Tanz Heilbronn! | Double Bill: Sirens & AMAE | 1. Teil von Ermira Goro (GR) | 2. Teil von Eliana Stragapede & Borna Babić (BE)

In the organizer's words:

from 16 years

This year's Double Bill opens with the dance performance "Sirens" by the innovative young choreographer Ermira Goro. Here you are invited on a sensual and mysterious journey into the world of desire and its social forms of expression. The two performers Chara Kotsali and Angelos Kolosionis become sensual creatures, part machine, part human, entangled in a game of advances and evasions. Precise robotic movements merge into instinctive ones, the tension of touching and not touching blurs the boundaries of fantasy and reality, of gender roles and their dissolution. As the rhythm accelerates to the sound of Jeph Vanger's musical composition and the physicality intensifies, the piece creates space for a vision in which eroticism, performativity and vulnerability are allowed to coexist.
"Sirens" was selected in 2025 by the European dance network "Aerowaves", which annually honors the most promising new works by emerging artists. Shortly afterwards, "Sirens" began an international tour.

The second part of the double bill is the duet "AMAE" by Eliana Stragapede from Italy and Borna Babić from Croatia. This fascinating performance questions and explores the boundaries of co-dependency in interpersonal relationships, the fine line between care and obsession, love and hurt, support and control. The title "AMAE" (甘え) - a Japanese term coined by the psychoanalyst Takeo Doi - refers to a specific human behavior: that which people show when they want to be loved and cared for, when they consciously or unconsciously want to rely on someone else, perhaps even treat them with submissiveness. Amae can certainly be perceived as something warm-hearted and intimately human, as a desire for harmony. But it can also promote complacency, dependency and controlling behavior. It is this duality that inspires and interests Eliana Stragapede and Borna Babić. They have created a dance piece that expresses precisely this polarity, a pulling, caressing, opening and refusing, a hypnotic interplay of two bodies in which the threshold between embrace and suffocation becomes blurred.

Ermira Goro is an innovative movement, dance and performance artist whose focus is on interdisciplinary work. She is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT) and continued her training in New York. From 2007 to 2018 she worked with the world-renowned DV8 Physical Theater. In 2022 she was nominated for the "Bessies Award - New York Dance and Performance Awards" in the category "Outstanding Performer". Her work has been widely promoted and presented at numerous festivals and guest performances in Greece and worldwide, where she has been critically acclaimed for her imaginative and distinctive approach.

Eliana Stragapede, born in Italy in 1996, and Borna Babić, born in Croatia in 1994, form a creative choreographic duo and are active as dancers and teachers. They live together in Brussels. In 2025, they founded the dance company "Paper Bridge", with which they continue to develop their artistic visions. Both studied at the renowned Codarts art academy in Rotterdam and worked with Marina Mascarell and the famous group "Club Guy & Roni" after graduating. Since then, they have regularly collaborated with renowned choreographers and established dance companies. Their furious 30-minute dance piece "AMAE" won first prize at the renowned International Choreography Competition in Copenhagen in 2022.
competition in Copenhagen, the choreography and production prizes of the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Holstebro Dansekompagni and was honored with the partner prizes of Codarts and Dansateliers at the International Choreography Competition in Rotterdam in 2023.