Helge Letonja & Kossi Aholou- Wokawui (-) »La mer en moi (Das Meer in mir)«

Helge Letonja, choreographer and artistic director of steptext dance project and the dance company Of Curious Nature, has created more than 50 dance works presented worldwide, often realized in interdisciplinary and transcultural collaborations. As a choreographer, Letonja creates vital areas of friction and vibrant images that reflect social conditions and processes and combine emotional and mental movements of individual and social bodies with metaphorical contexts. In his most recent works with Of Curious Nature, he deepens the artistic forms of expression of his ensemble with somatic movement training, among other things, in order to draw the complexity of today's human being. His repertoire ranges from dynamic, powerful ensemble pieces to subtle symbols. His works can be categorized as a kaleidoscope of visual associations in organic stage landscapes through to choreographies that are entirely dedicated to the dialogue between dance and music. Helge Letonja is also a tireless advocate for the interests of dance, both in his adopted home of Bremen and nationwide, as a board member of the Dachverband Tanz, and is involved in a wide range of collaborations to strengthen and communicate the art of dance. In this way, he opens up dance as a mediator of cultural diversity, social participation, interdisciplinary art and research.

Kossi Sebastien Aholou-Wokawui grew up in Togo and studied traditional and contemporary African dance as well as modern and jazz dance in various ensembles. He completed further training with Stephanie Thiersch and at the École des Sables, Senegal, among others, and worked as a workshop leader at the Théâtre National d'Haïti. Aholou-Wokawui has been working continuously with steptext dance project since 2012 and has since danced in numerous productions by Helge Letonja in Germany and abroad. In 2018, he created the dance piece Dans la Peau de L'Autre with Tomas Bünger, and his solo BeGreifen premiered in 2022. He has been a dancer with the ensemble Of Curious Nature since 2019 and choreographed for the company for the first time in 2023. His piece Ezan-Kélé was premiered in the three-part evening Moving Mountains. In various collaborations, Aholou-Wokawui leads workshops in Contemporary Afro and creates transcultural youth dance theater projects. "