Portfolio | DAGMAR SPAIN/DANCE IMPRINTS

Dagmar Spain/Dance Imprints‘ artistic work is created in the spirit of “repair” and connectivity, often intertwined with original writing (poetry, monologues, and playwriting) and developed into dance – works. Dance Imprints wants to bring forth artistic works that have a lasting effect on each participating artist/collaborator and audience. The work has been presented in the US, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, France, Bulgaria and Japan.

“What she (Dagmar Spain) has is a keen sense of the variety of human experience and the conviction that it lies at the heart of work for the stage.”– Toby Tobias, Village Voice

BODY, AGE & COMMUNITY PROJECT, at the Lake Studios, Berlin, (November 30th, 2024):
The core element of this inter-generational and intercultural project – including international dance artists at the Lake Studio residency – is dialogue and how dialogic interaction, textual, verbal, and embodied, shed light on our “dialogical self.” The dialogical self is defined by our many perspectives on the “I,” highlighting this workshop’s subjects of body and age. Participants are encouraged to deepen their understanding of these subjects and learn how to build bridges for intergenerational communication.

Excerpts of our shared Somatic Dance Narratives (SDN) as couples reflecting on the subjects of Body, Age & Community:

photography & video: Marlene Schomberg

COMMUNITY PROJECT THE CIRCLE at the National Czech/Slovak Museum & Library Institute (NCSML) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (November 8 & 9th, 2024):

THE CIRCLE is an intergenerational and intercultural community-based dance project in which the Czech folk dance “Ceresnicky” (cherry) from Moravia serves as an inspiration. Dance in a circle is probably one of the oldest traditions in many cultures, celebrating special events and rituals, bringing communities together, and strengthening them

LECTURE & PERFORMANCE: The Circle as a Democratic Principle

TRANSFORMATION IN BLACK & WHITE, OR ? Embodied reflections on the transformative powers of embodiment in research, Lake Studios, Berlin (February 10, 2024)

DISSERTATION PERFORMANCE (Short Version) at the Lake Studios, Berlin (February 17, 2024):

Research Is Choreography, Choreography Is Research is the short version of a 30 min. choreography by my 6 research participants and myself, the researcher. This title was adapted from Susan Stinson’s (2006) article “Research as Choreography,” in which the “form and content arise together, and we truly do not know one until we know the other” (p. 205). In this sense, our final performance was the emergence of all forms and content in my research and its ultimate finding. To outline this performance and to create an order, I followed my research Phases I-III, starting with our individual Somatic Dance Narratives (SDNs 1, 2, or 3), which were interspersed with spoken lines of our monologues onstage, continued with our SDN Trios and some spoken lines, and ended in our group sections in which we employed Kantor’s Four Dialogic Moves: Moving, Attuning, Balancing, and Observing

CHOREOGRAPHY by Dagmar Spain with the pre-professional students (5-month dance program) at DanceWorks, Berlin, Germany (January 31, 2024). Each student developed a “somatic” dance narrative (SDN) based on their entry point to dance. Each individual dance style was encouraged, accumulating into a group choreography.