Notes from a dancer learning to work without certainty I spent years learning how to follow direction: to adapt quickly, perform coherence, endure pressure, and trust structures that promised orientation through hierarchy, discipline, and recognition. Now I live in a moment where many of those structures no longer feel trustworthy, yet their logic continues surviving inside the body. This text moves through that contradiction: the difficulty of no longer believing entirely in inherited forms of authority while still not knowing how to live, create, decide, and build collective responsibility differently without reproducing them. Four performers sprawl across a dimly lit stage, their bodies exposed and tense, while a solitary figure stands still in a pool of light behind them. Something is not working within the structures I inhabit—in art, in work, in the way relationships and institutions organize themselves. And still, I continue sustaining things I already know no longer support me. I notice it in rehearsals, meetings, collaborations, and conversations that continue without conviction. Institutions continue performing coherence while exhaustion quietly accumulates underneath. I live in a moment where guidance, authority, and trust no longer operate as they once did. What is collapsing is not structure itself, but the belief that structures necessarily carry ethical clarity, stability, or direction. Perhaps what is disappearing is the patriarchal fantasy that someone above should know how to organize life completely, absorb uncertainty, and provide answers for everyone else. I realize how deeply I internalized that logic. As a dancer, I spent years learning through imitation, repetition, correction, and approval. I learned styles by copying bodies already legitimized. Most of the choreographers and directors who shaped my formation were men, and much of that learning happened through visible and invisible systems of confirmation: right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. Over time, movement was not the only thing being shaped. Personality was also choreographed. I learned that being “professional” often meant controlling emotion, adapting quickly, enduring pressure silently, accepting hierarchy, and performing certainty even when insecurity was present. Dominance slowly became associated with competence inside my perception of professionalism. I can recognize now that much of this came from external pressure and institutional formation. But it also became part of how I related to work, authority, collaboration, desire, and creation itself. And because dance happens through the body, these structures did not remain intellectual. They entered posture, reaction, breath, attention, and behavior. The body remembers what institutions, rehearsals, relationships, and histories repeatedly taught me about fear, authority, permission, belonging, and value. Often the body recognizes a threshold before language fully understands it. Now I live in a time where many of those structures are being questioned. And I question them too. But questioning something intellectually does not mean it disappears from the body. Even while creating my own artistic work, I still notice voices from the past inside the process: voices evaluating, correcting, judging whether something is right or wrong. My work has always searched for fluidity, openness, transformation, and freedom. But sometimes I still feel how this freedom exists inside an invisible cage built from structures I internalized long ago. Sometimes I no longer know whether the limit comes from present reality or from authority still alive inside me. At the same time, contemporary forms of life increasingly demand autonomy, flexibility, self-management, and responsibility, while the collective conditions necessary to develop these capacities become more fragile. I often feel unprepared for the responsibilities this condition demands. Not because I refuse responsibility, but because I was never fully taught how to navigate uncertainty, shared responsibility, or collective freedom differently. I learned how to follow direction more than how to negotiate orientation collectively. So I remain somewhere between paradigms: no longer fully trusting old structures, but not yet knowing how to build new forms of relation, responsibility, and orientation. And even while I question hierarchical authority intellectually, part of me still searches for certainty, permission, and confirmation. Part of me still waits for someone more legitimate to confirm direction before I move. The anxiety is not only about failure. It is also about no longer being able to transfer responsibility