Through unique female circus and movement art, Branché traverses time and Quebec's lush natural landscapes. While diminishing resources and livable land are causing existential collapse, the performers' bold three-high formations and breathtaking falls remind us that a oneness of nature and humanity is undoubtedly worth preserving.

Ampe is a high-energy game played by girls in Ghana. It includes jumping, clapping, and an all-around cheer as two teams select a stepping pattern and face off. The innate joy and competitive edge of ampe discloses the desire of girls to be set free unconditionally and feel a range of emotions without judgment.

Carmen, has just won a dance competition, she is holding the prize in her hands. She is exhausted, but happy, it has been worth the effort. She walks home, she just wants to show off her prize and let her family know that she has succeeded this time. She is so happy she can't even feel her own feet. But someone is following her. She realizes too late, it's too close. Carmen has to run, hide and defend herself. She'll never get home, she doesn't need to prove anything to anyone, not anymore. "Footsteps" proposes a poetic look at violence against women based on a physical investigation of Argentinean folkloric traditions and their replication in modern times.

"In our neighborhood, lives a rooster. In our neighborhood, lives a sadist slaying rooster!" With these first words, Syrian writer and poet Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani recites the journey of a dictator rising to power.

Millennial Eva is looking for a way to escape her daily struggles. The nightlife can give her the anonymity she needs to finally surrender to the moment. Will she get carried away by the flow of the beat? Can she disappear into the crowd without losing herself?

Saba, an Iranian girl, is a dancer. She wants to be indifferent to her surroundings and manifests this self-being and freedom with her body. She is in love with the art of dancing, the art of letting go and living away from conventional bonds. But this art of being is forbidden in an ultimately religious state that ignores the very basic human rights. The film is an honest portrait of the daily oppression women have to deal with in Iran towards the path to freedom.

This film is part of the online program but accessible only in the Netherlands.

Far from homogenizing parameters, flamenco uses the subversive power of art to enhance the diversity of bodies on stage. Disability is no longer a limit, but a creative starting point.

Anna sees Jasmine, her former bully from school, after years when she brings her daughter to dance class. Anna and Jasmine try to behave nicely, but something is bubbling beneath the surface. And then things get out of hand.

When a video of kids dancing in the rain goes viral, it brings global attention to an unlikely ballet school outside Lagos, Nigeria. Now, Daniel Ajala -- who learned ballet over YouTube -- is training students to perform on the world stage.

A lonely traveler embarks on a journey to find relief for a hidden yearning. Her restless longing spreads around and forces fellow passengers to face their own desires and disappointments.

This film is part of the online program but accessible only in the Netherlands.

Overworked office workers decide to take action against the company director. An absurd, wordless choreographed office comedy, with a bizarre conclusion.

In a barren treeless landscape which could either be a future vision of earth or another planet, a group of people struggle through the inhospitable environment, harvesting air, the new gold. They plant trees on a deserted black beach, hoping to repopulate the planet with its source of oxygen. A contemplation on the importance of trees and a timely metaphor of a world turned upside down by our disregard for nature and the planet.

There she stands, confidently, like a goddess of technological junk, surrounded by endless mountains of rubbish, plastic, stench and rare earth minerals. An angry appeal to the world to take responsibility for the consequences of capitalism, colonialism and environmental destruction in Africa.

In Atopias: The Homeless Wanderer, a black woman embarks on a meditative journey through the wild Caribbean landscapes, confronting dreamlike memories and traumatic experiences. This exploration of migration, transgenerational memory and trauma reshapes her voyage, taking her deep into her subconscious, where she encounters her inner child and ventures into ancestral realms.

For Broadway performer Randi, birthing her son felt triumphant until the doctors explained that Moses was profoundly disabled and faced a tenuous future. Randi fell into a well of grief before unearthing a new language with which she could learn to love her son. The film illuminates the often invisible story of the caregiver and helps shift the shame narrative around the stunning challenges and surprising gifts that come with the birth of a child with a disability.

Five perfect strangers meet in the middle of the night and break into an abandoned house. Are they occupiers? Vandals? Far from it! They are in need to free themselves from the shackles of everyday life. It is not a break-in, but a break-out! And so it begins. The five withdraw and start their individual ritual. Their lust can be felt, their power is contagious. No one can stop what has been unleashed.

Denni is a tunneller and Einar a farmer in the countryside of Iceland. They both practice wrestling but must keep their relationship a secret from the inner world of Iceland's national and very macho sport.

