Valeriya Koptseva
»I always make
myself move.«

In January 2023 we welcome the Ukrainian choreographer Valeriya Koptseva. She already had to leave her homeland, the Donbass, in 2014 and now for a second time with February 24, 2022.

"When you hear explosions and see death, your mind tries to find a way to escape. You start to distance yourself from your body. You stop feeling it. You don't want to eat, you can't sleep, you disappear."

Valeriya Koptseva is a Ukrainian dancer, choreographer and dance teacher.

She started her teaching career in 2011. It all started with the thought, "How does my body dance, even though it was taught to dance". Valeriya Koptseva spent hours, days and weeks discovering her movements, facing tasks and new challenges. All these processes led her to her own style. Then she moved to the Ukrainian capital and started her professional career as a dancer. Shootings, music videos for Ukrainian artists, performances and commissions for stage choreographies followed. Six years ago, together with colleagues, she founded Atmosphere Dance Camp - a large international event for dancers from all over the world, held in Ukraine.

Open Classes - 16-20.01.2023, each 10 a.m.

By means of improvisation exercises, connection between body-mind-soul will be established. We will get to know ourselves better, we will free ourselves from muscle tightness and tension. We will explore our bodies, space and partners. We will work alone, in pairs and in groups.

Public talk - 01/27/2023, 6 p.m.

On the occasion of the exhibition project "Loss and Hope" by Vira Dumke and the TANZPAKT in residence of the Ukrainian choreographer Valeriya Koptseva, the villa\wigman together with the association Plattform Dresden, will host a public conversation format on 27.01.2022, at the Ukrainian House Dresden, which will address the current situation of freelance dancers in Dresden, in Ukraine and in exile, as well as the solidarity engagement of the cultural scene.

Panel:

Tetiana Ivanchenko (Platform Dresden)

Valeriya Koptseva (Donetsk)

Alexandra Meißner (Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony)

Andrii Palash (Dnipro Art College)

Johanna Roggan (the guts company)

Maria Yarchuk (Kultura Medialna, Dnipro)

Moderation: Thomas Dumke (depart.one)

This action will be accompanied by the continuation of the exhibition project "Loss and Hope" by Vira Dumke. She began meeting Ukrainian cultural workers in exile in the summer of 2022 and documented their personal statements on loss and hope in the form of images and text.

The Villa Wigman for Dance Association is an initiative of independent dance professionals and other supporters in Dresden. Its declared goal was and is to preserve the former workplace of the dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman, Bautzner Straße 107 in Dresden, and to operate the culturally and historically valuable location as a rehearsal, production and mediation center for contemporary dance and other performing arts. The Villa Wigman Association for Dance now has over 60 members, primarily dance, theater and other arts professionals.

The Villa Wigman offers its rooms to artists and companies as artistic workplaces, places for experimentation and thinking, in order to realize their productions in the house, which can then be seen on various national and international stages. In addition, the association initiates artistic interventions, discursive and participatory formats several times a year and opens the rooms of the villa\wigman on the Day of the Open Monument and on other selected occasions.