About Us

"But paradise is barred and the cherub behind us; we’ll have to make a journey round the world and see if it’s open again somewhere round the back" (Heinrich von Kleist)

The Tanzquartier Wien (TQW) is one of the most important dance houses in Europe when it comes to thinking ahead and promoting contemporary dance and performance and the related theoretical discourses and standpoints. Against the background of a transdisciplinary understanding of art that is also reflected in the location of the TQW at the centre of the Vienna Museumsquartier, the tracing of contemporary developments and pioneering tendencies in dance creation and the dialogic proximity with arts determine our actions as well as the formats.

Artistic processes are important to us: we receive, initiate, care for and protect them, but also share their risks. To take up open ends, to continue them and mediate in between working process and production are the central motivations for curating the international guest-performance programme, local and also prospective international co-productions, artists’ residencies, the workshop and training programme or open project forms that promote the aspects of artistic research.

An integral component of programme design and development is the theoretical knowledge of dance and performance, which the TQW has played a decisive role in extending since its foundation. The advanced and continuous development of theory will continue to be related to historical concepts and the interest will continue to focus on linking the articulated and the unarticulated in artistic and theoretical practice and on questioning.

From the 2009/10 season, particular thematic attention will be given to the analysis of the choreographic: as a space-time structure and formative principle, as a dynamic and perception-oriented dialogue with the spectators or as the moment where artistic creation and social-societal development meet, the constitutent aspects, processes and effective forms of choreography will continue to be the focus of concentrated thematic intensification.
This is not a question of the affirmation of dance in distinction to other arts and design principles: beyond the utilisation and adoption of media, we are rather interested in the choreographic understanding in dance, performance and other disciplines and in a speaking "in" and "with" choreography, which implies transcending and breaking the limits of the art form. Furthermore, it also involves an opening to a "choreography of the social", that is to elements and dynamics of moving and being moved in culture, society and political life.

The open house will become an even more hospitable space. The TQW is simultaneously the location and the act of encounter with contemporary choreographic art and actively seeks to create openings and motivations that facilitate a differentiated analysis of dance and performance, yet without making it a necessity. In a contemporary gesture of invitation, alongside the existing audience who are interested in discourse, we are turning to spectators who are interested in sensual perception but also increasingly in the analysis of dance and performance.

Beyond an essential welcoming, the rights and obligations of hospitality, of territory and (artistic) languages also become relevant. The aim is not absolute understanding. Rather it is a question of taking the asymmetries, gaps and sense experiences that are opening up as a challenge for an enthusiastic exchange of art and theory, audience and artists. This too is hospitality and involves the role of the TQW as an institution at the centre of the discussion.

Together with the artists and the audience, we would like to propose paths through the diverse topographies of the choreographic landscape. To turn upside down the contemporary and the historical, the existing and the still fictional, to turn it inside out and to set out on a journey  and enthuse for the participation in the most exciting art form of the present and the future.