I can’t show anything, it all must go, all the material, out the window. I write a letter to the audience as an apology and perform it. First time in almost 15 years, solo on a stage. I enter a black, large space in 40 degrees. what will happen now. people listen. They support, laugh, lovingly go on the ride with me. like one of those important discoveries and experiences in life. enormous gratitude for the support and touched by the community feel in that moment. gifted with seeing everyone perform. diverse, honest, intense, funny, critical, crafty, architectural, all of the juice. getting to support them there, them on the stage doing their thing. I leave it at that.

Thanks to the ATLAS program for letting me have this full on diverse experience. Thanks for choosing those unique people to have it with.
The intellectual, clever, contextualised and rational feedback I will leave for someone else to share.

Linda Wardal

Report:

2024 was the year I finally got accepted to ATLAS after applying so many times before. I was very excited about going . Getting funding was not easy. I made a fundraising page and made it through, thanks to 65 (!) friends and freelance colleagues! Community is everything.

Impulstanz was about micro and macro constellations, ever changing for each new performance night and workshop week. The pink bikes was the glue that gave us a special band. Impulstanz was a lot about FOMO and learning to miss out. Sometimes I even enjoyed it, I allowed it to happen, I took the evening of, had chips in bed and let go. ATLAS meant often biking in really hot sun for 45 minutes and getting to the studio completely exhausted. I often used the studio in Arsenal instead, but it was often occupied by others. The hardest thing was to find the time to buy groceries, cook and wash clothes. I don't know how, but it happend. I also bought a fan for my room. That was absolutely necessary in the heat!

I loved Sophia Rodrigues Workshop about how to make a solo---> I made a solo . Its called "The Emerging Artist". I think a lot about what emerging actually means, and what is happening after, when we are supposed to have emerged into artist butterflies?
I appreciated Claire Lefevre's workshop for exhausted freelance artists.
I'm soo excited about our four days of showings by the end of the festival. I enjoyed to see the development of each and everyones artistic process.
Impulstanz was a lot about culture politics, getting each others perspectives and comparing how things works in our different communities.
Contemporary Pole, why didn't more people join that one? That was sooo goood.

For many reasons, ATLAS was challenging and very energy consuming. The struggles made us come more together as a group. Some of us created a little group of our own to get more time for peer feedback. That was super valuble.
I would say that DanceWeb is more about the workshops, partying and networking , while ATLAS people wants to go out partying but constantly feeling guilty of not being in the studio enough.

Lots of love to my ATLAS group, really special to share this precious time together, knowing it will never happen again in the same way.
Gabby, Maddy, Tia, Milo, Anna, Anya, Arthur,Dan, Dave, Emma, Francois, Gabriella, Iris, JC, Laura, Lucia, Manning, Mirte, Milena, Paula, Paula, Rebekka, Tommy, Valentine

HAPPY I SPENT TIME WITH YOU ALL LOVELY CRAZY AMAZING ARTISTS
Seems now like a pink blurry hot ice cream dream

Simone Gisela Weber

Report:

My participation in ATLAS Program has been an experience that exceed all my expectations. In those five weeks I was able to dive fully into a rich world of dance, movement, and choreography facilitated and enabled by a well curated workshop program. The program created the possibility to design my individual five weeks workshop plan. It was difficult to choose amongst all the great offers, which opened up different perspectives on dance, performance and choreography, on the side of technique, style and global origin. As a participant of ATLAS I enjoyed to be very free in designing my schedule and I was also very grateful that ATLAS team flexibly allowed me to participate in three research project instead of usually two.

I decided to start the workshop marathon with participating in a research project Transcending Tradition by Ulduz Ahmadzadeh. In the second week I participated in Sophia Rodriquez Research Project Without Filter. In week four I took part in Jule Flierl’s und Antonia Baehr’s research project The Ambition of Failing.
In all three research projects I could learn new tools and approaches to choreography that can extend my own practice. The most unfamiliar approach to me was Transcending Tradition, and I really enjoy that the workshop challenged my western educated dance training by learning new counting and rhythmical patterns.

