Counter Balance

Sizwe Mzimela is a DJ and cultural organizer born in Durban, South Africa, whose work is rooted in the deep connection between music, dance, and community life. Fabienne “Foxy” Klüver, born in Hamburg, Germany, is both a dancer and an Amapiano DJ, with a practice framed by Western training and institutional systems. Their Counter Balance residency is about lived heritage meeting Westernized frameworks, insider experience meeting outsider responsibility. Together they created Junkpark, an Amapiano event and community in Germany. Their research will delve into not only the joy and vitality of Amapiano, but also the tensions of translation – questions of authenticity, cultural ownership, and the politics of representation.

Sizwe Sihle “Sizwe031” Mzimela and Fabienne “Foxy” Klüver presented the results during the workshop “Amapiano and South African Culture” at the “Collective Impact” forum.

This collaboration united Irish choreographer and musician Aoife McAtamney with Dublin's Lexicon Library senior librarian Lucy O’Donnell to explore song, dance and choreography in relationship to literature, libraries and its community of readers. Through their cross-cultural research and performance project ‘Authors', they extended their explorations to new environments outside of Ireland. The Counter Balance residency enabled them to discover cross-sector commonalities and differences between the social and human fabric of dance, literature and the people who inhabit them – and share a creative proposal for what a German edition of 'Authors' could be.

The result was presented during the Tanztriennale at the Hamburger Bücherhalle.

Reiko Ohta, coming from a disciplined ballet background in Japan, and Joseph Simon, having his roots in hip hop culture as a B-boy, connect through their shared interests and visions to propose an unconventional approach to ballet. With this cross-cultural experimentation, they aimed to deconstruct elements of hip hop, house dance and ballet, to challenge and play with the social conducts, attitudes and aesthetics that are particular to these dance styles. The result was the 30 minutes short creation "Routines".

Guided by a shared desire to explore ballet through an unusual lens, Reiko and Joseph dream of a playground where ballet is practiced as an underground dance subculture. Drawing from breaking, hip-hop, house, and UK jazz dance, the work playfully bends and blurs the edges of ballet vocabulary with freedom and groove. In what they imagine as a late-night studio session, they practice their own version of an alternative, democratic ballet by exploring the in-betweens of different dance practices. Let this session celebrate the countless spaces around the world where dance communities gather, sweat, dream, and move together, united by their enduring passion for dance.

In their Counter Balance residency, Lau Sin Yi and Germain Zambi brought together three dance practices – Krump, Waacking, and Flamenco – each born from communities who turned adversity into art. By combining their distinct dance backgrounds, Lau Sin Yi and Germain Zambi created a space where their shared values – resistance, emotional authenticity, and storytelling – could be explored through a new embodied language. This tandem was not only an act of artistic curiosity, but also of solidarity. The result was their 30-minutes short creation "IN - Tension".

"IN - Tension" brings together three culturally distinct dance practices - “Krump”, “Flamenco” and “Waacking”- each born from communities who turned adversity into art. By combining our distinct dance backgrounds, we aim to create a space where our shared values - resistance, emotional authenticity, and storytelling - can be explored through a new embodied language. “How can different dance forms reflect different ways of processing emotion?” “How is cultural memory stored in movement - and how it can be shared across differences?”