MusicDance

MusicDance Music Dance 021, consists of workshops and, performances for musicians, dancers, singers and actors

Grateful, humbled, and still vibrating from MusicDance Cape Town   , from the question a nine-year-old asked “Why do you...
22/12/2025

Grateful, humbled, and still vibrating from MusicDance Cape Town , from the question a nine-year-old asked “Why do you rehearse if it’s never the same?”, to the conversations that unfolded on stage, in rehearsals, in Q&As, bars, at home.

This project reminds me again and again that improvisation is a technique of deep listening, attuning to one another: dancers, musicians, light, space, audience. Together , through practice, we navigated questions of differences, representation, gender, queerness, cultural responsibility, presence, vibration, aliveness , for ethics that resist binaries in favor of nuance, range, and responsibility. I was also reminded that performance is not about self-expression alone, but about becoming an antenna, yielding ego, transforming sensation into composition, and creating conditions in which something can move through a room and leave audiences and ourselves changed.

This work exists because of extraordinary collaborators of this year’s edition who brought insight and expertise to the space: .art Friederike Wendorf, and to and Lutho for creating the visual magic of lights and projection, and whose energy was so bright and supportive.

Thanks to .obs for being the home and the base, and to Caroline Calburn for believing in it again and again and seeing it grow through the years.

And the group of talented and committed artists, some new and some returning. Thank you for this journey across generations, identities, disciplines and for your courage, care, disagreement, humor, history, and generosity into the space. Thank you for trusting the process, questioning it, stretching it, and inhabiting it so fully.
.parks23 .mayeza .saxophone, , Isabella Hulme, Gemma Paton

Beautiful photography by
And also a thanks to for being a guest and to the ones that were not able to join this year but whose presence was strongly felt in the room.

Upcoming Wednesday  Arts in Obs, 12-2pm a workshop-lecture by Friederike Wendorf, flutist. It's participatory. For dance...
06/12/2025

Upcoming Wednesday Arts in Obs, 12-2pm a workshop-lecture by Friederike Wendorf, flutist. It's participatory. For dancers, musicians and all performers.
Sign up [email protected]
Cost: sliding scale R120/150

Thrilled to announce the line up of artists that will join this amazing project this year at .obs Artistic Direction:  (...
14/10/2025

Thrilled to announce the line up of artists that will join this amazing project this year at .obs

Artistic Direction:
(dance)

Team of Collaborating and Facilitating artists:
(piano), (percussion, seperewa, umtshingo, mbira, voice, dance), .art (dance and text), ( viola, electronics), (self-made, indigenous instruments, electronics and reeds), Friederike Wendorf (flutes)

Participating Artists 2025:
, , Zaria Moal, , , , .parks23 .mayeza , (dance)
Gemma Paton (dance and vocals) , (trumpet, bass) .saxophone (saxophone) , Isabella Hulme (saxophone), .space (dance and piano).

Lighting Design:
Photography:

There is a crowdfunding campaign, link in bio.
Please help realize this project, which is a breeding ground for long-lasting and meaningful collaborations and a community of practice that grows every year.
Help by donating or sharing
Thank you
❤️❤️✨

MusicDance 2025➡️ EXTENDED DEADLINE Deadline: 25th SeptemberCall to participate in MusicDance 2025 at Theatre Arts from ...
20/09/2025

MusicDance 2025
➡️ EXTENDED DEADLINE Deadline: 25th September

Call to participate in MusicDance 2025 at Theatre Arts from

📌29th November - 13th December

MusicDance Cape Town is a performance residency for dancers and musicians, supported by Theatre Arts since 2018. Now in its eighth year, the project draws together artists from diverse genres and backgrounds. The emphasis of the work is interdisciplinary and real-time composition.

Audiences are invited to witness the forging of exciting new collaborations and unique expressions in music and dance performance.

Application MusicDance 2025
➡️LINK IN BIO
https://musicdance.net/

The performance residency consists of an intensive period of workshops in which the participants are guided by the facilitating artists to practice the tools of interdisciplinary and real-time composition. The workshops lead towards the creation of performances.

Each performance consists of a programme of different short compositions of sound and movement, with a different constellation (grouping) of musicians and dancers. All the compositions are created in the moment, based on real-time artistic choices in movement, sound, light and presence.

More info, schedule and fees:
LINK IN BIO

How open are you to connect?We are in the midst of an intense week of creation at MusicDance Portugal 2025.Bodies, sound...
17/09/2025

How open are you to connect?

