Carla Anacker

AROUND

WORKS

Anderswo
Dance, 20min
2026

Shifting one’s focus—from what is loud, central, and visible—to what is quieter, to the details, to the delicate, to the in-between. Movements, rhythms, volumes, and intensities collide, coexist for a while, or exist in parallel: elsewhere.

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II.

After All
Dance, 40min
2026

the feeling that something is dimming down
a never ending dimming  
dimming that lets other intensities, 
rhythms on other scales unfold
a release
a shift in tonality, texture and presence
inhabiting the shift 
cohabiting space  
a ground for thought 
still dancing 
volumes of bodies
after all dancing
volumes of rhythm, subtleties, details
ending and dancing  

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III.

A possibility to land
Performance Lecture, 30min
2025

I activate my choreographic archive – a collection
of notes, quotes, songs, film excerpts, memories, dried lemons, an apple, a metronome,
my cello, a microwave and popcorn.

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IV.

So we returned to resting
Durational Performance
2025

… so we returned to resting and dedicated this dance to letting go. We held each other’s heads, lifted, carried, shifted them, and rested them on our bodies. Listening to the time it needs to sink in, to let go of surface tension, of deep tension. Holding each other and letting go.

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IV.

The place where I go to listen
Dance, 30min
2025

What if each movement is a place where I go to listen?

What if the theatre space is a place where I go to listen?

What if when I listen, the I goes?

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The beach is accessible at Low Tide
Durational Performance
2023

Attuning to the temporality of the tides. Dancing over the course of 6-7 hours. Flowing with a river.

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VI.

Unfolding Decomposition
Installation
2022

Traces of a mutual dance between a block of clay and my body unfolding over the course of several months.

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CARLA ANACKER

carlaanacker@aol.de

I am an artist working with choreography, dance and writing.

My work lives in the following words:
subtle
details
sensitive textures
time passing
timing
temporality
dwelling
surrendering
nuances
timbre
reverberation
shift of focus
leaning close
everyday
falling into place
now
intensities
rhythms

The two columns WORKS and AROUND can be scrolled up and down. Thereby, new connections between the contents of the columns emerge. This corresponds to the relation I see between the category WORKS and AROUND.: They speak into each other.
Whereas WORKS contains all projects that got presented to an audience in a classical way, AROUND holds what happens outside of that realm, around the works.
WORKS contains that what got labelled as work through instutitions.
AROUND contains what I believe is part of my work too.

EDUCATION

MFA Choreography
The Danish National School of Performing Arts
2024-2026

Dance Education “Dance Intensive”
Tanzfabrik Berlin
2022-2023

BA Integrated Design
University of the Arts Bremen
2018-2022

Violoncello classes
2007-2017

SCHOLARSHIP

Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
2020 - 2026

ATLAS scholarship
Residency and mentoring programme during
Impultanz Vienna
2025

RESIDENCIES &
SUMMERSCHOOLS

One week residency in Ljubljana at Stara mestna elektrarna in connection with Institut 0.1 in Ljubljana. Together with colleagues Lara Ostan and Inaja Skands in the frame of our collective research on material and immaterial sustainability and collective modes of working.
2026

Scenes of Transformation and Resistance
Summerschool of the Artistic PHD Program of the University of the Arts Bremen,
Palazzo Michiel, Venice
2024

Lesarten und Schreibweisen
Residency at Thealit, Bremen
2024

Residency at Zentrum für Kunst (Tabakquartier), Bremen
2024

Un-learning Dance
Summerschool/ Festival in Ponderosa, Stolzenhagen
2021

Beyond Repair
Summerschool of the University of the Arts Bremen in the frame of the 58. Art Biennale in Venedig
2019

RESEARCH EMPLOYMENT

Drawing and the Body
Teaching at the Nordic Drawing School, Lund together with Mona Schieren, Andreas Berg and Juana Bustamante
08/2026

Research associate and tutor of/ for
Mona Schieren, Professor for Transcultural
Art Histories,
2020-2022

WORKSHOP/ CONFERENCE/ SEMINAR PARTICIPATION

2-day seminar “Perspectives on: Weird/ Strange/ Queer Feedback“ hosted by HAUT in collaboration with Toaster

Conference on blind and deaf dramaturgy and anti-racism in audio description in dance and performance hosted by Community of Reception and Tanzhaus NRW
2025

2-day seminar “Perspectives on: Sustainability and Equity in the Arts/ Navigating Times of Crisis“ hosted by HAUT and UrbanApa
2025

July-August 2025
Many different workshops during ImpulsTanz Vienna. Especially the workshop of Matteo Fargion stands out for me. Matteo was also my mentor in the work “A possibility to land“

September 6, 2024
“Seeking unicorns“ | Chiara Bersani | Dansehallerne, Copenhagen

September 5, 2024
“Very concrete imagination“ | Manon Santkin | Dansehallerne, Copenhagen

July 23-28, 2023
“Embodying Time and Music“ | Maya M. Carroll | Tanzfabrik, Berlin

May 2022
Butoh: “The Unfamiliar Body“ | Natsuko Kono | Dock 11, Berlin

April 29 - May 1st, 2022
“Garden as Studio“ | Shelly Etkin | Ponderosa, Stolzenhagen

