Bio

The progressive wave is a collaborative performance project based in Berlin, founded in 2014 by Israeli performance artists and choreographers Gal Naor and Matan Zamir. They produce a variety of works and activities, from dance and theater productions to art installations and site-specific performance projects. Parallel to their independent and commissioned productions, they are regularly teaching workshops for both performers and non-performers. They offer an inclusive space that is welcoming mixabled people, with and without experience in performing arts. They aim to spread the knowledge of spiritual understanding through the experience of the dancing body. Their artistic goal is to bring together choreography, performance art, and visual art, along with political and spiritual content in a thought-provoking theatrical setting.

Their first creation bodieSLANGuage, created in 2014 in collaboration with the Berlin-based duo-choreographers matanicola, consists of eight international Deaf and hearing performers, founded by the Capital Culture Fund of Berlin (Hauptstadtkulturfonds), and co-produced by Theater Freiburg, and Ballhaus Ost, Berlin. In 2016, with the support of ID Festival Berlin, They embarked on their innovative performance trilogy Science of Signs – a theatric triptych exploring the relations between science, performance, and philosophy. Their dance-lecture-performance; Science of Signs I: Lights & Vessels, created in 2016, was presented in Radialsystem V and Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin, and in Tanz Faktur, Cologne, in the frame of Sommerblut Festival. Science of Signs II: Oráculo was staged in 2018 at Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, and was shown in Schwankhalle Bremen, in the frame of the eigenARTig festival. In 2019 together with fashion label UY Studio, sound composer and DJ Dasha Rush and Butoh artist Valentin Tzin, they created the contemporary site-specific dance ritual Zone. The work consists of twenty performers and was presented at Halle am Berghain in Berlin. 

In 2018, they were invited by theatre director Michaela Casper and Possible World Deaf Ensemble to choreograph their queer Sign Language version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, presented at Ballhaus Ost Theater in Berlin and Grillo-Theater in Essen, Germany. Later that year, they were invited by Trauma Bar und Kino to present Lights & Vessels as the opening event of their interdisciplinary art venue in Berlin, along with Oráculo Live Installation. In the fall of 2018, they were invited by choreographer Karolin Stächele to dramaturge her dance creation Myth, presented at E-Werk, Freiburg, Germany. In January 2020, they collaborated again with Stächele on a performative installation called LoveArchive; the work was performed thirteen times at the contemporary art gallery in E-Werk, Freiburg. The progressive wave are leading workshops and classes that revolve around the study of consciousness in relation to the moving body, internationally.


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