

HIDDEN PHASES — Choreographic Research
Dance Works by Dagmar Spain & Marlene Schomberg
Feb 15th 2025 , 19:00 – 21:00
Life is fluid…
As an ongoing process of change, beginning and endings, we move through different stages that shape us and our outlook on life. Some feel joyful, others challenging, but all reflect the delicate and often hidden balance between our inner growth and the ever-changing world around us, making us who we are and who we envision to become.
During this shared evening, Dagmar Spain and Marlene Schomberg present their unique approaches to this inner and outer dialogue, inviting the audience into this process. They will each showcase a dance work in which they both use an “Embodied Dialogic Research” methodology founded by Dr. Dagmar Spain in her doctoral studies, and with which they have developed their choreography together with their dancers.
“Between” by Dagmar Spain
“I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.”
excerpts of “Possibilities” by Wislawa Szymborska From “Nothing Twice”, 1997

This work is part of an extensive study on professional dance education’s transformative and lifelong learning effects on former ( and one present) dance students. It is born from Dr. Dagmar Spain’s doctoral project (2024), in which she provided a dialogic space for embodied, textual, and verbal exchanges with her former study participants. A professional dance education needs stamina, determination, and undivided dedication, leaving often personal aspects barren and unfulfilled. Not every graduating student ends up working in their dance profession and might choose willingly or for reasons of survival a different field altogether. In this new project, former dance students were asked about their present growth and how their dance education has positively or negatively impacted that growth, especially if they are now working in a different field. This performance is based on the personal solos (somatic dance narratives) of each former dance student and the researcher, extending to a shared embodied exchange, a dance dialogue. The choreography is co-created, and everyone holds shared responsibility for its personal and communal meaning-making.
Dancers: Cosma Alvarez, Maria Banaszak, Louis Flothman, Karolína Grygarová, Marlene Schomberg, Dagmar Spain & Rozálie Stárová
“bodypeace” by Marlene Schomberg

The intersectional project “bodypeace” reflects evolving beauty standards imposed on predominantly female body shapes through changing fashion seasons. It aims for a deeper understanding of the intersection between inner identity and external appearance of women. By addressing themes of identity and self-acceptance, the dance performance invites viewers to reflect on how industries shape the way we see ourselves and others—and how we can stay true to who we are beyond trends.
Dancers: Samira Aakcha, Eleni Vogiadjis, Ina Jia Guo
Bios
Dagmar Spain, born in the Czech Republic, is a scholar, dance educator, and dance artist collaborating with filmmakers, visual artists, and writers at different institutions around the world; currently at the University of New York in Prague, Czech Republic, where she designed the course The Power of Words, teaching the art of monologue writing; at DanceWorks Berlin, Germany, a BA dance program, she designed the course “Applied Learning” for pre-professional dancers; and she facilitated embodied community projects at the National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library (NCSLM) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, US. Dagmar specializes in interactive and somatic dance movements in conjunction with poetry and monologue writing and conducts experiential workshops for all populations to unleash the healing power of embodied expressions with a dialogic approach. In the U.S., where she lived for 20 years, she founded her dance company Dance Imprints and taught as a dance artist and visiting professor at Brown, Penn State, and Montclair University. Spain received her BFA in dance at the College for Dance and Performing Arts, Frankfurt, Germany, and her MFA in dance and choreography at Tisch School of the Arts, N.Y.U., New York. She earned her EdD in dance education with a holistic focus on dialogic research & pedagogy at Teachers College/Columbia University in May 2024.
Marlene Schomberg, a Berlin-based movement artist, explores multidisciplinary movement languages by integrating dance with various mediums. Her work expresses critique and desire. With a focus on FLINTA* perspectives, examining the realities of this group in the society she grew up in and lives in today, as well as the power dynamics that shape human relationships. Since earning a B.A. in Contemporary Dance from Danceworks Berlin, she performed with Munir Arreola in “Fragancia-la fiesta” and “Umi no Hikari” (2024), danced in Kasper Jakobsen’s “Manpurse” (Ortstermin Festival 2024, “Rooted by Apricot Productions), and contributed to Dagmar Spain’s “Dialogic Spaces as Research Methodology” doctoral project (2023/24). As a choreographer, she co-created “Kleines K” (Wildwechsel Festival 2023) and “Keine Panik” (Tanzwärts#7, 2023). She also provides organizational support to artists, edits video content and choreographic assistance for e.g Yu Bai, Michael Langeneckert.