Join for a conversation with the Graz-based choreographer Jadi Carboni.
We talk about her relationship to dance and the body. What is contemporary about contemporary dance? What is modern about post-modern dance? What is the role of experience in dance? How did the role of the dancer evolve from an instrument to a sensing, living, feeling human being?
What is the role of experience in dance from the point of view of a dancer, a choreographer and the audience? How to bridge these gaps? Do we need to?
What does it mean to become the dance?
Their conversation follows the questions that guide her practice—what attracts us, what repels us, what moves us—and opens them to the audience. In her project Shadows of Freedom, shared weight and physical constraints meet a different invitation: to follow the movement of awareness.
In this conversation
- 01:45 — Circus, ballet, and finding another way to work
- 04:27 — Technique, experience, and the dancer as an experiencer
- 07:36 — Postmodern dance and being in the now
- 10:43 — Breaking the fourth wall; the audience as a participant
- 15:33 — Ritual, surprise, and synchronicity
- 18:58 — Scores: structures that leave room for freedom
- 20:09 — Shadows of Freedom: shared weight, constraint, and attention
- 22:16 — Following awareness and letting the body respond
- 24:14 — Dance as a practice of freedom and ongoing development
- 25:48 — Reading, practicing, and finding a way into postmodern dance
“The physical body is much quicker than our intellect.”
For further reading, Jadi recommends Contact Quarterly, a journal of dance and improvisation, and discusses artists including Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, and Barbara Dilley.
Jadi is now working on an inclusive, collaborative dance piece titled “Shadows of Freedom” which will be part of Lendwirbel on Saturday, 2nd of May 2026.