As part of “Berlin bleibt! #5,” we are presenting two dance performances at Mehringplatz that engage with public space in different ways: “Apaches” by Saïdo Lehlouh is a project that explores collective practices, hip hop, and forms of visibility, and is constantly being reimagined in collaboration with local dancers. The participatory format “Dance Church”, initiated by Lavinia Vago, has been bringing people together since 2010 regardless of their dance experience, operating at the intersection of community, ritual, and workout. A conversation about the rules of gathering in public space, a redefinition of the term “institution”, and the fact that dance is actually everywhere.

Petra Poelzl: Hello Lavinia, hello Saïdo. We are excited to bring you both together for this interview. It’s great that the two of you you are part of our festival “Berlin bleibt! #5: Nachbarschaften in Bewegung” – which translates as “Neighbourhoods in Motion” and reflects on the changes happening in HAU’s neighbourhood – with the Mehringplatz and the new quarter as one of the central locations. How do we navigate between these large housing estates and, supermarket chains and the old Kreuzberg neighbourhood, and how do they shape our bodies and movements, and how these environments form paths, encounters, and ideas of coexistence, and what histories are inscribed in them, both old and new?
Saïdo, when I called you to talk about “Apaches” at Mehringplatz, you immediately replied, “Yes, Mehringplatz.” I had the feeling that the place is familiar to you. May I dig deeper? 

Saïdo Lehlouh: Yes, Mehringplatz. I think I was 19 years old, I was still studying, and the first artistic project that I've been involved in was by an invitation by Niels Robitzky, “Storm”. At that time, he was looking for two French performers to be in a French and German project, and I said, yes, so I've been traveling to Berlin, I stopped my studies, and I started this project. Actually, the show was at HAU and the rehearsals took place in one of the HAU studios at HAU. I was passing through Mehringplatz every day for months, and stayed there after the rehearsal with the other dancers that were part of the project. Most of them were also living there with their families – dancers from Lebanon, from Palestine and from other places. Part of the project was to discover another diaspora who was into the hip hop culture. With their own culture, their own background, their own way of being part of a Western society, with different struggles, but also common questions as a teenager in our way to involve in this hip hop culture. So, when you talked about Mehringplatz, it brings me back to almost 20 years ago, when I've been going through this journey as a young artist.

Petra Poelzl: Lavinia, during “Berlin bleibt”, you will also work at Mehringplatz. On a project with the very paradoxical title “Dance Church”. It began in 2010 in a rented space in Seattle with only a few people. Then during Covid-19, you had to use a completely different space, the digital space, where you reached around 150,000 participants joining via livestream worldwide. How did this project evolve from a small closed space to a global digital format and then into public spaces?

Lavinia Vago: It started as a small studio practice for just a group of professional dancers. We were really craving a space to move and say fuck you to all the rules of training, and we also wanted to create a space that felt welcoming to everyday people. We were like: everyone can dance, why limit that experience to the professional training? So, we were playing around with the format for many years. It was around 2016, so already 6 years in, when we started to understand which format felt right, and people were excited about finding this space of joy and release and togetherness. It was just growing organically. By 2017, 2018, we were doing classes multiple times a week with 70, 80, 90 people in multiple cities.

There was already this energetic pulsating happening. In 2020, we were on the bridge of this growth, and lockdown shifted us to online. The online space was very fascinating because we realized that we could communicate better with people because of the microphone, and because we were able to share more cues around what we were doing with our body, and also, share a little bit more of our personality, whether in a big space with 100 people. Usually, we put the teacher in the centre of the space without a mic, and we move along with a lot of people. So, people often cannot hear what we say. The online space created this huge explosion because everybody could join from their own living room, and it became this extra accessible practice. Especially during Covid, it was a moment where everybody needed to move and needed a sense of joy and release and togetherness.
In the summer of 2021, I was like: I can feel that people want to come back together. I missed the smell of sweat of people around me. I missed the ephemeral, and so we started exploring with outside spaces. We realized that the energy was really changing, because it can be somewhat intimidating to go into a dance studio, or a yoga studio, or a gym. There's a sense of intimidation, there are also some barriers regarding accessibility, and the moment we went outside, there was a new charge. When you're outside, you feel freer and more energized, and people would also watch and be curious. And then slowly, people would join from the outskirts, and it created this reverberation. We've been exploring more and more, especially in the summertime, outdoor events, people bring their children, and people of all ages come. It feels like we have broken some barriers here.

Petra Poelzel: When you speak about the outdoors, is it a park you're referring to?

