Lessons from the Berlin Dance Scene
In her text, choreographer and dancer Sasha Amaya reflects on how generations are not neatly divided but rather shift, overlap, and shape one another. She reminds us that the body acts as an archive, holding memory and movement as we continue to dance and age. Weaving together personal insight and practical guidance, she explores how one can carve out a path within the often demanding landscape of the art world. Dance, she suggests, is not about staying perpetually “emerging,” but about deepening, evolving, and embracing aging as an integral part of artistic practice.
Text: Sasha Amaya
Choreographer & Dancer
What does it mean to age, to grow, to move from one generation to the next? It seems as if generations are often thought of as little train cars, attached but distinct, not only in their tastes and habitudes, but in their very metaphysical and epistemological goop.
Yet our own experiences refute this compartmentalisation: both between generations, and in the shifts we find ourselves moving through as we morph from one generation to the next. And even while we repeat this discourse of bordered generations, we find innumerable selves within each of us—as the body as archive has reminded us so often—as well as deep resonances between generations. Our selves are, indeed, more like circles of a tree, as psychotherapist Gianna Williams has noted. We grow up together as a forest, with ring growing upon ring upon ring, memory upon memory, not leaving first experiences, but expanding outward from them. I heard a saying once that to have an accent means that the speaker speaks more than one language. To be old(er), then, is to hold multiple generations within oneself.
So what helps us grow up in dance? What helps us layer up our experiences? Become more profound, more resonant to and with each other? Professional dance in the West has not always been the best at recognising the power and beauty of deep-set knowledge, but here too in Berlin we have our elders in dance. And coming to this city, the culture of Ehrlichkeit ist eine Tugend (honesty is a virtue) has proven particularly generous in its gifts of wisdom.
You need to keep dancing. Dancing comes in many forms, and you need to find your own way of doing so as you age and keep aging. Watching and taking class with laborgras, dancing in four generations with Gisela Müller, Christine Vilardo, and Gabriele Reuter at Tanzfabrik’s 40th anniversary, and moving alongside members of the Dance On company at Pilates, yoga, and professional morning class remind me of the importance of finding a practice that works for you, but also to just keep practising. Or, as my Pilates instructor and fellow dancer Yuko Matsuyama once reminded me: you can do Pilates as much as you want, but if you want to get better at dance, you need to keep dancing.
Be a good team member: find the time and place for the right action. One of the best work experiences I had as an emerging artist was with Alexandra Hennig as an outside eye at Tanztage. Alex was critical within the framework of our process, but on the day of the premiere, equipped with hyper-detailed knowledge gained from the process, she passionately and articulately presented the work. This taught me so much about how the internal and external demands of a piece can be (and often are) very different, what being a good colleague can look like, and that the goal should always be the work itself.
You won’t be an emerging artist forever, and you will need a new plan. Running into an established artist at the Sophiensaele last autumn, I shared how utterly exhausted I was by the unending work fever I had caught. She replied flatly “That’s a choice. What you are doing is completely common for people in the first five years of their career. And anyway, it won’t go on forever.” As someone with a temporary visa and a tonne of stress around that, I always bristle when Europeans tell me it is my choice to work so hard. But there was a really good point to what she said, which, put another way is: within the highly unequal external parameters we don’t get to chose, try to find the internal choice of how you want to work. Be aware of your priorities, and don’t forget to zoom out. Life doesn’t go on forever. And emerging artist status definitely doesn’t either. So find ways of working that are rooted in your bigger values so you can continue once you stop being shiny and new. Don’t get too caught up in the mirage, because it is a mirage, but find a real practice and update it as you need.
But keep including this perspective in your process. Abroad, where scenes are often smaller, I experienced a greater frequency working across generations within one project, both younger and older. Listen to your older colleagues who have done it all before, but equally your younger ones, who bring their own insights and words of wisdom.
Build your networks—and let it be mutual. Work with people that also want to work with you. Work with institutions that also want to work with you. It’s like dating. It has to go both ways. It sounds super simple, but it is easy to forget in the swell of which institutions are hot at any particular time combined with the real power they have to lift you up. That isn’t nothing. And if, like me, you didn’t study in the city, you have to make your connections yourself. So reaching out is necessary, but if the interest isn’t mutual, let it go. Dance artist Lea Moro once gave me great advice: find a few institutions with whom you actually resonate and build your relationship with them. At that point, I was applying for so many different things, and it was exhausting, frenetic, and geographically scattered. I couldn’t actualise the advice immediately but built on it over the subsequent years.
Curators are our colleagues. The German system gives curators an enormous amount of power, but they are, foundationally, also our colleagues. It is okay to reach out to them and ask them for things. This is also part of their job. They are not enemies, but colleagues with whom to be in conversation.
Don’t exhaust yourself: delve deep into your research. I once asked artist and choreographer Adam Man for advice on how to work more sustainably, and I received the following counsel. Go deep into your research, so that a body of work can come from the same well, both for the depth of the work itself, and also so that you are not starting anew each and every time. Second, try to find and/or found other kinds of structures for working that give you a small income on the side besides production projects.
The art world is really shitty sometimes, but there are resources out there. The art world can be so awful sometimes. There is no oversight. No guarantees. No recourse. No HR. There are a lot of untruths and unkindnesses. There is also bullying, sexual harassment, and assault. It gets pretty lonely and depressing, and it is possible to fritz out, feeling broke, alone, and at your wit’s end. In some of my darkest times, I got some hard knock advice from tough German dance scene veterans. There was not much sympathy, and I definitely was not misled into thinking I could change the situation. Rather, I was asked if and how XYZ person had power over my life. If it was negligible, I should try to let it go. If it was significant, I was strong and could get through it. And, most of all, if it was a crisis, there are designated German resources for financial issues, sexism, harassment, mental health crises, and racism: for me, Touring Artists, Diversity Arts Culture, Themis, and Amadeus Stiftung were especially helpful.
People will misunderstand you. Dancer and teacher Jan Burkhardt has reminded me to let go of being understood. This has been one of the hardest lessons to learn. Receive feedback, admit your mistakes, and be flexible. But if people only offer critique, are not curious about your perspective, and never co-solution, then you need to let that go and accept there will be misconceptions from time to time. This is part of life.
But help also comes from everywhere. Some really special opportunities have come from horizontal links: colleagues, teachers, costume, light and sound designers. These collaborators engage closely with our processes, know our work, and see us at work, and therefore have a very real sense of where a work might resonate, or how a future collaboration could unfold. Even without ostensible positions of power, we have the ability to shift things for one another for the better.