CITY DANCE COLOGNE is a 12-hour performance parcours across the city involving more than 500 professional and non-professional dancers, musicians, including orchestras and choirs, and citizens. It took place on the 3rd of September. The artistic collective of City Dance under the direction of choreographer Stephanie Thiersch in collaboration with composer Brigitta Muntendorf and visual artist Bettina Buck has created an all-day community utopia for Cologne in cooperation with the Cologne Philharmonics. It created unusual points of view, as dance, music and action met people in the most unexpected places. Just after dawn, the participants of the sunrise walks, coming from different neighborhoods by foot or by boat, gathered on the meadows of the Rheinpark for a warm-up. Later, they crossed the Rhine in gondolas, plunged into the ancient moat of Fort X, conquered the impressive Higher Regional Court, performed in the 70's architecture of Ebertplatz, paraded along the Turkish and Arab quarter of Eigelstein and celebrated in front of Cologne’s central station. From sunrise until sundawn, 10 performances, several smaller interventions as well as performative walks and experimental parades took place, mostly with the participation of the audience. The project is based on the idea of Anna Halprins City Dances that were initiated in San Francisco in the late 60's. These City Dances were an artistic and political attempt to experience dance in a collective and democratic process in times that were characterized by a tense social atmosphere and ethnic riots. Stephanie reinvented the City Dance together with the collective of artists for the present situation in Germany taking into account urban problematics such as migration, segregation and gentrification to sample its pertinence and perpetuity today.