Lavinia Vago: Parks, plazas, yes. We have this big event in Lincoln Center Plaza, which is a large space. One of the most iconic things that we've been doing for a few years is in Seattle, and I taught it last summer. I had 600 people, because it's this large grass park, and, so there's a lot of people that can kind of join from here, but then people start joining from the outskirts and just becomes this large reverberation of energy.

Petra Poelzl: I really appreciate that idea of reverberating energy. It also connects to what you mentioned earlier about cues – that in large groups, people don’t naturally hear them. In the digital space, that became much more accessible. In public space, however, the cues are less audible; instead, people tend to follow the collective movement and go with the flow, which I find very compelling and beautiful to even think about.

Lavinia Vago: Exactly. We've developed this format that has a simple repetition and steps, that people can catch from the energy of the people next to them, and then it kind of reverberates out of the circle. It feels like everybody's moving together, and it's very musical. You don't have to necessarily hear or understand exactly the cue, but you can follow along in an easier way.

Petra Poelzl: Is there a musical dramaturgy you're choosing?

Lavinia Vago: The music plays a huge part. At least one or two songs have to feel like a karaoke, so that people can feel like they can sing along, and there's just a fun and joy and levity to the experience that can feel more welcoming, but from the teacher's side, the playlist is very curated, so that there's a level of understanding of BPMs, and how to open up the body, and how to ride the energy. There are moments of cardio, louder moments, and moments of that are more juicy in the pelvis. 

Petra Poelzl: Saïdo, you originally choreographed “Apaches” for the public space in 2018, right? It was not thought to be for a theatre. What made you choose the public space as a site for this work?

Saïdo Lehlouh: The starting point of “Apaches” was a movie project. I wanted to do a movie with all the dancers that were in the breaking community that represent a certain approach, and to invite different generations of the French legacy in breaking to participate in this movie. The only space that was big enough for all the crews from different cities from France was the Centquatre-Paris, because it's an open space, open every day for all kind of practice. I was not thinking about doing a performance that will be touring and stuff like this. But when the movie came out, different, theatres and institutions asked me if I would like to present it in a different context.
We did “Apaches” in so many different environments, in theatres, in museums, in corners, in battles, in the opera, on a beach, in schools, even in a forest, and I think it's just the fact that self-taught artists that come from the hip hop culture do not recognize or defend themselves in only one space. It's a practice that transcends any space. There's just the necessity to express. Also, the necessity of exploring diverse environments will give you the possibility to understand your body differently, and to approach your movement and the communication with the others differently. And this possibility to explore a different space nourishes the way to express yourself and the technical approach of your vocabulary that you develop.

Petra Poelzel: That’s a long time for a piece to “survive” in our field. How often did you present the piece? 

Saïdo Lehlouh: Very often, in different contexts, with 15 to 150 people. I think we did it more than 50 times, actually. And also, for three years, there has been a lot of development of “Apaches” in other countries, in South America, in Asia, with the people who pass through it. The community of “Apaches” is everywhere. And they share the value of it, the certain rules, letting people into their communities and their environment.
I was in Istanbul last September, and I had one week of sharing “Apaches” with dancers from Turkey, and they really wanted to perform, because they don't have many opportunities to perform, so I said to them: let's perform every day. Let's go choose a space and perform where we would like to, always in different spaces. So, every day after the workshop, we were going to spaces without special authorization. In art, you need to answer to your necessity, and not especially wait for a structure, a production, an institution. If your necessity is to express yourself through your body language, culture, practice, you just do it.

Petra Poelzl: I think necessity was also something where you started with “Dance Church”, Lavinia? As you said, you needed a space to move and belong. From the beginning, you avoided this idea of working with a certain dance terminology.