elsewhere. Freedom does not immediately feel liberating when someone was formed inside structures organized through authority, correction, and external validation. There is grief in realizing that certainty never protected me from responsibility. I am grieving forms of guidance that no longer make sense to me while still not knowing what replaces them. This grief is not abstract. It appears as hesitation, exhaustion, instability, avoidance, and sometimes loneliness. I increasingly notice how exhaustion organizes behavior today. Sometimes I cannot distinguish whether hesitation comes from fear, resistance, exhaustion, or from the absence of conditions necessary to move differently. I also notice how often I still wait: for alignment, for clarity, for leadership, for certainty. But when leadership appears, distrust appears with it. I learned to recognize manipulation, institutional self-protection, and performances of authority. But critique alone does not teach me how to build trust differently. And I do not yet fully trust myself enough to replace what collapsed. Part of what makes this moment difficult is that I am still learning how to inhabit forms of collectivity that do not depend entirely on domination, permission, fear, or centralized authority. And I am learning while already inside the transition. I no longer believe entirely in centralized authority. But I also do not think horizontal structures automatically eliminate domination. Sometimes hierarchy disappears formally while reproducing itself emotionally, socially, and invisibly. So I keep asking myself: How do I build collective responsibility without reproducing the same structures I claim to reject? I do not yet know. And maybe part of honesty is admitting that. Because I speak about collectivity while still learning how to trust it myself. I also think a lot about desire. Not desire as fantasy or individual impulse, but as something shaped by history, migration, geography, language, memory, and social conditions. Living as a Brazilian in Germany changed not only what I want, but how I understand recognition, precarity, ambition, intimacy, and belonging itself. The question “What do you desire?” cannot exist outside the conditions that formed the person asking it. Desire is never neutral. It carries contradiction, projection, memory, illusion, and history. And still, desire matters to me because it often reveals where life continues insisting beneath adaptation and fear. To sustain desire is not to obey every impulse, but to remain accountable to what repeatedly asks to exist through me. I no longer experience a clear separation between the individual and the collective. The collective is not something outside me. It appears through the ways responsibility, avoidance, silence, risk, and care circulate between people. Thought alone does not reorganize a life. The body often remains attached to patterns long after consciousness identifies them. What I know is that I can no longer remain inside systems that slowly reduce the conditions necessary for growth, honesty, transformation, and collective learning. I am at a threshold. And thresholds are uncomfortable because they remove the illusion of neutrality. No one decides for me anymore. And maybe that is exactly what feels frightening. I spent years learning how to receive direction. Now I am trying to learn how to remain present inside uncertainty without waiting for certainty first. Lately, I have also noticed that intellectual understanding alone rarely transforms behavior. Avoidance survives in habits, gestures, rhythms, postures, and bodily responses. So sometimes I try something simple. I choose one object directly connected to something I have been avoiding: a message, a task, a conversation. I go to it. I touch it. And before interpretation appears, I notice what happens inside my body. Sometimes that small gesture already changes something. Not because it solves the problem completely, but because it interrupts the distance between thought and action. Perhaps that is part of what I am trying to learn now: how to remain present in the consequences of my choices without waiting for external confirmation first. Something has already shifted... ...and I still do not fully know toward what. If something here feels familiar, stay with it—and write from within that place in the comments below. I’d value hearing how it meets you. Leonardo Rodrigues is a dance artist based in Mannheim, holding an MA in Contemporary Dance Education. He works as an autonomous educator, performer, researcher, and choreographer, using choreography to create conditions for exchange and to shift perception between people.

