Project timeframe: 15th -20th of June, 2021
25th – 31st of October, 2021
10th – 17th of April, 2022
MIHR theatre’s engagement in the project: Shoghakat MLKE-Galstyan is a local project coordinator. Tsolak MLKE-Galstyan is a choreographer within the project.
The dance project Wishing Wishes invites young people from Armenia and Abkhazia to explore their own wishes and visions, and encourages them to expand their familiar horizons of action and to position themselves independently in relation to the social norms of their home environment.
Wishing Wishes starts in Armenia in 2021/22. Five young people between the ages of 11 and 17 from eleven towns located on the border with Azerbaijan travel to Dilijan and almost immediately come together as one large, inseparable group. During the first workshop, Swiss dancers and choreographers Meret Schlegel and Kilian Haselbeck give an introduction to contemporary dance in collaboration with Tsolak MLKe-Galstyan, Art Director of MIHR Theatre. Physical exercises and improvisations teach the young people new approaches to reacting to music and expressing emotions and desires through free movement. The Swiss project participants also get an insight into Armenian dance through the Armenian dance teachers. They experience the difference between the energetic folk dance, danced in group cohesion, and the stylised, so-called national dance, strongly influenced by the Soviet ballet tradition.