Lavinia Vago: “Dance Church” was born out of this desire almost to destigmatize dance. Dance can have a stigma, especially from technique training and Eurocentric canons of beauty, and it's a place where it can create a lot of tension. From the beginning, we wanted to break that apart and destigmatize it, so we've created this, as I was mentioning before, this format that is using the somatic intelligence that trained dancers have to create a space that can be inviting, accessible, easy, fun, and using levity as a space to dance. There's cardio, there's opening of the planes, there's getting closer to the floor, coordination, and it's all work that the body needs, but it's done in a way that feels very easy and approachable. Using repetition or music that is fun helps.
We were able to create this without using the dance technique, so instead of saying “plie”, you bend your knees and you get lower. As the organization developed, our North Star has always been to bring dance to everybody. We're aware that there will always be barriers, but as a North Star to follow, it feels very important.
Before my role as a programming director with “Dance Church”, I spent a lot of time studying different formats for dance for disabilities. This has been just a passion of mine for many years. I went to the American Dance Therapy Conference, I was trained in Dance for Parkinson's. In general, just this idea of bringing dance to people with disabilities, and also understanding the power that dance can have, both as a therapeutic place, but also with cognitive and physical developments, has been a big interest of mine. When we went online with “Dance Church”, we were receiving many tags on Instagram or messages that people were like: I can't believe that I could dance again. I am in a wheelchair. Or: I dance with my grandma, and she's 95, and she loves it. 
When we reopened after Covid, I was starting to understand how I could take it even a step further and develop the in-person experience. Both to feel even more welcoming and accessible, but also to shape the format to be catered to people with disabilities so that they could feel the joy and release that dance research is trying to bring.
In 2020, we worked with a non-profit organization named Dance for All Bodies, and we went through a long training to figure out what the limitations are that exist in dance spaces, and how we can morph them and avoid them, so that people feel welcome.
And then we've started creating different formats of the class that can be catered to different communities. We have a class for low impact for 60 plus ages – the music is a bit lower, and it's not as wild and energetic, and maybe the cardio's not as high, but the experience and the joy released still felt the same way. Also, we have in Seattle an ongoing partnership with a company called Here and Now Project that works with people with spinal cord injury or disability, so, partial mobility. In collaboration with them and with the Harborview Hospital in Seattle, and their spinal cord injury physical therapists, we've developed this class that is specifically catered towards people that are either in a wheelchair or have limited mobility. 
Before every experience starts, the teacher gives a pre-speech, and we say that we go through different actions and coordination, but you can modify as you need. The way that you approach the movement is up to your energy, to your body and what you need right now, today in the moment. So, there's already an established, energy that, any body can approach the movement however they want, and however they need. Not that people need permission, but sometimes it's a good reminder that the way that the teacher moves may look very different to the person next to you, so dance can look and feel in many different ways. And already from that it just created this more welcoming space that a lot of dance studios or institutions may not have. 

Petra Poelzl: I'm already really looking forward to dance with you and probably a bunch of strangers at Mehringplatz in June! As your participants are always changing, Lavinia, the crew you are working with in “Apaches” is also always put together anew, Saïdo. For the Berlin edition at Mehringlatz, you will be working with 20 dancers from Germany, and 70 movers. Who are the 20 dancers, and who are the 70 movers?

Saïdo Lehlouh: I have called dancers from Berlin, but also from other German cities. The 20 dancers are selected performers from earlier experiences, because it has already created a family. In June they will be able to exchange their experience, and how they represent themselves, and how they support each other in it. For me, they carry this moment that we spend together, and this experience that we share together. “Apaches” is a process of a week, sometimes two weeks. It's a social experience where a lot of things happen. There is, of course, the moment where we have the rehearsal, we have the workshops, we create the shape of the performance itself, but there's a lot of time when we hang out, we talk, we experiment, 

And about the 70 movers: They are people who have a relation with their body and want to experiment and have this necessity of representing themselves in a large community of diverse people and backgrounds. It can be old people, young people. “Apaches” has been a bridge between social class and institution and people who live their life every day without being stuck to a posture. And it shows a lot that it is possible that people who come from different background, different practices, different visions of life. But for a moment, they choose to be next to each other, get to know each other better, and support each other without judgment, but just as humans.

Petra Poelzl: The 20 dancers have developed their practice outside institutional frameworks – in communities, on the street, in battles. How do you deal with the tension that institutional visibility can also be a form of appropriation?

Saïdo Lehlouh: An institution is a group of people that has their own rules and architecture. We confront an institution as a state organization, public structural organization, but actually a group like “Apaches” is an institution itself. Because the people who participate make the rules, they understand how to communicate with each other, they know how to welcome, they know how to focus on necessities of each person who participates.
For me, a theatre is an institution that gives possibilities to artists and to the public to critic certain things and to discover different points of view and different art visions. A theatre, like other institutions, has tools to show it. 

Petra Poelzl: Talking about institutions – Lavinia, given that “church” can mean very different things to different people – from a site of exclusion and control to one of community and ritual – how do you see the importance of communal spaces and public gathering today, especially in light of current political tensions and global uncertainty?

