In the Bloodlines series Stephen Petronio pays tribute to postmodern American choreographers, who inspired him during his career as a dance professional. To preserve these traditions, since 2015 the Stephen Petronio Company has also been presenting works by artists such as Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Anna Halprin, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer, who all have created dance languages that embody high degrees of artistic impact.

The intensive, powerful duet of the French dancers Boris Charmatz and Dimitri Chamblas was developed in 1993, and today it is still considered a key work of contemporary dance. During À bras-le-corps the audience finds itself in a rectangular room, in a “boxing ring”. The first movements are slow and sculptural, but then the dancers explode into a very physical, powerful, fast choreography, occasionally interrupted by moments of total darkness, in which excerpts from Paganini can be heard.

KONTAKTE '19 examines performative opportunities in electroacoustic music and brings together more than 20 premieres and over 120 artists from all over the world. The musical arc of the festival spans compositions from the sphere of the Feedback Studio Cologne in the 1970s to the “T.I.T.O. marathon” with a line-up of 14 of the world's most exciting turntablists. A central component of the programme features Berlin-based initiatives with international resonance.

As a curator, Wulf Herzogenrath has made a crucial contribution to the establishment of video art in Germany. In his archive highlights of video art and sculpture since the 1970s can be discovered. The exhibition “Magic Media – Media Magic” provides insights into this archive and shows works by Vito Acconci, John Cage, Lutz Dammbeck, Joan Jonas, Rebecca Horn, Nam June Paik, Bjørn Melhus, Marcel Odenbach, Sigmar Polke, Ulrike Rosenbach, Bill Viola, Raphaela Vogel, et al.

Dance archives in Cologne, Leipzig, Bremen and Berlin are showing unique centrepieces from their collections in a joint exhibition for the first time. Selected documents of Modern German Dance are placed into the context of a worldwide, international dance scene, which through projections of a hundred iconic photographs and film clips present themselves as a dynamic force field of body images and motion inventions in dialogue with the original objects.

A look at the dance scenes of the 20th century shows how new body images, choreographic concepts and perception levels have evolved since the beginning of the century. With a programme series of more than 20 current dance productions, discussions and an exhibition the Akademie der Künste is set to become a research platform of dance heritage. The programme focuses on questions concerned with passing on knowledge of choreography and dance between generations.

The photographer Thomas Florschuetz has dedicated himself to the fragmentary image of the snapshot, which oscillates between abstraction and concretion. A selection of large and small-format works at the Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum at Rheinsberg Palace demonstrates how deep and multi-layered his photography can be and the limits of abstraction he exceeds.