a solitary body stands exposed in rehearsal space, reaching toward liberation and confrontation Visibility as refusal, and the question of which bodies are allowed to remain This text introduces my solo re:befreiung, presented in the opening program The Art of Protest at the 3 TAGE FREI – Festival der Freien Darstellenden Künste Stuttgart. The program brings together short performances responding to cultural funding cuts, political urgency, and the changing conditions of the independent arts scene in Baden-Württemberg. Within this context, I approach protest not as a theme, but as a lived practice. I write to clarify how this work operates, speaking both to those who recognize these conditions and to those who participate in shaping them. re:befreiung is the solo I perform within this context. The title connects two movements: liberation (Befreiung) and return. The “re:” refers to an earlier full-length solo through which I revisit and reactivate body memories. This work continues from that process, bringing these memories into the present. I perform from within the conditions I address. Public discussions around cultural funding cuts often focus on loss—what is disappearing, what can no longer be sustained. Yet not every body is equally included in what is being defended. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asks, “Can the subaltern speak?” More precisely: under which conditions is speech recognized as speech at all? I speak from a position that is not always fully legible within the structures that define legitimacy, visibility, and support within the independent arts field. What is described as collective loss often reflects the perspective of those already stabilized within systems of support. As Donna Haraway reminds us, knowledge is always situated. I do not encounter precarity as a rupture. I work from within it as a continuous condition. This position is not outside the system; it is produced by the system itself, even when the system does not fully acknowledge it. My practice moves between performance, research, and embodied knowledge. In this solo, I search for an aesthetic that reconnects me to histories and bodily understandings that existed before my direct encounter with dominant Global North frameworks. What emerges is unpolished, dense, and weighted. The work does not seek beautification or resolution. It sustains tension through contrasts: resistance and yielding, presence and withdrawal, control and disorientation. Scores and Material Relations The solo unfolds through a series of spatial, sonic, and bodily scores. These structures do not function as fixed choreography or narrative progression. They organize relations between movement, sound, rhythm, memory, friction, and perception. Through these shifting material conditions, tensions around visibility, instability, labor, and recognition emerge. A spatial score mapping the circular pathways and energitic directions of the solo re:befreiung The performance begins in the audience. I am already there. No announcement. No separation. At first, the body appears recognizable. Then it shifts. The rhythm does not fully align. The gaze does not fully return. A refusal becomes perceptible. This refusal does not reject visibility. It resists being stabilized. Materiality of Sound The work is structured through sound as material. The soundscape does not accompany the performance; it shapes perception and influences how the body is read in space. The soundscape was created in collaboration with Pêdra Costa, a Brazilian artist whose trajectory has been marked by repeated refusals: refusals of access, legitimacy, and at times almost of existence within institutional frameworks. In Costa’s work, refusal does not appear as absence or lack. It becomes force—a way of confronting imposed limits while opening other conditions for sensing, relating, and existing. Memory appears here as unstable, fragmented, and unresolved. Fragments of Garota de Ipanema emerge throughout the space, but never fully arrive. The music is stretched, reversed, interrupted. At moments, a German version overlaps with the original—not as translation, but as interference. Recognition appears and dissolves at the same time. Later, the soundscape shifts toward Rupestres Sonoros: O Canto dos Povos da Floresta, specifically Koi Txangaré by Mawaca. Another layer of memory enters the work, connected to Indigenous presence. Not as representation, but as acknowledgment of forms of existence that continue despite remaining structurally unrecognized. Presence alone does not guarantee legibility. Throughout the solo, sound destabilizes orientation. It alters the perception of time, shifts access to memory, and affects how the body positions itself in space. The work creates a field in which recognition cannot fully settle. Hands covered in palm oil become a tactile landscape of memory, labor, and transformation within the perfoemance re:befreiung The Body as Material Within this shifting field, the body becomes material. I remove layers of clothing. Not as revelation. As the removal of protections, projections, and expectations required to move through social space. The action shifts how presence is perceived and how the body relates to the sound-filled space around it. Palm oil enters as a material agent acting on the body. Not as a symbol. Agent. It alters friction, temperature, and texture. It changes how the body moves, how it meets the floor, how it resists and yields. It can be read as sweat, as labor, as residue. Presence intensifies as stability dissolves. Traces—visible and invisible—accumulate in space. The material does not illustrate meaning. It produces it. As the performance unfolds, interpretation begins to stabilize what is being seen. In a review for Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Andrea Kachelrieß wrote: “Leonardo Rodrigues […] machte sich blank bis auf die Unterhose und schien in der Konfrontation mit dem eigenen Schweiß danach zu suchen, wie Arbeit und Armut einen Körper zeichnen.”