“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle.
This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future” (Albert Camus)
Partner Organizations:
DOCK ART Berlin / Germany
DOCK11 EDEN***** Berlin / Germany
Derida Dance Center, Sofia / Bulgaria
La Mama, New York / USA
A project by DOCK 11 GmbH in collaboration with DOCK ART
This project is supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Summa Artium, DOCK ART
Artist: Ivan Estegneev
Through this international residency program, we aim to further artistic excellence across borders and nations. Its goal is to bring people closer together through live, shared experiences. We seek to connect between individuals of different nationalities, ages, and beliefs, stimulate critical thinking, and enable safe yet fearless discussions.
Artist Ivan Estegneev has been invited to create a new dance work and present it at DOCK 11 / DOCK ART in Berlin, Derida Dance Center in Sofia and at LaMama in New York.
Several Community Outreach programs will accompany the Project.
Schedule:
January - July 2026 Creation Period
24 June 2026 Lecture Demonstration at DOCK 11 Saal 4
18.7.2026 Pre Premier at Derida Dance Center in Sofia, Bulgaria
03., 04., 05., 06. December 2026 Premiere at DOCK 11 / DOCK ART Theater, Berlin
Dramaturge & Development: Katherina Vasiliadis
Curatorial Team: Katherina Vasiliadis, Wibke Janssen, Atanas Maev, Mia Yoo,
Project Description
The Shape of a Man (Working title)
This project explores space and the figure of a man suspended between waiting and action. He appears as an archetype shaped by the Soviet body, which was “made in USSR” —disciplined, collective, and deprived of intimacy. Throughout the performance, this body gradually opens itself to a more authentic identity, uncovering individual desire, sensuality, tenderness, and fragility beneath the rigid surface of social norms.
Rather than focusing on dance itself, the work investigates a state of perpetual preparation. Something always seems about to happen—a rehearsal, a meeting, a performance—yet the anticipated moment is continuously delayed, stretched, and dissolved. The body in anticipation becomes an archive of lived experience and a form of resistance to linear time. Encounters are endlessly postponed: a touch becomes a gesture, a gesture a glance, a glance a pause. In this world, the constant state of "almost" becomes the central event.
Embraces and touches emerge only as fleeting flashes of intimacy—fragile attempts to bridge the distance between two wounded individuals and to understand the nature of the male self. Through a complex, raw, and uncompromising physical language, the body becomes a battlefield where power and dependency, violence and tenderness, fear and longing constantly collide. Old wounds repeatedly resurface through movement, trapping the two men within cycles that seem impossible to escape.
Situated between personal testimony and the emotional intensity of ancient Greek tragedy, the performance examines the mechanisms through which masculinity is constructed and the cost of its continual reproduction. The two protagonists find themselves imprisoned within inherited notions of manhood—structures built upon the suppression of tenderness, the rejection of vulnerability, and the denial of everything perceived as feminine.
As their bodies move through exhaustion, transformation, and change, the urgency of this conflict grows ever stronger. The performance asks whether it is possible to move beyond these inherited roles and expectations, to imagine new forms of intimacy and selfhood. It offers no definitive answer, leaving the question open until the very end.
The authors draw on Deborah Hay's philosophy: "What if every moment is a dance?”
Creation & Performance: Ivan Estegneev and Evgeny Kulagin
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Biographies:
Ivan Estegneev
Evgeny Kulagin
Derida Dance Center is the first center for contemporary dance and education in Bulgaria, founded in 2010, and functioning through Art Link Foundation. The center has a broad spectrum of activities that fulfill the objectives of the organization, namely to be an instrument for accelerating the development of contemporary dance art in the country by supporting the existing and emerging talents in the field. The main areas in which the center operates are independent dance productions, training and coaching programs for Contemporary Dance, international partnerships, residency programs, presentation, and curatorial activities.
LaMama (Experimental Theatre Club) is a legendary, multicultural NYC theater, founded by Ellen Stewart in 1961, offering a haven for underrepresented, avant-garde artists to create boundary-pushing work, known for supporting global talent and pioneering Off-Off-Broadway theater with a mission of diverse, uncensored artistic freedom. It's a vital cultural institution that champions new performance, pushes artistic limits, and serves as a global hub for diverse voices in theater, dance, and art
DOCK 11 EDEN is a renowned institution, with two locations, for contemporary dance in Berlin and across Europe, consisting of a dance school, rehearsal spaces, and a theater hall operated by the independent DOCK ART gGmbH. Founded shortly after German reunification in a former factory on Kastanienallee, DOCK 11 has developed into a lively centre for artistic creation, education and performances and now houses a dance school, several dance studios, a digital laboratory, a café, offices and a theatre space with a regular programme. In 2009, the range of facilities was expanded with the addition of EDEN, an ensemble of several high-quality studio buildings and two villas on park-like grounds in Pankow, providing additional rehearsal, performance and multi-purpose rooms as well as additional residential apartments.
DOCK 11 / DOCK ART theater in Berlin has been a permanent venue since 1998 and presents a weekly changing program. The focus is on dance, but performances, concerts, and readings are also programmed. The program strives for diversity and aesthetic plurality, is intergenerational, and is committed to cultural education and community projects. Since 2020, DOCK ART has received conceptual funding from the Berlin Cultural Administration; it stages more than 200 performances per year, reaching approximately 13,000 audience members. Important festivals at DOCK ART include the international dance film festival POOL, which took place for the 18th time in October 2024; MASH Dance Berlin, a joint festival with the Machol Schalem Dance House in Jerusalem; the festival for contemporary dance and performance art b12; soundance, the international festival for contemporary dance and music; and PLATAFORMA, the decolonial and intersectional BIPoC/Latinx platform for dance, documentation, and discourse. Artists such as Christine Bonasea, Jenny Haack, Martha Hincapie Cherry, Tomi Paasonen, Peter Pleyer, Anna Nowicka, Hanna Schillinger, Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor, Nir De Volff, and Johannes Wieland have long been associated with the venue.