Four professional figure skaters, accustomed to gliding only on perfectly groomed artificial ice, return to the origin of ice; naturally frozen water. This experience of nature is central in the film and shows what we are gradually losing due to climate change.

A figure of a black Tito appears in the big and empty underground structure of a former silo in Tamale, Ghana. He visits the people of the country by plane and rickshaw to spread his message and joins the Parliament of Ghosts in session. An artistic interaction between NAM – Non Aligned Movement by Christian Guerematchi and the Parliament of Ghosts by Ibrahim Mahama. Both works speak about forgotten histories and the contemporary echoes of the cultural connections from the time of the Non-Aligned Movement between Ghana and Yugoslavia – Nkrumah and Tito.

Under the Sky of Fetishes responds to the complexity of colonial archives. It reinvents the specters of a haunting gaze to tell the story of Mauritian sega – a cultural practice born during colonization and slavery, now mainly seen in tourism. How do we project, literally bring out of ourselves, the narrative of the oppressor? Mixing fiction and ethnography, the film sanctifies the power of the projection as a mental as well as intimate enigma to release ghostly and alienated bodies, including our own.

In the wake of the loss of her mother, documentary filmmaker Nyasha Laing travels into the heart of the Jamaican countryside to research the ancestral ritual of Kumina. “Once you beat that drum, you have called the ancestors”, says Imogene “Queenie” Kennedy. Queenie was a contemporary priestess in post-colonial Jamaica, who catapulted her African spiritual practice into renown. Her mysterious world reveals a divergent pathway to freedom, healing, and transformation. Interwoven with Queenie’s life story are the personal journeys of a generation of cultural icons of Jamaican heritage who unearth their roots and examine their identities. Versed in dance, music and cosmology, they open up a portal to the past, as well as a glimpse into the future.

We don't know what happened but dancer 1 and dancer 2 need to take a break, smoke a cigarette and just vent to each other. The conversation heats more and more until the movie itself becomes a dance following the words we can't hear. Winner of La Danza in 1 minuto, presented in collaboration with Coorpi Turin.

Gimp Gait is a solo for two – surrogates to one another. It includes an exploration of the subjects' private and public lives and how the perspective of the viewer may attempt to control or shape who they are. The title of the film discloses its origin: 'gimp', a slur meant to mark a weak or handicapped person and 'gait', the manner or style of a person's walk. Can you notice every part of their bodies – both the similarities and differences?

D3C05 is a sci-fi love letter to Miami’s Art Deco architecture. The film takes the idea of optimistic futurism and reimagines the concept within a neo-human world, where the boundaries between human, nature, and object coalesce; a world where synesthetic communication and performative rituals reign.

HOW TO: Oh, look at me features four femmes of color. Two dancers and two poets interact with one another through words and movement, seeking reprieve from the constructs of our current reality. Revolving around a deconstructed playground, an installation designed by director and multidisciplinary artist GeoVanna Gonzalez.

A collaboration between Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds and filmmaker Vincent Moon, When We Are Born is a journey about rituals, relationships and our inner landscapes. Filmed in Iceland in the summer of 2020 and based partly on Ólafur’s life, the work ultimately focuses on how we all move forward; a theme made especially potent in the times of disconnection and isolation it emerged from. The music of the film was recorded live on location and interpreted by choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir and the Iceland Dance Company.

A woman enters a Synagogue and is transported to the parallel universe of all her ancestors who do not let her leave until she participates in their dances and rituals. The film is inspired by Gabri Christa’s first time visiting the Neve Shalom in 2000 where she was overwhelmed by the building and the emotions it brought to her. It spurred her into researching her Surinamese father’s lineage, which revealed that she had indeed also Jewish ancestors. As the famous Surinamese writer Cynthia McCleod says “when you shake your family trees, a few Jews fall out”.

Q5 is inspired by the energy, feeling and expressiveness of Waacking; also known as Whacking or Punking. A dance form that emerged in the 1970s as an expression of oppression in the Latin and African-American LGBTQI+ underground clubs of Los Angeles. Through the sounds and movement language of Waacking, the 5 performers in the film dive into the 5th dimension. They explore different colors, portals, perspectives and worlds within worlds. All in search of the essence: The Quintessentials! The original theater performance and tour of '21 was canceled due to Covid and transformed into a 5-episode Waacking movie series that festively closes Cinedans FEST '24!

