tanzschreiber was initiated in 2016 by Tanzbüro Berlin as an online portal for dance reviews. Since then, we have been publishing around 600 texts, which examine the aesthetic and conceptual diversity of dance in Berlin and Potsdam and make it equally accessible to experts and laypeople alike.
There are always four tanzschreiber authors regularly publishing articles on tanzschreiber, in English or German. The current writers are Alice Heyward, Inky Lee, Johanna Ackva, and Miriam Taschler. Occasionally, reviews by tanzschreiber guest journalists also appear on the online portal. Starting from November 2023 all dance reviews are published in two languages. Under Authors you find a list of all tanzschreiber writers.
—
Tanzbüro Berlin was founded in 2005 as a central institution for the Berlin dance scene and is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Tanzbüro Berlin sees its mission in strengthening the Berlin dance scene and in networking national and international dance actors and institutions.
- Tanzbüro Berlin initiates and supports projects to improve the training and production conditions of the independent dance scene.
- Tanzbüro Berlin promotes communication between the dance scene and cultural policy.
- Tanzbüro Berlin organizes consulting seminars and information talks for dance and theatre professionals.
- Tanzbüro Berlin works together with cooperation partners such as the TanzRaumBerlin network.
- Tanzbüro Berlin is dedicated to the mediation of dance.
- the magazine tanzraumberlin is published, which presents texts and dates to the dance happening in Berlin.
- The TanzRaumBerlin website is operated as an information and contact portal.
- Tanzbüro Berlin offers the tanzcard, the discount card for dance events in Berlin and Potsdam.
Further information on the individual projects of Tanzbüro Berlin can be found at www.tanzraumberlin.de.
Facts behind tanzschreiber:
The online review portal tanzschreiber was developed within the framework of “Attention Dance I”, a project funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Senate Administration for Culture and Europe Berlin. By late 2017, within its first 1.5 years alone, 128 texts on the Berlin dance had been published by a rotating team of dance journalists. tanzschreiber, as an incredibly successful instrument in times of increasingly diminished (cultural) media landscape, highlighted the aesthetic and conceptual diversity of dance with high-quality texts and made it equally accessible to both professionals and laypeople alike. The next goal was, and is, to simultaneously and conceptually expand the portal within the framework of “Attention Dance II”. To this end, English-writing journalists have been publishing on tanzschreiber since 2018. Furthermore, a selection of texts are translated into English or German, there’s a focus on attending selected festivals, local and nationwide structures are being initiated. From fall 2018-2020 the online portal has been accompanied by a series of events (incl. the Blattkritik and Why criticism? series), with the goal of expanding on passive reading through an active exchange on critical writing practices, developments in dance/cultural journalism, and the checkered relationship between art and critique. With the project “Perspektive Tanz”, funded by the ERDF from 2021-2023, we have started a series of tanzschreiber Dialogues, which focus simply – yet most difficult – on writing in relation to dance.
Our first tanzschreiber writing workshop TAP TAP TWIST & TURN: A Writing Slowdance with Inky & Aslan started in August 2022, with a second round in 2022. A separate tanzschreiber workshop program in German, Texte in Bewegung, led by dramaturgs and dance journalists Alex Hennig and Johanna Withelm, took place in March 2022 in cooperation with Tanzplattform Deutschland 2022, hosted by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and a second round in January 2023 in cooperation with Tanztage Berlin. You find more info here.
—
Information about dance events can be sent to mail@tanzschreiber.de. Please note: The e-mails will not be answered in terms of content.
tanzschreiber is a module of “Empowering Dance”, a project of Tanzbüro Berlin, supported by Zeitgenössischer Tanz Berlin e.V. and funded for 2023-2026 by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
