Dear audience,

Now or Never — this is the heading for the tenth anniversary of Tanzfestival Rhein-Main which we are celebrating this year. Ten years ago, the directors of the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Staatstheater Darmstadt, the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Hessisches Staatsballett seized a unique opportunity. They founded Tanzfestival Rhein-Main which, thanks to the strong regional links between its partners and its outstanding programme, transforms the Rhine-Main metropolitan region into a giant stage for two and a half weeks each year, enabling the richness of dance to be experienced in a unique way.

In this anniversary edition, the festival will focus on the promise of the moment and the fragility of beginnings, on the urgent need to take action and the search for alternative visions of the future. Many of the pieces in the programme are concerned with risky or borderline experiences, the inexorability of death and the value of individual lives. And they question how looking back to the past and seeking contact with our ancestors can help us appreciate what we have in common and the joy of being alive and also enable us to reconnect with forgotten knowledge in this world rocked by crises.

We look forward to your visit and to a thrilling, touching and at times thought-provoking anniversary programme that celebrates dance as the art form of the present — immediate, risky, transient: now or never.

Alexandra Hennig, Bruno Heynderickx, Anna Wagner
and the Tanzfestival Rhein-Main team