Johanna Ackva is a dancer and choreographer, working mostly in collective constellations or collaborating with artists of different backgrounds and media. She is especially interested in the sensorial, affective and political dimensions of the diverse relationships existing between the self and the world. Investigating and renegotiating these relationships with commitment and humor is central to her work.
Johannas artistic approach is informed by philosophical and anthropological theory as well as the practice of Somatics and a variety of other body-based techniques, ranging from dance improvisation to meditation or singing. She lets herself be led by her curiosity about what it is that moves us – on a macro and micro scale, globally as well as locally. Since 2014, her collaboratively made works have touched upon diverse topics such as work and its value (The Agreement), experiences of natural wastelands and solitude (Salt Lake), or notions of femininity and their relation to fluids (Women and Watery Men, EARTHBOUND SQUATTERS).
In 2019, Johanna realized two choreographic works for which she invited several other dancers and musicians. thank you for all the food that i have received in my life was presented in the frame of Berlin’s Project Space Festival at VERY and took the visitors of an exhibition in a procession to the nearby river Panke. The performance addressed the notion of pro-gress, a movement forwards, as a collective and a non-linear one. Out of Our Hands, a work co-produced by and presented at Tanzfabrik Berlin, delicately explored mortality as a factor of radical limitation and vulnerability. For this work Johanna received the Early Career Funding (Einstiegsförderung) of the city of Berlin. To continue her investigation into the same topic, Johanna was granted the Elsa-Neumann-Scholarship 2020/21.
Next to pursuing her own choreographic work, Johanna is part of Suddenly collective, which comprises thirteen international dance artists based in Berlin. Limitation Piece (2018) and ESPRIT (2019) have been the first pieces made by the collective, following a principle of shifting artistic roles for each project. She currently writes as a dance critic for ada Studio and teaches at Universität der Künste Berlin as a guest teacher in the interdisciplinary institute Studium Generale. Johanna has danced and performed for, amongst others: Monster Truck, Nicole Wendel, Lea Martini & Dennis Deter, Grażyna Roguski, Emma Tricard, Madalina Dan, Barbara Bess and Roni Katz.
Johanna Ackva works as an artist mainly in the fields of choreography and performance. Next to a range of dance and movement based practices, her work draws importantly from anthropological writings and methods. Thus, observation of everyday life, wanderings and conversations – with experts, strangers or friends – make up an essential part of it. At its core, Johanna’s interest lies in the material, sensory and affective, the intimate as well as the political dimensions of the relationship between Self and world. She is invested in exploring and (re)negotiating entanglements, and searches for ways of translating this artistic process into performative settings that invite for shared experience.
Since 2014, Johanna’s often collaboratively developed projects have touched upon themes such as work and its value ([dry] [title], Hamburger Bahnhof, 2016 / AG Arbeit, Libken 2021), experiences of natural wastelands and loneliness (Salt Lake, ada Studio, 2018), constructions of femininity (Women and watery men, Display & Flutgraben Berlin, 2016), female mystics and mysticism (VIRIDITAS, Lake Studios Friedrichshagen, 2021), or death and finitude (Out of Our Hands, Tanzfabrik Berlin, 2019 / Solo ohne Titel, Uferstudios, 2020 / CLOUDS ON CLEAR SKY, Vierte Welt, 2021 / Grandmothers, Ballhaus Ost, 2021). Next to performances in theaters and other spaces, Johanna’s work also manifests in objects, installations and text, such as most recently the brochure ‘aus dem, was sprachfähig war. Versuche einer Annäherung an Sterben, Tod und Endlichkeit’ or the three-channel-video installation ‘bluefold’. In 2020/21, Johanna was a fellow of the Cultural Senate of Berlin (Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium & Recherchestipendium Darstellende Kunst).
Part of Johanna’s practice are writing and teaching In 2019/20, she wrote as an in-house dance critic for ada Studio; as guest teacher at Universität der Künste Berlin, she facilitated interdisciplinary workshops in the frame of the Studium Generale. Johanna has danced and performed for, a.o.: Monster Truck, Nicole Wendel, title provisoire, Lea Martini & Dennis Deter, Grażyna Roguski, Emma Tricard, Madalina Dan, Barbara Bess and Roni Katz. Since 2020, she contributes to the programming of Denk- und Produktionsort Libken. In a residential building in the small town Böckenberg / Uckermark, built to house workers of a GDR-run agricultural cooperative, Libken offers space for a wide range of artistic, scientific and activist residencies, projects and events.