We are in the midst of an intense week of creation at MusicDance Portugal 2025.
Bodies, sounds, and stories are meeting - not to erase differences, but to compose from them.

This is an ongoing project, crossing countries, continents, and territories.

On Saturday, we open the doors to share the process of this year in Lisbon... a journey still unfolding.

Stay connected: MusicDance will continue to grow in other places and will return to Portugal next year.

To improvise is to cultivate courage and presence together.

Team: art


Invited guest:

📍 Saturday, 21 September 2025 at 6pm (doors open até 5:30 pm)

📌 At c.e.m.( centro-em-movimento), rua dos Fanqueiros, 150, 1⁰ floor, Lisbon.

01/09/2025

📖 Chapter 3/4 — Roots in the Global South

In 2018, MusicDance found fertile ground in Cape Town.

At Theatre Arts, it began as a series of informal sessions among artists of the scene: body, sound, text, image, which gradually opened into public performances.

The audience, attentive witnesses, was amazed: everything was improvised. And yet, or perhaps because of it, everything was alive.

Bodies and sounds of different stories came together. Not to erase differences, but to compose from them.

This is the ethical and political gesture of MusicDance: artists of diverse backgrounds and vocabularies create, together, without hierarchy, a common language.

Every gesture and every sound matters.
Every difference is fuel.

From the very beginning, performances sold out.

And a network grew. Artists of the scene, lighting designers, photographers, from different territories, both concrete and symbolic, returning each year and bringing new collaborators. A community that expands not by imposition, but by desire.

Improvisation here is not just aesthetics.
It is a way of existing.
It is imagining other ways of being together.

Thus, MusicDance in Cape Town keeps growing. Not merely resistant, but fertile.
Because to improvise is also to cultivate the future.

Our gratitude goes to every artist, collaborator and institution that has crossed this field over the years — your presence is a living part of this story. 🌍💫

MusicDance 2025Call to participate in MusicDance 2025 at Theatre Arts from 📌29th November - 13th December➡️ Deadline: 20...
31/08/2025

MusicDance 2025

Call to participate in MusicDance 2025 at Theatre Arts from

📌29th November - 13th December
➡️ Deadline: 20th September

MusicDance Cape Town is a performance residency for dancers and musicians, supported by Theatre Arts since 2018. Now in its eighth year, the project draws together artists from diverse genres and backgrounds. The emphasis of the work is interdisciplinary and real-time composition.

Audiences are invited to witness the forging of exciting new collaborations and unique expressions in music and dance performance.

Application MusicDance 2025
➡️LINK IN BIO
https://musicdance.net/

The performance residency consists of an intensive period of workshops in which the participants are guided by the facilitating artists to practice the tools of interdisciplinary and real-time composition. The workshops lead towards the creation of performances.

Each performance consists of a programme of different short compositions of sound and movement, with a different constellation (grouping) of musicians and dancers. All the compositions are created in the moment, based on real-time artistic choices in movement, sound, light and presence.

More info, schedule and fees:
LINK IN BIO







The call for MusicDance Cape Town for this iteration of the project is out! Looking for musicians and dancers who would ...
28/08/2025

The call for MusicDance Cape Town for this iteration of the project is out!

Looking for musicians and dancers who would like to engage in an intense two weeks of interdisciplinary practice towards the creation of performance.
Looking forward to hearing from you!

Call to participate in MusicDance Cape Town 2025 at Theatre Arts
Deadline: 20th September 2025
://forms.gle/BsjPMps68xbQiutt6

More info
://musicdance.net/capetown2025/

🌀 To improvise is to remember that the body knowsWith Improvisation is not just a creative act, it's ancestral memory. I...
05/08/2025

🌀 To improvise is to remember that the body knows
With

Improvisation is not just a creative act, it's ancestral memory. It is body speaking without asking for permission. It is remembering that to move is also to listen.

Descendant of the Makonde people, from northern Mozambique, Vintani carries in his gestures a lineage where body, sound, and spirit have always been inseparable. His ancestry doesn’t echo in folklore, it lives in his every move.

A dancer, percussionist, singer, composer and choreographer, he bridges tradition and experimentation, with a life dedicated to preserving and reimagining Mozambican and African musical heritage.

Vintani is an artist of the crossing: dancer, composer, researcher. He does not separate art from life. For over a decade, he has explored the intersections between movement, sound, ritual, and resistance.