(Kachelrieß, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 16 Apr. 2026) The review connects the exposed body, sweat, labor, and poverty, reading the performance through the marks social conditions leave on the body. These elements are present within the work. From my perspective, however, no single interpretation can fully contain what the performance produces or allows to emerge. re:befreiung does not resolve these tensions. It does not offer liberation as an outcome. I remain inside the negotiation—visible, but not contained; present, but not absorbed. This text also remains unfinished. It does not stand outside the work, but continues moving with it. Like the performance itself, it ends without closure. What persists are tensions between visibility and containment, recognition and misrecognition, presence and absorption. The questions remain open: which bodies are recognized, which forms of precarity become visible, and who is allowed to remain present within structures that were not designed to fully hold them. The following texts and authors echo questions, tensions, and sensibilities present in this work: HARAWAY, Donna. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, v. 14, n. 3. Washington, D.C.: Feminist Studies, Inc., 1988. HAN, Byung-Chul. Sociedade do Cansaço. Tradução de Enio Paulo Giachini. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 2017. Título original: Müdigkeitsgesellschaft. SAFATLE, Vladimir. Circuito dos Afetos: Corpos Políticos, Desamparo e o Fim do Indivíduo. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2015. SPIVAK, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? In: NELSON, Cary; GROSSBERG, Lawrence (orgs.). Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. p. 271–313. Press Reference 3 TAGE FREI – Festival der Freien Darstellenden Künste. “The Art of Protest.” Stuttgart, 2026. Available at: 3 TAGE FREI – The Art of Protest. Accessed on: 11 May 2026. KACHELRIEẞ, Andrea. “Gala mit Protest: So startet das Festival für Tanz, Theater und Performance.” Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart, 16 Apr. 2026. Available at: Stuttgarter Zeitung article. Accessed on: 11 May 2026 If something here feels familiar, stay with it—and write from within that place in the comments below. I’d value hearing how it meets you. Leonardo Rodrigues is a dance artist based in Mannheim, holding an MA in Contemporary Dance Education. He works as an autonomous educator, performer, researcher, and choreographer, using choreography to create conditions for exchange and to shift perception between people.

Between the desire for autonomy and the actual conditions of work, artistic practice reorganizes itself — not always in the direction of freedom. This text is a personal reflection based on my experience living and working as an independent dance artist in Mannheim, Germany. It reflects on the institutional conditions surrounding autonomous artistic work and how they shape both artistic practice and the ways artists organize themselves in order not to disappear. As an autonomous artist, I work within systems where continuity depends on project-based funding, institutional frameworks, and the constant negotiation of access to resources. I write from within these conditions — not outside of them — while trying to understand how they shape my practice, my relationships, and my sense of belonging within the structures that sustain this field. Writing publicly about these tensions is not an attempt to provoke for its own sake. It comes from a growing need to articulate something that has long accompanied my work and exchanges with others: the distance between the promise of artistic autonomy and the actual conditions required to sustain it. ... I live precariously as an independent dance artist. Or perhaps not entirely independent. There is a tension here that motivates this writing: I am partially employed within the dance field, yet my projects depend recurrently on the support of publicly funded institutions — at the level of the city and the state. I write, therefore, from this in-between position — neither fully embedded in a stable structure nor entirely outside of it. From here, the question deepens: what does independence mean when the continuity of one’s work is directly tied to institutional funding mechanisms? This dependence creates a relationship — but what kind of relationship is it, and what does it produce over time? In practice, I notice how easily I participate in a recurring cycle: the need to access resources leads to constant participation in workshops, training programs, and development processes focused on project design and applications. Learning how to write proposals, adjusting language, responding to institutional criteria — all of this gradually occupies a central place in the practice. Over time, this participation begins to reorganize my attention: it shifts away from artistic inquiry toward maintaining the conditions needed to stay within the system. It becomes less about creating and more about following the rules in order to exist. This works as a localized adjustment: a constant calibration to each context, where artists absorb its logics and begin to operate within them to sustain continuity. At the same time that artists learn to adapt themselves to these systems in order to continue working, another movement also becomes visible: a growing number of dance professionals arriving in the city. This is not a statistical claim, but a concrete perception of everyday life — Mannheim hosts two professional dance schools and continues to attract artists who move here for various reasons, as I once did. What becomes difficult is that this growth does not seem to be accompanied by a proportional expansion of working conditions or structural support. The field becomes increasingly populated, but not necessarily more structured. As a result, a subtle sense of competition begins to intensify alongside a shared condition of fragility. Within this condition, I notice how many artists begin searching for ways not to remain completely alone — ways to stay connected, continue working, access resources, and sustain some form