Beyond Academia? How Dance Rewrites Research

Performative Talk with Prof. Dr. Mariama Diagne and Dr. Sandra Noeth
with interventions by Isabel Kwarteng-Acheampong
September 11, 2026, 6–7:30 pm | German
SAAL, Radialsystem, Berlin 

In this conversation, Sandra Noeth (HZT) and Mariama Diagne (LMU), both professors in the field of dance and performance research at German universities, explore how dance as a practice, an art form, and a discursive field has impacted an academic field of research over
time. Drawing on their professional trajectories, they reflect on what it means to study dance in institutional settings — universities, art academies, theatres, or museums — whose foundations lie in imperial and centralist knowledge structures: Which concepts, expectations, and scholarly forms shape access to the field? Building on this, they ask how the landscape is shifting today: at a moment when embodied practices, non‑academically formed perspectives and collective forms of learning and artistic methods are gaining importance and bringing new forms of knowledge into view. At the centre lies a fundamental question that reaches far beyond the discipline itself: How do we not only research dance, but how does dance transform what we call “research”?

Tickets will be available soon.
 

LA PALABRE Space — Tea, Reading & Resting Room

September 11, 2–9 pm
KUBUS, Radialsystem, Berlin

Tea, Reading & Resting Room with artistic interventions. The programme at LA PALABRE Space is curated by Arantxa Ciafrino. On September 11th, LA PALABRE Space will feature jee chan and Cheng-jung Tsai. More information on the LA PALABRE Space can be found here.

The series UNEXPECTED LESSONS — Knowledges of Body and Sound is funded by the LOTTO Foundation Berlin. In cooperation with the Betty Center for Movement Research in Dance Studies at LMU Munich.