DESERT(ED) DREAMING
Katja Cheraneva & Viktorija Ilioska

"Desert(ed) Dreaming" is a sensory and poetic invitation to understand lack not as the end but the beginning of something and – amid global exhaustion – to imagine new ways of living together and create possible futures. Here the desert takes on multiple meanings: it evokes abandoned dreams and political drought while at the same time retaining the potential for change, caring and regeneration.

Inspired by hydro-feminism, speculative fiction and ecological thinking, the piece explores processes of withdrawal, voiding, extraction and emaciation – physically, ecologically and biographically. How can a new imaginative power be drawn from absence? What can be created on a stage that has already been deserted and transformed itself into an intermediate space, a place of memories and visions of the future.What remains when we leave places, bodies and systems behind?

In Desert(ed) Dreaming Katja Cheraneva and Viktorija Ilioska launch a choreographic search through their shared histories of migration between Russia, North Macedonia and Germany.

Choreography / Performance: Viktorija Ilioska, Katja Cheraneva

Dramaturgy: Chiara Marcassa

Text: Viktorija Ilioska in conversation with Katja Cheraneva

Outside eye / dramaturgy: Amèlie Haller

Light design: Laura Salerno in collaboration with Carlos Franke

Costume Design: Laura Stellacci Sound Design: Antonia Beeskow, Aran Kleebaur

Stage Design / Set: Nina De Ludemann

Technical Direction: Patrick Faurot

Artistic Producers: take the money and run GbR

A production by Viktorija Ilioska & Katja Cheraneva, in co-production with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Hessisches Staatsballett in the frame of Tanzfestival Rhein-Main 2025 and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia. Funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Hessisches Ministerium für Forschung und Wissenschaft, Kunst und Kultur, LLB network through Creative Europe program and Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Ministry of the Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana. Supported by Uferstudios Berlin and Lokomotiva – Centre for New Initiative in Arts and Culture, Skopje.

Tanzfestival Rhein-Main, a project of Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Hessisches Staatsballett, is made possible by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and is funded by the Department of Culture and Science of the City of Frankfurt am Main, the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture, Aventis Foundation and Dr. Marschner Foundation. Sponsered by Energieversorgung Offenbach AG (EVO).