Sophia Rodriquez research project really changed sustainably how I think about and what I have thought I knew about creation processes. Without Filter gave me new and very hands on tools how to create movement and performance material without judging it to early. I experienced Sophia as a workshop facilitator who was unbelievable generous in sharing their tools and knowledge. Sophia encourage each of the participants, created a open atmosphere for failure, experiment and encounters. The group was rather big, but Sophia kept everyone in their gaze which created a safe group experience. Though, the studio could have been bigger, since Sophia's workshop is also very physical and it would have been lovely to have more space to move.
A very good addition to Without Filter was the workshop of Angélique Willkie called No Neutral Canvas:a personal dramaturgy as well as the research project of Jule Flierl and Antonia Baehr. In combination those three learning opportunities shaped greatly my own research project I worked on during the five weeks ATLAS program. 
All three workshops focused on creating material, and teaching tools in how to do so. In addition to tools they also focused on challenging the believe in “good” and “bad” material, by re-teaching the trust in ones own craft and personal dramaturgy. This approach supported me a lot in generating material for my own solo I presented at the end of the program and encouraged me to use the opportunity to try things out. I mainly used the workshops to work on my solo, which was amazing that they facilitated this time and space to come with my own questions. This was also very useful because it could be quite tough to deeply generate a regular studio practice during the Impulstanz Festival with all its offers.

Though, what shaped my experience the most, were my ATLAS peer group and Angélique Willkie as our mentor. Angélique managed within the first three days to form a group out of random artists who came together on base of an application. Even though the group diffused quickly because of each different workshop plans Angélique managed to bring us always together, created a sense of being responsible and facilitated space for us to share. She was our anchor and I must say I have had a lot of mentors during my education, but I have never had someone like Angélique who i have, truly said, really sensed honest interest in each of us. She took time to engage in our practices, gave honest and productive feedback, challenged us and was able to see the uniqueness of each handwriting.

Those five weeks I will remember with the words Dancing, Learning and Living together. Everyone participating in the Programs stayed in a dorm together. This circumstance amazingly facilitated a lot of time beside the festival program to exchange and talk and meet each other, in a pretty easy going way. Summer campy vibes, in a hot Vienna and a even hotter dorm, brought us to spend a lot of time outside the building, talking about the workshops we do and the shows we saw. I am pretty sure I have made friends and contacts that will last, and I think there is no better way to go home from a festival.

Iris Writze

Report:

If you’re reading this, you’re probably considering doing ATLAS.
Here’s how it might go down.

You’ll send in your application hoping to be selected but somehow also expecting not to be selected because you know how these applications work and you want to soften the blow when the rejection hits you.

You’ll forget about it eventually and months later when another notification pops up on your screen, you’ll be re-reading it multiple times to finally grasp that you have, in fact, been selected.

You’ll be looking for funding. If only you had considered the possibility of actually being selected, you would be more aware of your funding possibilities already - the deadlines are either long gone or approaching rapidly and you’re gambling with cost calculations hoping to get all the money you need.

You’ll be considering your options - is it worth spending 800€ of your money for down-payment in the hopes of getting it back via funding? You’ll only know by June.

Even then, you might only get the funding money after the final deadline for you to confirm with ATLAS has passed. How are you going to pay it if you don’t have your funding money yet? 

You’ll be explaining your situation to the ATLAS team, they will be understanding.

You’ll get the funding.

That means, you’ll get part of it. The remaining sum will put you into an existential crisis, having to decide whether you can see the financial investment as an investment in yourself (because it is).

You’ll annoy all of your friends because you cannot make the decision.

You’ll think of everything people around you are buying. Bianchi racing bikes, bouclé designer couches, Margiela tabis. You’ll start to consider this remaining sum of money as an investment in yourself, and it is. You won’t regret it.

You’ll receive a lot of e-mails. 

When it comes to the point where you have to select your workshops and performances, you’ll be overwhelmed. You’ll try to put something together that focuses on your interests but is also realistic.

You’ll show up the day of the first get-together, learning 25 new names and forgetting them immediately.