When memories from his childhood come to the surface, Derik Lynch, a Yankunytjatjara man, escapes white city life in Adelaide to return back home to his remote Anangu Community (Aputula) to perform on sacred Inma ground. Inma is a traditional form of visual, verbal, and physical storytelling. It is how the Anangu have been passing down stories connected to the land, dreams and myths for over 60,000+ years from generation to generation.

She faces endless rehabilitation; her body keeps recalling the injury; she wishes to appease, yet she fell……Three dancers who have confronted injuries filled the visual with strain on the body. The film ponders how to co-exist with the trauma and keep going after one’s world falls apart.

Based on the legendary Chinese folktale Kua-fu Chases the Sun in the scripture of Mountain and Sea from 4th century BC. As in the legend, the film, employing the language of dance, tells the wondrous story of a modern man on a daring quest to chase the sun. When the enigmatic creatures depicted in the book begin to infiltrate his dreams, he suspects that he has crossed paths with them.

With the China’s reform and opening up which began in 1979, it became big differences among areas’ economic development level. The population migration occurred with accelerated urbanization process, like birds. The cognition of hometown and native place has changed qualitatively. As the impact of modern technology on chicken in chicken coop, no one could escape. They are all domesticated. City is like a modern chicken coop, and people are like the domesticated chicken. Imagining human beings returning to an original state and conventional rules ae no longer apply. Imagining human beings are objectified and the next dominating species have a completely different social system - what would the world be like? Whenever we observe and approach other creatures, they are observing and approaching us at the same time.

Three performers, Kawamura Mikiko, Kawaguchi Takao and Matsuoka Dai, studied three pieces of choreography by Butoh legends – Ohno Kazuo, Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Yoshito to replicate their works not by imitation but responded to the spirit of Butoh in contemporary ways.

Created with virtual bodies found online, Flying Low is part of Freya Björg Olafson’s ‘Keystroke Choreographies’ series. Each of the videos in the series are compositional studies that use popular contemporary dance techniques as a framework for virtual choreography. Flying Low is a movement technique developed by David Zambrano that focuses on the dancers’ relationship with the floor. Movement patterns involving breath, speed, and release are used to activate the relationship between a dancer’s core and joints, as they move into and away from the ground with efficiency.

A minimalist dance film by Alexander Ekman, Being Being follows a man through a series of expressive motions, portraying the ups and downs of existence. Navigating between moments of strength and vulnerability, the performer reflects the resilience inherent in the human spirit.

Table for One, Please is a short film that emerges from rehearsals for the dance theater piece I Should Have a Party for All the Thoughts I Didn’t Say by director Samantha Shay. Exploring the social awkwardness of grief, and inspired by the writing of Anton Chekhov, the project gathers current and former artists of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, as well as the Grotowski Institute-based physical theater company Teatr ZAR, as a reflection on the lineages of Polish Jerzy Grotowski and German Pina Bausch, their relationship and how their work resonates today.

It takes 6 weeks to come off antidepressants. A man tries to dance his way through it, armed only with a boombox and a sign inviting people to join him. From over 100 hours of footage shot on the streets of Bristol and London, this film documents a journey from isolation to connection.

Feminism for beginners – and for everyone else who needs to shake up their habitual thinking! A lively discussion club of a film that tests the many theories in practice through social experiments and performative interventions. Feminism WTF reflects on current debates and analyzes the potential of intersectional feminism to profoundly change our future societies. In the film speakers from different disciplines, from biology and linguistics to political and educational sciences, as well as dance artists, contribute to a comprehensive picture on gender equality in our society. Experts such as sociologist Laura Wiesböck, gender scientist Maisha Auma, political scientist Nikita Dhawa, men's researcher Christoph May, sexologist Rona Torenz, and sociologist Paula Villa Braslavsky have their say.

Follow the fascinating evolution of jazz dance from its origins in Africa, through to its modern-day interpretations which reveal the political and social influences affecting the dance form today. Through this celebration of the art form, with special appearances from industry stars such as Debbie Allen, George Faison, Chita Rivera, Camille A. Brown and Thomas F. DeFrantz, a spellbinding story of triumph over adversity, oppression, and privilege is uncovered.

In her new video work, choreographer Meg Stuart explores the Vorklinik, a modernist building erected in 1971-76 for the University of Graz’s medical faculty, that has meanwhile been demolished, as it was considered too dysfunctional for further use. Together with two dancers, Stuart attempts to mark this brutal transition through a sensorial processing of the building’s vast, empty spaces. Like the modernist project, the attempt to fit their bodies into the architecture of the Vorklinik is slated to fail. With tenderness and sensuality, they connect past and future, dream and decay.