Lavinia Vago: Yeah, I think it's a perfect follow-up. We've been aware that the name church can have very difficult connotations. Often we write “no religious affiliation” right next to our name, just to specify it. It started as this Sunday morning class experience ritual in 2010, and honestly, the community, the people that were starting to come and come back, they started to name it church, because of the idea of repetition, ritual, coming together, belonging in a space to share energy. Perhaps there's even a spiritual side, but we don't put this in the forefront. We often say: if you go through a spiritual journey inside of it, because you feel this sense of cathartic release, that's on you. It is kind of an aftermath of the experience, of dancing together with a lot of people, sweating in a room together. Also, putting the word dance next to church at the time almost felt like a rebellious dichotomy, because dance is a space of radical freedom, it's of the flesh, it's of the body, maybe even sinful if you want to go there. Next to the term “church”, which was once a place of judgment and exclusion. Now we kind of repurpose it to be a space of safety and fun and joy and belonging. It almost felt like the two words don't belong together, but now they do.
I love what Saïdo said about reframing and repurposing something that is so loaded historically, and putting it next to it. I mean, in this place, we move our asses to Bad Bunny, and maybe that's a kind of church that some people need. A little bit of grit, a little bit of grind, and a little bit of playfulness with your body. Now, more than ever, I feel like this silliness, joy, and pleasure, and release, and to be away from this ethereal social media online life feels more important than ever, especially in a world where the future is so unknown. With so many very difficult news to find out every day and so much tension in the world, a reminder that the body exists and we can experience pleasure and joy together feels powerful and politically charged, because we know that bodies carry that energy. In some way, the reframing of institutions, repurposing of things feels important and needed now more than ever.

Petra Poelzl: Saïdo, the title “Apaches” refers to a marginalized group in Paris around 1900s, whose existence and culture was systematically rendered invisible, and who nevertheless developed their own aesthetic and their own resistance. Can you talk a little bit more about this historical reference, and also how it is linked to today's world?

Saïdo Lehlouh: I found out about the “Apaches” when I was researching the history of the first Parisian gang. I was fascinated by their style – the way they stand, dress, talk, dance, how they presented themselves. I've been digging deeper and I felt people were looking at it in the same way they were looking at hip hop artist when I started. With excitement and desire to understand, but there is still kind of scariness behind it. We are fascinated and want these people around, but not too close, because we also marginalize them. And even one century later, there is still the same relationship between people from different social classes who had this descendant.
Back then, they didn't call themselves “Apaches”, it was the media and the police who called them that. They had different group gang names, like people from Belleville, or people from Barbes. They were called the “Apaches” in relation to the indigenous people in Northern America – people who are colonized, who are controlled, and who are outsiders of society.
We don't look at who they are, or at the intelligent way they do things, they create their own way to live in the cities, and to develop a culture. We just consider them as outcasts, and not people who plug in how the society would like them to be. But still, we need them because they because they create shocks, because they are not like everyone. And we don't really understand their culture. But still, it's cool to have them close. I wanted to play with this little trigger. With the “Apaches”, it is important to me to show that they don't marginalize themselves. They are everywhere. For me, it is about changing perception.

Petra Poelzl: That’s also how the piece starts, right? Rather than a fixed start, people gradually gather in the space. The dancers and movers slowly appear form a group, begin to dance, spin turn together – between choreography and improvisation – and then eventually leave again, as if they had always been part of that environment. In an interview with tanzhaus nrw, you described your work as an ecosystem that reflects collective experiences. As you also already said, the public space is also itself a living system and an uncontrollable space with its own rules and conflicts. So, where does choreography end, and where does life begin?

Saïdo Lehlouh: Through the form that we adapt in any space, we bring it to live. What I try to do is to put a focus on what is already there and to fill the daily routines of the people living there with value. The richness comes from the people who live in those places. For me, it's not about confronting a place with something new. It is about communicating differently, and to see that it has a value to stop for a minute, to stand next to each other and to look at each other, to see people walking differently, speaking different language, taking care of the younger and the oldest.

Petra Poelzl: This essence is very much appreciated in current times, I would say. What do you think, Lavinia? Where does choreography end, and where does life begin?

Lavinia Vago: I love what you said, Saïdo, that everything is already there. You can really see the world through the lenses of dance, and when you put that framework, you can see choreography everywhere.
Recently I became a mother. I had to have a C-section, and I had a lot of tension in my body, because I had to go into the operating room. Then one moment I was thinking about it as a choreographic thing. I just realized everything was highly synchronized, and it made help releasing the tension. It was like a study of choreography, the doctors moving around the space, and suddenly, here's a new life. It might be extreme, but I do believe that dance is everywhere, and everyone is a dancer. Our bodies carry this energetic force, even when it's unintentionally passing through simplicity, there is this force inside the body. We as dance makers and thinkers carry this duty of enhance and create these experiences that put the power of the body in the centre. Dance is everywhere. And everything is already there. We just put the spotlight on it.

Petra Poelzl: Thank you, it was very inspiring to hear both of you speak about your work.