Your days will look like this: You get up, leave your house, ????, you'll sleep more deeply than ever before or afterwards.

Your backpack will become an extension of your body, you're a reverse kangaroo now.

You might not enjoy some workshops as much as you thought and that’s okay because the workshop office is nice and you can switch to other classes that your friends recommended to you.

Your friends know they won’t be seeing you for a month. You’ll have a new friend group. 

Similarly, you’ll have three new WhatsApp groups, you keep them pinned.

People will complain about the heat.

You’ll be biking a lot. Or not, like me.

You won’t mind going to all these performances by yourself because there is always someone you know.

You’ll be out at the lounge connecting with people or, in fact, you won’t ever because you know your social battery and there is no way you can go from 8 am til 12 pm every single day. 

You haven’t seen so many performances in one month, ever, and you probably never will again.

You’ll have to be very honest with yourself. Maybe you really need one day of bed-rotting in order to enjoy the next week fully, otherwise, you might run yourself against a wall.

You’ll feel like you’re on Erasmus again. Slowly understanding which people you feel more connected to than others.

You’ll be taking notes but not reflecting much overall and that’s okay because that one workshop teacher says to trust that even if you don’t fully focus on something you can trust your subconscious has picked on it somehow and it’ll come back when you need it.

By the time you’re in 3rd week, you’ll be stressed out, you have barely worked on your own performance yet. You’re not alone in this, everyone around you is booking studio time, too.

You’ll discover flaws. Your peers might see them too. Can you figure them out together? A group dynamic will unfold.

You’ll realise you couldn’t have made the perfect choices. The programme offers so many opportunities, the best you can do is set your focus depending on your priorities. Is this mostly a research residency for you? Book a lot of studio time and fewer workshops. Do you mostly want to learn? Don’t take your own performance as seriously and go to workshops instead. Do you mostly want inspiration? Take in all the performances you can and maybe skip the morning workshops.

Either way, you’ll feel like you missed out on something, there is no way around it.

You’ll be stressing out over not having had enough time for your own research.

You’ll show your final work and it will be fine. You’ll be amazed by all the creation that has happened in this short time. 

You’ll say plenty of goodbyes.

You’ll feel like this has become your new routine and you’ll need some time going back to your old  one. 

You’ll feel like you need some change, not realising this change has already been started anyway.

You’ll have people in your mind and in your contacts who live in different spots all over the place and maybe someday you might visit them, maybe you’ll bump into them at Arsenal again.

If you’re me, you’ll think you’ll discover something new about yourself.

When really, you’ll remember what you already knew but forgot and now re-remembered.

And then you'll forget again.

manning dong

Report:

In 2024 I participated in ImPulsTanz's ATLAS programme. It was a beautiful experience for me, a very fulfilling month of networking with the international dance community, as well as workshops, performances and peer-to-peer exchanges orientated towards both creative experimentation and self-reflection, which became intertwined and challenging and expanding environments.

During the month we not only met and exchanged ideas with artists from all over the world in contemporary dance and other fields, but also with people from different backgrounds who love dance and feel the vitality of dance, but also have valuable artistic resources to learn from, and for me the opportunity to participate in ATLAS for choreography is very exciting. I saw dozens of performances of different genres and diversity, which allowed me to do a lot of input, gain a lot of inspiration and open my mind to artistic possibilities over the course of a month. These performances showcased current trends in dance and performing arts. Exposure to cutting-edge work, from avant-garde pieces to more traditional forms, gave me new insights into the possibilities of this medium. Certain performances resonated deeply with me and inspired me to think about new directions for my work, an understanding of ways and means of intervening with different people and topics.

Meanwhile, in practice, different workshops provided not only physical training, but also inspiration for creation and creativity. The workshops invited many well-known artists at the festival to share their artistic working methods. I tried to participate in physical classes in different techniques, ballet, Forsythe, acrobatics, relative techniques and the style of Utima Vez, to let my body understand and experiment as much as possible with these logics, and also for the experience of movement indispensable for the creative process. For me I also took part in two research projects, Sophia and Lloyd intervened in different ways in the practice of movement and ideas, giving valuable references and time to reflect on my own work. Such a huge contemporary dance event allowed me to see a lot of established artists but at the same time the summer was enlivened by the fact that emerging artists were able to have their own groups to communicate internally and socialise with artists from different backgrounds.