March 21-23, 2022
Butoh: “Materiality“ | Natsuko Kono | Dock 11, Berlin

January 7-9, 2022
“Sense Appeal“ | Melanie Maar | Tanzfabrik, Berlin

March 1-3, 2021
“Working with Scores“ | Antonia Baehr | online

October 29 - November 19, 2021
“Flying beyond four walls“| Eva Karzcag | (online)

AWARDS

First place University Award for
“Das fehlende Segment“ together with
Cedric Müller and Chiara Rika Kwade
2022

PRESS

After All
‘https://bastard.blog/graduation-show-from-mfa-in-choreography-den-danske-scenekunstskole/
2026

Anderswo
https://www.kultur-mv.de/kunst-kultur/darstellende-kunst/tanztheater-baltic-perspectives.html
2026

Collective work:

In 2020, I co-founded the collective “Tremenda Corporea“. The collective grew over the last years with currently six members from El Salvador, Colombia, Chile, Germany and Austria. We are all differently involved in the different projects of the collective. We are a resource for each other, sometimes we bring our different professions and work together on a projects, at other times, we are accompanying each other in more subtle, slightly invisible ways. Friendship plays a big role.
I was a part of the following works of the collective:

Bodies of Resonance (Concept, Creation), 2021, Schwankhalle, Bremen
https://schwankhalle.de/en/events/tremenda-corporea-bodies-of-resonance

Paradoxical Myth of the Crazed Jaguar and Nene del Solar (choreographic support), 2022, Schwankhalle, Bremen
https://artigavictor.com/paradoxical-myth

Thoughts on Fluid Assemblages (Co-choreography, co-dramaturgy, performance), 2023-24,
Radialsystem, Berlin
https://forecast-platform.com/forecast-festival-8-victor-artiga-rodriguez/

Scoring: How scores have nothing to do with goals (Performance), 2024, Dauerwelle/ GAK, Bremen
https://www.hfk-bremen.de/en/events/documenting-in-artistic-research/11698

Lithium Lovestories (choreographic support), 2025, Schwankhalle, Bremen
https://schwankhalle.de/de/veranstaltungen/lithium-love-stories

With Emilia Sting and Julia Höft I am in an ongoing project on embodied writing.
We started in 2022 with the text and reading performance “Begrenzt Genzenlos“, which we presented in the frame of our BA graduation from the University of the Arts Bremen at Weserburg. In 2024, we had residency at Thealit (more infos -> here) where we were silently writing together for two weeks.
A bit later, we were part of the project Create Space! by Literaturhaus Bremen and continued our collective writings at a Litfasssäule in the city space of Bremen.
We are exploring how words can flow into each others bodies, pour over. We ask how bodily sensations transform into words and we explore how we can become one collective “Schriftkörper“,
a body of text.

Last Updated 24.10.31

Description practice

I am describing photos (fig. 10) I found on the platform “Pinterest“. An online resource that gathers countless photos that users of the platform can add to online mood-boards. The photos are in most cases not credited and authorship gets lost, that is a big problem. It also makes the photos context-less. You don’t know, who made it, when, where, why. Often when I save a photo on Pinterest I look at it for a fraction of a second and directly match it with the fitting mood-board category. At one point, I actively decided to spend more time with the photos, by looking at a photo and describing it as detailed as possible. This sometimes took hours and filled many pages. On one hand the practice entails spending much more time with something that normally takes almost no time, on the other hand, it is a practice of attending to details, atmosphere and specificity of this very situation depicted in the photo.

Eating an apple over 20min

A group of people eats an apple together in silence. Something that usually takes a few bites and less than a minute is stretched in time.

Testing rest(ing)

I observed how people are resting on the mattresses of IKEA
I came to understand that people were not actually resting but instead performing to rest as a way to test and find a suitable mattress.

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Writing and the Body

This photo shows a practice Emilia Sting, Julia Höft and I did a lot during our residency at Thealit in Bremen.

You lay on your back and place a piece of paper on your belly. You write everything down that crosses your mind at that moment.
The writing is accompanied by the movements of your breath.

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Cold water

When I stay in the cold water longer than the shock, a feeling of calmness arrives, the situation suddenly slows down, for some time the moment feels endless. Doing something over and over again also becomes a practice of registering change: It is by coming back to the same thing that lets you understand that this thing and the place is never the same.
In the winter 2024/2025 I swam almost everyday as I was living right next to the water. I recorded every swim and took notes afterwards. When I listen to the recordings with some distance, I am noticing how the rhythm of the same place is different in the different recordings. When I read the notes I took over the months, I understand what it is that I give attention.

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Pauses

Imagine you go for a walk on a Sunday afternoon and through a window you hear someone rehearsing a piece of music. A part gets repeated, there is a wrong note being played, pages of the notation are turned, half a page gets skipped, a part that is very familar gets rehearsed in double speed, the person gets up to refill the coffee in the kitchen, comes back and plays again.
Together with Pianist and Composer John R. Carlson, I explored how to compose a piece of music that sounds as if someone is practicing the piano.
This was part of the research for -> Anderswo.

more of AROUND will be added