He improvises as someone who listens to the invisible. He dances with the in-between. He speaks silence and gestures song. His presence is not one of spectacle, but of invocation. He invites us to be present with everything we are: our fractures, our rhythms, our voices.

At MusicDance, Vintani holds space like one who drums the earth: with pulse and reverence. He improvises as if weaving together times and textures, cultivating connection, presence and transformation through the vibration of now.

Because to create is to make room.
Because listening is a political act.
Because when we improvise together, we transform what connection can mean.
Because improvisation is a practice of becoming in relation, in presence, in truth.

✨ If your art is born from the body, this field is yours. Comment MusicDance and get all infos!

Starting 18 January, so still possible to APPLY!Post-MusicDanceWorkshop and Performance Series January/February 2025Join...
11/01/2025

Starting 18 January, so still possible to APPLY!
Post-MusicDance
Workshop and Performance Series January/February 2025

Join us for this Post-MusicDance Workshop and Performance Series. An opportunity to revise and further hone our improvisation and composition skills, shortly after the December 2024 performance residency.

The series is facilitated by Leilah Kirsten (Cape Town), with guidance from Manuela Tessi (Amsterdam). It consists of:

● X3 3hr workshops (9hrs total), over three weeks at Theatre Arts, Obs
● X1 1hr performance at theatre Arts, Obs You are eligible to join this series if a) you have previously participated in a MusicDance performance residency b) you are new to the project – send us a brief motivation on why you’d like to participate, including any video content of you in performance. Schedule and prices see link in bio

Join us for this POST - MusicDanceWorkshop and Performance SeriesJanuary/February 2025://musicdance.net/2025-2/An opport...
06/01/2025

Join us for this POST - MusicDance
Workshop and Performance Series
January/February 2025

://musicdance.net/2025-2/

An opportunity to
revise and further hone our improvisation and composition skills, shortly after the December
2024 performance residency.
The series is facilitated by Leilah Kirsten (Cape Town), with guidance from Manuela Tessi
(Amsterdam). It consists of:
● X4 3hr workshops (12hrs total), over four weeks at Theatre Arts, Obs
● X2 1hr performances at theatre Arts, Obs - all artists perform twice

You are eligible to join this series if a) you have previously participated in a MusicDance
performance residency b) you are new to the project - send us a brief motivation on why
you’d like to participate, including any video content of you in performance. Preferably, a
minimum of x10 full-time participants is required for the series to go ahead

POST - MusicDanceWorkshop and Performance SeriesJanuary/February 2025Join us for this Post-MusicDance Workshop and Perfo...
04/01/2025

POST - MusicDance
Workshop and Performance Series
January/February 2025

Join us for this Post-MusicDance Workshop and Performance Series. An opportunity to revise and further hone our improvisation and composition skills, shortly after the December 2024 performance residency.

The series is facilitated by Leilah Kirsten (Cape Town), with guidance from Manuela Lucia Tessi (Amsterdam). It consists of:

X4 3hr workshops (12hrs total), over four weeks at Theatre Arts, Obs
X2 1hr performances at theatre Arts, Obs - all artists perform twice
More info ://musicdance.net/2025-2/
Please email [email protected] if you’d like to attend.

Endereço

Wesley Street
Lisbon

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MusicDance 021- Cape Town

MusicDance021 is a platform for the interdisciplinary collaboration of dancers and musicians in performance. The project brings together established and emerging artists in a cutting-edge performance and workshop format.Started in January 2018 by Thalia Laric and Manuela Lucia Tessi at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, MusicDance021 represents an interdisciplinary dialogue across different performing art forms. It brings dancers and musicians into a shared space to exchange creative practice and refine collaboration skills. It offers audiences insight into the immediacy, fluidity and risk of real-time collaboration, unearthing new directions for performance.

see website> https://musicdance.net/

In 2020 MusicDance 021 presents:

MusicDance Performance Residency is Cape Town’s foremost interdisciplinary composition residency for dancers and musicians. Now in its third year, the residency focuses on developing individual performance and composition skills, and providing opportunities for artistic networking and collaboration. The program will run from 8 March till 1 April 2020, consisting of 4 composition workshops and 2 public performances. 10 musicians and 10 dancers will be selected to join the full residency programme. Musicians and dancers from diverse training, styles and backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Priority will be given to performers who are invested in composing their own work and collaborating with other artists across disciplines and genres.