I think this is also true for ATLAS, which emphasises practice in the creative process and provides us with the opportunity to learn from and meet mentors face to face, but this summer our group mentors were not as good as they could have been and did not show or give us the experience and professionalism in the process, which is a shame because ATLAS's mentorship programme is invaluable. programme is invaluable. The personalised feedback provided by the established artists helped me to think deeply about my own artistic path, not only in terms of technique and aesthetics, but also about the wider role of art in contemporary society and the literacy and observation that comes with being an artist, and I hope that there will be space for critical thinking here so that I can approach my vision for future projects with a clearer sense of purpose This time, the lack of good communication opportunities was very unfortunate. But I was impressed by the intimacy and communication and co-operation within the group, supporting each other and enriching our understanding of each other's work and perspectives. Also due to the absence of the guiding part what we had had more free time to focus on our own work, it was a month of experimentation in the spirit of experimentation, ideas ended up being tested in real time with feedback from our peers, the diversity of backgrounds and experiences in the group meant that each participant was able to come up with a unique insight, which broadened my understanding of choreography and performance still an interesting experience. I hope that at the festival there will be a greater focus on the impact and spread of our work as emerging artists to a wider audience, giving us more attention and viewing debriefs, as well as allowing more members of the public or festival attendees to know and understand what we do.


Overall, the ImPulsTanz 2024 ATLAS project and experience has been a great experience and platform for my future creative endeavours, not only in terms of improving my skills, but also in the way I approach my creative practice now. Being in a vibrant international arts community, coupled with targeted mentoring and creative spaces, has allowed me to explore my artistic identity in new ways. Providing me with the tools, experience and connections I need to further develop as a contemporary dance artist. The skills and insights gained from this experience for studying choreography now or later as an artist and creator will undoubtedly influence the direction of my future work, encouraging me to continue to grow and explore in both my personal practice and professional collaborations.

anya sirina

Report:

ATLAS WAS GREAT.

THE WAACKING WORKSHOP WITH ARCHIE BURNETT WAS MY HIGHLIGHT. THIS WORKSHOP TAUGHT ME THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMITTING TO WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND COMMITTING TO WHO YOU ARE AS A PERFORMER.

THE PACE OF THIS PROGRAMME IS VERY INTENSE, SO LISTENING TO WHEN MY BODY NEEDED A BREAK WAS KEY.

IT WAS CHALLENGING TO DELVE INTO MAKING A NEW PIECE OF MY OWN WORK ALONGSIDE ATTENDING WORKSHOPS AND PERFORMANCES PRETTY MUCH EVERY DAY.

ON REFLECTION, APPLYING WITH A PIECE OF WORK THAT HAD ALREADY GONE THROUGH ONE STAGE OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT COULD HAVE BEEN EASIER; HOWEVER, AT THE END OF THE FESTIVAL I PERFORMED A RAW PIECE OF WORK, A SKETCH, AND THIS WAS A VERY USEFUL EXERCISE FOR ME.

UNFORTUNATELY, OUR GROUP DID NOT HAVE A GREAT EXPERIENCE WITH OUR MENTOR, SO IT MEANT THAT OUR GROUP HAD TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER AND PROVIDE OUR OWN MENTORING THROUGH SELF-ORGANISED PEER-TO-PEER EXCHANGE.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT TO HAVE MORE CONTACT WITH THE OTHER ATLAS GROUP THROUGHOUT THE FESTIVAL. FACILITATED MOMENTS FOR MEETING OTHERS WERE NEEDED IN THE FIRST FEW DAYS.

MOST WORKSHOPS WERE AT A VERY HIGH STANDARD AND I LOOK FORWARD TO RETURNING TO FUTURE IMPULSTANZ EDITIONS TO ATTEND MORE WORKSHOPS!