Obsessed with Light is not a bio-pic of pioneer Loïe Fuller, but rather an insightful examination of the artistry and incredible impact her work still has on contemporary culture, including artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Taylor Swift and Shakira. The American creator of modern dance, Fuller (1862-1928), created a completely new kind of spectacle which combined dance, fabric and movement. She propelled herself into swirling abstractions which made audiences gasp and she immediately understood the importance of copyright and protecting the ownership of innovations. Creating a dialogue between the past and the present, artists such as Robert Wilson, Bill T. Jones, Iris van Herpen, William Kentridge, Trajal Harrell and Studio Drift speak about her influence in their own work. ​

A young black woman grapples with the histories of her ancestors and the present-day violence ravaging her community. She begins to imagine what her future looks like through dance.

Using his trademark assemblage of esoteric costume and visual metaphors, Congolese-Belgian hitmaker and filmmaker Baloji explores the practice of skin lightening in black communities. Euphemistically described as ‘brightening’ or ‘toning’, skin bleaching takes many innocuous forms, such as creams, buffs and soaps to deal with hyperpigmentation, but is more often used by women to emulate Eurocentric beauty standards.

Q5 is inspired by the energy, feeling and expressiveness of Waacking; also known as Whacking or Punking. A dance form that emerged in the 1970s as an expression of oppression in the Latin and African-American LGBTQI+ underground clubs of Los Angeles. Through the sounds and movement language of Waacking, the 5 performers in the film dive into the 5th dimension. They explore different colors, portals, perspectives and worlds within worlds. All in search of the essence: The Quintessentials! The original theater performance and tour of '21 was canceled due to Covid and transformed into a 5-episode Waacking movie series that festively closes Cinedans FEST '24!

The Purple Episode is the last episode of the series and includes a Theater Scene and the Beyond The Whack - Behind the scenes content, as well as the performers' Mission Statement and the last historical chapter, exploring what is the essence, and how can we preserve and protect that to take to our future dream visions for the dance, culture, community & BEYOND!?

How far are you willing to go for your hustle? A young Kenyan visual artist comes up with a sly plan to take over the art world abroad. Will it work? This One Went to Market is part of the mini-series by The Nest Collective, in partnership with Forum Syd, dedicated to the city of Nairobi and its citizens – trying to live to see another day, to get that cash, to get home, to get a job.

This is what freedom feels like, baby.” The uncompromising words of musician and writer Mykki Blanco echo over a transcendental parade of a group of empowered queer dancers. A film about the French black queer community taking pride in who they are, what they have achieved, and embracing the bodies they are in. Tajabone takes its name from a unique tradition in Senegal, where in addition to singing and dancing through the streets everyone practices cross dressing through the night.

To celebrate half a century of SNDO - School for New Dance Development of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, as a laboratory for dance and performance, a trajectory of public events is unfolding from January 2024 and on. Cinedans proudly joins with the co-production and presentation of a documentary honoring Ria Higler’s legacy. Ria Higler can be considered a 'mother-spirit' of SNDO. A graduate of the first student cohort of Moderne Dans Opleiding, as SNDO was called back in 1976, she transitioned into teaching in 1980. From 1989 to 1998, she served as the co-director of the school alongside Trude Cone, continuing as a core team member, mentor, and teacher until April 2024, when she passed away. Drawing from Higler’s personal archive, which includes hours of footage from her travels in India and Indonesia, as well as recordings of her performances and interviews with those who worked and studied alongside her, this documentary aims to activate the archive and ensure her teachings, spirit and legacy remain visible and accessible for further generations. The film serves as a visual ode celebrating the life and work of one of SNDO's longest-standing and profoundly impactful educators.

A group of people emerges from the water. They try to work against the current of the river and the crowd of people in the city, but surrender to the flow and are washed ashore. Going with the flow or against it, resistance and devotion manifest as a basic instinct. A strategy of survival.

Retelling of the classic myth of Circe and Odysseus. Circe overcomes the deception of an unanswered love and lets him go.

Bart shares his experiences of living in Moerwijk-Oost, a working-class neighborhood in The Hague. The many empty buildings merge the world of a group of inhabiting creatives with the daily antics of five children living down the street. Shot with a hand-held 16mm and super 8 camera and accompanied by a photo series by Nas Hosen and soundtrack by Unit Nine.