of continuity while still carrying the idea of being independent artists. More and more, this seems to happen through already existing structures such as Vereine — a German form of association organized around shared interests and collective activity, often officially registered as an e.V. (eingetragener Verein). I learned a common joke in Germany: “Treffen sich drei Deutsche, gründen sie einen Verein.” (“If three Germans meet, they create an association.”) Over time, I started recognizing something of this logic within the dance field itself. The Verein already exists here as a familiar and socially recognized structure for organizing collective activity, and because of that it easily becomes one of the main forms through which independent artists attempt to survive, remain visible, and access support. In dance, this creates another layer of complexity. Many professionals working in the independent scene are foreigners, migrants, or artists who do not fully speak the language, yet they often encounter these structures as one of the few existing paths for continuity and legitimacy within the system. But it is precisely here that I need to take a position: I do not identify with the Verein model. I recognize its historical importance and its role in collective organization, yet in practice it appears to me largely as a resource already structured by the system itself — a format we accept because it seems to be one of the few available ways not to remain alone, especially in moments of crisis. This raises a tension that is not only personal: to what extent does the Verein model organize the community, and to what extent does it also condition it to operate within predefined limits? And what happens when forms of organization also become forms of containment? ... I do not have clear answers to the questions that run through this writing — about what independence means, about the relationship to the system, and about the sustainability of the formats and structures that currently organize this practice. What I do have is a growing distance from what is already in place, and an increasing difficulty in continuing to believe that these formats constitute a truly sustainable horizon. Not because there is no effort to support artistic work — there is. But because this effort seems to operate within very specific conditions that end up defining how we are expected to organize, collaborate, and exist. Verein structures do seem to solve certain problems — enabling access to resources, sustaining collective work, and creating forms of continuity. And yet, I am not convinced that the Verein model is truly an answer. In many cases, this implies adhering to pre-existing collective formats not necessarily out of choice, but as a way of not disappearing. I recognize how I, too, remain within these structures under these conditions, and although I acknowledge their function, I have not yet found a way to fully align with them — particularly when the forms of working together do not necessarily produce a shared force, but rather a coexistence structured by necessity. If the condition for working together is to formalize ourselves into fixed structures, then perhaps the question is not whether to join them or reject them, but whether we need to rethink what it means to become an institution at all. These structures come to be perceived as the only viable path, in the absence of other forms that have yet to be articulated. But are they? From where I stand, discomfort begins to appear around what is often framed as “support.” I recognize the effort behind it, but in many cases it does not emerge from what I or others actually need. Instead, it comes already shaped — defining in advance how support should function, and how I am expected to adapt in order to access it. Over time, I notice a shift in my own practice. Instead of responding to urgencies, I find myself learning how to navigate formats — adjusting, rewriting, repeating. Something changes in that process. Not because of a lack of intention, but because the logic of support starts to move on its own, slightly detached from the conditions it is meant to sustain. ... I take some distance to listen more closely. Differences are there — often strong — but they rarely surface. They remain contained within an unspoken rule: to stay politically correct and keep things running. This is where the discomfort stops being only personal. The risk I take in staying with this position is real. It means that I may fail by not fully aligning with the only system that currently allows this work to exist. I don’t think I am alone in this — many of us remain within it, not out of conviction, but because we have learned to accept it as the only possible way to continue. From this perspective, a difficult feeling emerges: everything begins to operate under a logic of survival. When most of the energy is used to remain active within the system, the space for risk, displacement, and deeper transformation starts to shrink. If institutional structures were to disappear, I would continue. Not because I have a solution, but because my relationship to practice does not begin or end there. I understand my work not only as a profession, but as a way of existing. In that sense, the precariousness present in my work — both in its conditions of production and in its aesthetic — is not accidental. It reflects this position and becomes, at times, a potential form of force. If this text is not about offering answers, then perhaps the most honest gesture is to sustain the questions — and not allow them to settle: What kind of independence are we actually practicing? And at what cost is this independence maintained? If something here feels familiar, stay with it—and write from within that place in the comments below. I’d value hearing how it meets you. Leonardo Rodrigues is a dance artist based in Mannheim, holding an MA in Contemporary Dance Education. He works as an autonomous educator, performer, researcher, and choreographer, using choreography to create conditions for exchange and to shift perception between people.

