DANZANKÓ

We are DANZANKÓ – an international stilt dancing collective from Berlin.

With our production DisTouched we want to fill the streets with poetry in motion and bring our unique language of stilt dancing to a wider audience all around Europe.

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Our SHOW

DisTouched – a dance performance on stilts

Three women, three nationalities, three experiences.

DisTouched is a touching and multi-faceted stilt dance performance for public space, that poetically and playfully explores the themes of friendship, coping with crises and the relevance of meaningful touch.

Concept, Choreography & Performance: Esther Geyer, Clara Gracia, Anna Vilhelmiina Peltola
Music: Julian Blanco
Costumes: Anna Vilhelmiina Peltola
Camera & Edit: Susu Rachidi
Coach & External eye: Jefferson Perreira da Silva

Technical requirements: A minimum flat surface area of 5m x 5m.
Performers: 3
Length: 20-30 Min
We can provide our own mobile sound system
The performance cannot take place outdoor in case of rain or strong wind (>20 km/h)

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR.

Collective

The stilt-dance-collective DANZANKÓ was founded by Esther Geyer (DE/ES), Clara Gracia (ES) and Anna Vilhelmiina Peltola (FIN) in 2020. The three dancers and performers are working for many years in the fields of contemporary dance and physical theater in the independent performing art scene in Berlin.
They share the joy of dancing on stilts and the objective to present it to a wider audience. Furthermore, by performing in a public space, their goal is to provide a frame for interaction to enhance and deepen the relationship between the performers and the audience.

In 2021 all three performers received a DIS-TANZ-SOLO grant in the programme NEUSTART KULTUR, Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland for their research focusing on developing a method of dancing on stilts.

Their debut performance DisTouched was created in the spring and summer of 2022 and performed at Artspace Bremerhaven and Salon K – Das Kunst- und Kulturfestival im Lettekiez in the same year. In 2023 they received the Wiederaufnahmeförderung from the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR).

In the same year they were able to deepen their research and continue developing their method with the help of a renewed DIS-TANZ-SOLO grant.

Read more about our research

CLARA GRACIA is a Spanish actress, performer and dancer. She successfully completed her studies at the State School of Drama Institut del Teatre in Barcelona in 2010. She has been involved in various dance-theater projects led by artists such as Takahashi, Meredith Nadler, Ingo Reulecke, Alexandra Rauh, Stella Zannou, Valentina Bordenave and Heike Scharpff. In 2012 she founded the Kazibaze Theater collective together with Marina Rodríguez, with which she developed various family theater pieces. Since 2015 she has also been a member of the international theater groups Grotest Maru and Theater Anu.

ESTHER GEYER is a freelance actress, dancer, performer and moderator. She successfully completed her acting studies (MA) at the State School of Drama in Seville and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. She works both in German-speaking and international contexts and has already participated in numerous theater productions and dance-theater projects led by artists such as Lionel Ménard, Heike Scharpff, Sybille Günther, Juan Carlos Malpelli, Daniel Koch. From 2019 to 2021 she was a lecturer at the Anton-Bruckner University in Linz for the subject of movement technique and body language. Since 2018 she has been a permanent member of the international theater ensemble Grotest Maru.

ANNA VILHELMIINA PELTOLA is a Finnish dancer and performer. She completed her stage dance training – with a focus on modern and contemporary dance – in 2013 at DANCEWORKS berlin under the direction of Carol Ellys. In 2015, she continued her education with the MASA Dance Journey program of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Israel and worked with artists such as Eyal Dadon, Noa Zuk, Oded Graf, Sharon Vaisvaser and Rina Schenfeld. At present, her focus is on physical and site-specific theater as well as stilt performance and she works throughout Germany and Europe with Grotest Maru, Pantao, Dulce Compania, as well as with choreographer/ videographer Eric Dunlap.