Projects

Through this project, steered by Sabine Parzer (dancer, choreographer, teacher) www.holistic-dance.at and Hannes Taljaard, dancers and musicians are developing strategies to fuse two fields of artistic practice: performative movement and music/sound performance.

The project is currently in its first phase: a series of experiments involving one dancer at a time. Through these experiments we create for each dancer an ‘ecological niche’ based on the diversity that each dancer brings to the project. From March to June 2026, we cooperated with the performer and teacher Lena Maya Turek (www.lenamaya.com). Some results of each series of experiments are shown as an individual work-in-progress, and our first performance took place on 17 June 2026 in Vienna. During the second phase of Snap(!), the dancers (and their niches) will be gathered into a metaphorical ecosystem – the foundation for the evolution of the final stage piece.

We are investigating (through our experiments as well as our performances) the potential of transdisciplinary work to contribute to fostering an understanding of diversity as a necessary and generative factor of the living and thriving of all organisms – rather than a problem or a burden on societies.

This project is part of a group of projects under the title Pas: Trans_form.

About four students and six lecturers were gathered at the university for a general discussion about neurodivergence. Hellen, dressed in black, was sitting at one of the ends of the semi-circle with headphones around her neck. After about half an hour of general ideas floating without any discernable weight, the group started to share experiences. Hellen showed her noise-cancelling headphones: for her, an essential protection against the noise of the university buildings. She added some detail to ensure that others would understand what she meant. One got the impression that her intention was to help others. Everybody can benefit from this tool, she might have been thinking.

Some of those attending looked with curiosity at the headphones – one had the idea that maybe they wanted to see which brand she had. Maybe they wanted to know if the same headphones were waiting for them at home. Others looked at her incredulously, and one would not be amiss when one noticed a slight hint of impatience in the way that they turned only part of their bodies towards her, reluctantly. One of the incredulous ones questioned Hellen’s experience: the campus was certainly not so noisy that one needed noise-cancelling… it was, after all, a music university, and she was, after all, a musician. The eyes of the curious ones changed.

These remarks of the leader of the pack of incredulous ones ambushed Hellen into sharing more personal experiences. Hellen maybe felt that she needed to convince the group that sensory sensitivities could indeed be very strong and that she was not making things up. She mentioned, for example, her need to use a dry, powdered soap, because she found the change of state from dry to wet unsupportable. The feeling in the room switched. With an uncanny simultaneity, a few people suddenly seemed to display the glee of children visiting the zoo and learning for the first time that the actual specimen of platypus that they were seeing, was indeed a mammal. Others straightened their backs, tilted heads sideways towards sternums, and looked, more than listened, to the questions that erupted.

When the questions subsided, when the questions lost their momentum and turned into speculations because of the lack of answers, the pack leader presented her experiences of many years of talking to ‘those people’. With the certainty of a therapist who knew exactly what her clients needed, she announced that whenever she talked to ‘one of those’ she always felt that, “there is something fundamentally wrong with this person”.

Hellen turned her right shoulder ever so slightly inwards, her gaze trying to find some safety in the suddenly more tense knuckles of her left hand.

You, dear reader, would be imagining the actual event, if you are now seeing some eyes growing softer, still looking at Hellen, and then sinking – emptier now – to rest on the floor.

Students from Institute 13 of the mdw presented an improvisation that started from certain basic assumptions of 4E cognition. We explored and then presented music as movement that is perceived in a multi-sensory way. The relations between body movements/dance and sound movements were drawn systematically, and showed ‘interactional asymmetry’. Our performance was about interactions that take us into new musical terrain and a meaningfulness that primarily arises through the sensitizing of perception on the basis of conceptual understanding. I worked as artistic leader of this project which was under the leadership of Prof. Stephanie Schroedter, and together with Alexander Okhotnikov as artistic assistant. After the performance in November, we continued our explorations for one more semester. We concluded the project with two workshops: in Luxembourg in July 2025 at the Seventh International Conference of Dalcroze Studies; and in Vienna in September 2025 at the Symposium of the Society of Dance Research.

AMBO´s work on this project is continued in a variety of projects that are grouped under the title Pas: Trans_form.

This open-ended project focused on collaborative experiences and research under the guidance of Prof. Stephanie Schroedter. About twenty students from the mdw and the University for applied Arts (Vienna) explored music, movement and textiles in combination with inputs from performance art, design, and interactive technology. One of the main aspects of the project were the movement workshops presented by Ingrid Gappmeier, Ingo Reulecke and Eva Maria Schaller. I worked as assistant in the organisation, and as improvisor in music and movement.

This project developed into Movement as musical Meaning-Making (pas: trans_form).

I worked as choreographic assistant for Elisabeth Orlowsky who choreographed the Serenata and Tarantella from Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne for violin and piano. The choreography of the Tarantella was performed by a trio of movement artists: Alexander Okhotnikov, Hongshan Bi and Theresa Kanak (with a short appearance by Xavier Duntze – who performed a solo for the Serenata).

Where, when and how are the changes to our planet be expressed? How will the expression sound? Five students of the Department of Music and Movement Education/Rhythmics of the University of Music and performing Arts Vienna (under the guidance of Milly Groz) presented improvisations inspired by an art exposition that formed part of the Klima Biennale Wien 2024. Through this project I created the improvisation concept City of Birds: four musicians performing movements and sounds with cymbals, sound bowls and various obects.

I worked as choreographer for the first piece on the programme Reflejos Distantes by Karola Obermüller) and as movement artist in three more performances.

The transdisciplinary project KORZINTHIO combined music and movement to create a multisensory experience for the participating artists (almost twenty students and three lecturers at the University of Music and performing Arts Vienna) and the audience. The exchange between different disciplines created new perspectives and inspired participants to go beyond the boundaries of traditional artistic practices. KORZINTHIO explored the music of female composers from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and our time. For more information click here.

Students and lecturers from the mdw worked with the music of seven female composers who were persecuted by the Nazi’s and whose work and names were almost forgotten. The aim of the project was to present the wide stylistic range of the compositions, and to encourage musicians to present the works more often. Students from our institute for music and movement education worked on two contrasting compositions and in contrasting ways under the guidance of Irmgard Bankl. My roles took as foundations my analyses of the compositions and my responsibility for structuring parts of the rehearsals based on the experiences of the group of movement artists. For Rêverie for piano by Germain Taillefaire we developed a concept for a structured movement improvisation that took as its basic inspiration the common denominators of our experiences of opposing forces in the music. For the third movement of Trialogues by Wally Weigl (for flute, viola and harp), we developed a choreography in the tradition of plastique animé. Our aim with this choreography were to clarify the tonal and thematic processes of the composition.

Movement artist and choreographer

Our performance opened a long concert that highlighted the work of the pedagogical institutes at the mdw. Students from our institute under the guidance of Prof Meike Schmitz developed choreographies for Circusmuziek by Ton der Doest for Woodwind Quintet – performed live. To accompany the music of the seventh movement, I developed a concept for a movement improvisation with materials by the whole movement ensemble – a multicoloured cloth and a variety of balls. My aim was to present three of the four means of RhythmicsMM in a playful way: music, movement, and materials.