This is a review of the dance piece "Groove," which premiered in Mannheim on Friday, October 25th, 2024, at 8 p.m. at EinTanzHaus. Image: Lys-Y-Seng. In the picture from left to write: Gabriele Aidulis, Andrea Böge and Mike Planz #Desconstructingurbandance Jonas Frey and his team have played a key role in the expansion of urban dance in Mannheim. Their recent piece involves turning club dance routines into a refined theatrical performance, which has impressed the usual crowd at #EinTanzHaus. Nevertheless, the inquiry persists: How does the distinctive fusion of street dance styles and contemporary choreography in urban dance effectively resonate with the audience? "Groove" is a performance that begins with a sense of timidity and contemplation. Initially scattered across the theatre, the dancers converge towards the central stage, executing a brief rhythmic sequence characterised by subtle bounces accentuating the music's beat–grooving. At its inception, this routine is a delicate movement exploration, exuding a bashful and modest quality without any desire to draw attention. It's as if they are dancing in silence, even though the music remains throughout the piece. As the groove routine progresses, it expands and develops, fostering a sense of unity and camaraderie. #Unity and #Emotion During the group dance, a simple hand gesture on the shoulder symbolizes unity and emphasizes the importance of staying together rather than drifting apart from the group’s rhythm. This intentional tempo, requiring patience, transforms into a rhythmic and emotional experience as the solo performances delve deeper into the dancers' personalities. The straightforward movements captivated the audience, gradually shifting their perception toward a purposeful emotional depth that emanated from the dancers' bodies. The charismatic performers Mike Planz, Gabriele Aidulis, and Andrea Böge embodied the choreographer's essence on stage, presenting a style that feels authentic to urban dance rather than theatrical. #Emotionaldepth During the group dance, a simple hand gesture on the shoulder symbolizes unity and emphasizes the importance of staying together rather than drifting apart from the group’s rhythm. This intentional tempo, requiring patience, transforms into a rhythmic and emotional experience as the solo performances delve deeper into the dancers' personalities. The straightforward movements captivated the audience, gradually shifting their perception toward a purposeful emotional depth that emanated from the dancers' bodies. The charismatic performers Mike Planz, Gabriele Aidulis, and Andrea Böge embodied the choreographer's essence on stage, presenting a style that feels authentic to urban dance rather than theatrical. Image: Lys-Y-Seng. In the picture from left to write: Andrea Böge, Mike Planz and Gabriele Aidulis, Jonas and the group exhibit a distinctive skillfulness in Groove that doesn't rely on acrobatics or storytelling. Their strong bond and pleasure in dancing is a collective joy that stems from their history of collaborating on previous projects. This connection is evident in their most recent performance, which showcases their skills and significantly contributes to the evolution of dance art in Mannheim. This performance stands out by consistently presenting work without pretentious grand narratives. By creating a captivating and identifiable vocabulary, the dance significantly impacts the spectators' perception. Leonardo Rodrigues is a dance artist based in Mannheim, holding an MA in Contemporary Dance Education. He works as an autonomous educator, performer, researcher, and choreographer, using choreography to create conditions for exchange and to shift perception between people.