Dance as a Space for Change. International Dance Alliances Launches a Programme of Laboratories, Performances and Artistic Residencies
How can choreography and dance actively shape the future of culture? International Dance Alliances 2026 is a new initiative seeking answers to the challenges facing the contemporary arts landscape, where dance and choreography play an increasingly significant role – not only artistically, but also socially. This ambitious multi-year programme will include a series of laboratories, presentations of Polish dance productions, and international artistic residencies. Initiated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, International Dance Alliances responds to the need for a space that connects the dance community while fostering lasting institutional and interpersonal relationships.
International Dance Alliances – Building Transnational Connections Through Dance
The primary goal of International Dance Alliances is to create opportunities and conditions for establishing meaningful, long-term relationships between institutions, artists, choreographers, producers, curators, critics, and other dance professionals from across Europe and beyond. Through shared reflection and collaboration, the programme aims to inspire new approaches to the pressing challenges facing contemporary culture and the arts.
The initiative will be realised through a series of online and in-person laboratories, presentations of Polish dance performances on international stages, and artistic residency programmes. Together, these activities will explore the intersections between contemporary dance, choreography, and today’s most urgent social issues.
International Dance Alliances brings together professionals from across the dance ecosystem, including artists, producers, managers, curators, and critics.
The programme will also support the international visibility of Polish choreography by presenting Polish productions at festivals and venues across Europe and globally, while enabling Polish artists to participate in international residency programmes and key platforms for artistic exchange.
In 2026, the programme will involve several dozen Polish artists alongside producers, managers, researchers, and international experts.
Practice of Change – Laboratory Sessions
The Practice of Change laboratory series is dedicated to exploring care as a systemic foundation for the ways artistic communities create, collaborate, and sustain cultural ecosystems. Moving beyond the notion of care as merely a “soft skill”, participants will examine how the absence of care often has structural causes, reinforcing exclusion, precarity, and burnout.
The programme approaches care as infrastructure: a set of practices, procedures, and values that shape institutions, relationships, and working conditions. Here, care is understood as a practical necessity that ensures continuity and resilience, supported by concrete tools that foster well-being, safety, trust, and accountability throughout every stage of artistic production and across every professional role. Participants will collectively imagine alternative futures and develop new models of artistic collaboration.
Representatives of partner institutions and organisations from across Europe have been invited to participate. This year’s laboratories will combine online meetings with in-person sessions hosted by partner organisations in Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Sweden, culminating in a gathering of all partners during the Polish Dance Platform 2026 in Wrocław.
The laboratories are facilitated by Julia Asperska and Konrad Kurowski, together with invited international experts.
The Performat Foundation serves as the programme’s strategic and operational partner for Practice of Change.
Agnieszka Brzezińska’s “who cares” at ConTempo Festival in Kaunas
One of the first choreographic works presented within International Dance Alliances will be “who cares”, choreographed by Agnieszka Brzezińska and performed by Katarzyna Leszek, on 6 August 2026 at the ConTempo Festival in Kaunas, Lithuania.
The performance portrays an individual navigating identity within contemporary society, examining how external expectations shape self-perception and how behaviour evolves over time in today’s fast-moving world of social media. “who cares” presents a self-constructed identity and its emotional expression confronted by constant public judgement, the relentless pursuit of acceptance, and the desire to be seen.
“I try to look the right way – but what is the right way?”
“I treat Instagram as my business card – but should I? I don’t know.”
“who cares” is a turbulent exploration of both the psychological and physical boundaries of the individual.
World Premiere of Kasia Wolińska’s “Phoenix. Sun” in Berlin
On 24 August 2026, audiences will have the opportunity to see the world premiere of “Phoenix. Sun” by Kasia Wolińska at Tanz im August in Berlin.
“Phoenix. Sun” is a solo choreographic work created in collaboration with composer and sound artist Heinali, video artist Denis Kozerawski, and dramaturge Jette Büchsenschütz. The project emerged from the need to rekindle fire: choreography becomes a meditation on a world engulfed in flames while proposing new ways of imagining its future.
The performance draws inspiration from the pyrotechnic works of Polish artist Władysław Hasior, who sought to soothe the spirits of burning birds falling from a war-torn sky. It also enters into dialogue with the visionary compositions and spiritual writings of the German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, who invoked viriditas – the life-giving force of redemption that rekindles new life.
International Dance Alliances Programme
6–7 August 2026 – “who cares” by Agnieszka Brzezińska at ConTempo Festival, Kaunas (Lithuania), together with Practice of Change LAB 2, featuring invited international experts.
24–26 August 2026 – premiere of “Phoenix. Sun” by Kasia Wolińska at Tanz im August, Berlin (Germany).
17 September 2026 – Practice of Change LAB 3 during the Polish Dance Platform 2026 in Wrocław.
11–23 October 2026 – Residency of Joanna Leśnierowska and collaborators developing “Yanka Rudzka Project” at Hellerau – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden (Germany).
11–23 October 2026 – Residency of Magdalena Górnikiewicz at Hellerau – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden (Germany).
23–25 October 2026 – Presentations of “U-rodziny” by Hanna Bylka-Kanecka, “Phoenix. Sun” by Kasia Wolińska (Czech premiere), and “To Bitch or not To Bitch” by HERTZ HAUS at Norma Festival, Prague (Czech Republic), alongside Practice of Change LAB 4, featuring invited international experts.
5–9 October and 19–23 October 2026 – Residency of Kinga Jaczewska developing her new work “Figures” at Dansateliers in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), including a work-in-progress presentation.
6 November 2026 – Practice of Change LAB 5, online session for all project partners.
17 November 2026 – “Amoroso” by Janusz Orlik and Teatr Klucz at the 5th edition of DansFunk Festival at Skånes Dansteater (Sweden), together with Practice of Change LAB 6, featuring invited international experts.
Project Team and Partners
Project coordination: Renata Piotrowska-Auffret (Adam Mickiewicz Institute).
Project co-operation: Ewa Opawska (Adam Mickiewicz Institute).
Practice of Change programme: Karolina Wycisk, Ula Zerek, Ania Straczyńska-Green (Performat Foundation).
LAB facilitators: Julia Asperska, Konrad Kurowski.
Invited experts: Filip Pawlak, Igor Shugaleev, Natalia Wilk.
Participating artists: Agnieszka Brzezińska, Hanna Bylka-Kanecka, Janusz Orlik, Joanna Leśnierowska, Kasia Wolińska, Katarzyna Leszek, Kinga Jaczewska, Magdalena Górnikiewicz, the Hertz Haus collective (Magdalena Kowala, Natalia Murawska, Joanna Woźna, Anna Zglenicka), and Teatr Klucz (Mariusz Józefiak, Jarosław Kubiak, Antek Kurjata, Daniel Laskowski, Lidia Piskorska, Piotr Roszak, Karol Solski, Magdalena Szalbierz, Arkadiusz Żmijewski).
Organiser: Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Project partners: Bunker (Slovenia), ConTempo Festival and Kaunas Artists’ House (Lithuania), DanceConnected (Czech Republic), Dansateliers (The Netherlands), Festival of Ecological Theatre for Children and Youth (Serbia), Hellerau – European Centre for the Arts (Germany), Institute of Urban Culture (Poland), Kiosk Festival (Slovakia), Kraków Choreographic Centre and Kraków Dance Theatre (Poland), Latitudes Contemporaines Festival (France), La briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne (France), Lithuanian Dance Information Centre (Lithuania), Norma Festival (Czech Republic), Réplika Teatro (Spain), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden), Studio Hrdinů (Czech Republic), and Valmiera Theatre Festival (Latvia).
