Khamlane Halsackda was born in Laos, grew up in the UK, and now lives in Malmö, Sweden. He has worked within dance for 30 years, and this, as well as turning 50 recently, ignites his reflections on ageing, queerness, connection, community, ecology, and sustainability.

Khamlane’s work questions, "How can all our perspectives exist in one place at the same time?" He leans on this philosophical question as a way to welcome diverse perspectives and lived experiences into his creative work, embracing dialogue and curiosity.

w: nyarorelsen.com
i: @khamlane

Kosta Karakashyan is a Bulgarian-Armenian director, choreographer, and writer exploring empathy through movement and storytelling. He creates bold, concept-driven productions across stage, film and immersive experiences that move, provoke and connect. His work has been presented by the Columbia Ballet Collaborative, One Dance Festival, The Gabrovo Biennale of Humor and Satire, and he is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree and a member of the European Film Academy.

w: studiokarakashyan.com
i: @kostakarakashyan
f: @kosta.m.karakashyan
t: @kostakarakashyan

Laura Alcala Freudenthal is a creative director, choreographer, and movement director. She co-directs the dance company LaSúbita. Among her most recent projects are POP. A Dance Monologue (2023), Flesh and Flowers for Tanzkollektiv Bremen (2024), and ONA, a dance and live music performance for early childhood (2025, Mercat de les Flors), as well as the choreography for Rigoberta Bandini’s latest music video directed by Cèlia Giraldo. She is also a lecturer at ERAM and Shifta by Elisava.

w: lauraalcalafreudenthal
i: @lauraalcalafreudenthal

Lilian Steiner is an Australian dancer and choreographer, now based in Stockholm. From 2010, Lilian worked in Australia as a major performer/collaborator with Lucy Guerin Inc. Company, and many independent choreographers and artists working with live performance and film in the fields of visual arts, experimental sound and architecture/design. Since 2023, Lilian has been working with the renowned company Cullberg, performing works by Alexandra Bachzetsis, Hooman Sharifi, Alma Söderberg, Halla Ólafsdóttir and Renan Martins. Lilian’s choreographic practice spans live performance, text, sculptural installation and teaching. Her work has been presented in Australia, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Latvia, Sweden, the UK, and Hong Kong.

w: liliansteiner.com
i: @liliangrace

Originally from Lyon, Malika Djardi trained in contemporary dance at UQAM in Montreal and the National Center for Contemporary Dance in Angers (2009 – 2011). She has performed for Mélanie Perrier, Joris Lacoste, Ola Maciejewska, Alexandre Roccoli, among others, and collaborates with Pierre Droulers. Developing her work with the solo Sa prière, created in April 2014 at La Raffinerie in Brussels, she continues to explore performance as an object of documentation, notably by interviewing her mother, who converted from Catholicism to Islam.

The duo Horion was created at the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales of Seine-Saint-Denis (France) in May 2016. For the Charleroi Dance Biennale (Belgium) in 2017, she conceived the piece-lecture 3, addressing the genre of science fiction and the issue of emotions in a disenchanted fertility ritual. She was in residence for creation at the National Center for Dance (France) in 2019 – 2020 for PIER 7, which starts with a dialogue with professional skateboarder JB Gillet. Her latest piece, Martyre, a tribute to her mother suffering from Alzheimer’s, premiered on March 27, 2024, as part of the Le Grand Bain festival with the Gymnase CDCN in Roubaix.

w: malikadjardi.com

Ming Jou Chen is a choreographer, performer, and multidisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam. A graduate of the SNDO (School for New Dance Development) at the AHK and a dance degree at the University of Taipei, her artistic practice is deeply influenced by her fascination with underwater ecosystems and nonhuman phenomena. Drawing on her experiences as a scuba diver and her observations of coral reefs, she uses body movement, visual media, and sound to create immersive, otherworldly spaces for her audiences. By integrating diverse sensory elements and nonlinear storytelling, Ming Jou invites viewers to reconsider traditional narratives and connect with a range of perspectives and lifeforms. Her work explores the potential for connection across human and non-human experiences, continually seeking ways to decentre the human spirit and discover the beauty of our interconnected world.

In recent years, her work has been showcased at venues such as Frascati, Brakke Grond, Cinedans, CTM Berlin, and Miaobei Art Center in Taiwan.

Ming Jou Chen’s recent work, The Terrestrial Gathering of the Mermaids - PURE, dives into East Asian female self-consciousness, inspired by her personal experiences and cultural roots. In this piece, she crafts an oceanic landscape filled with love songs, struggles, moments of disorientation, and healing rituals. Through this evocative setting, she challenges and reinterprets societal narratives, creating a space where political and personal identities seamlessly intertwine.

Nataša Kustura is a dance artist and researcher based in Croatia. She enrolled in the BA programme in Contemporary Dance at the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, graduating in 2022. During her studies, she developed her technical and performative practice by working with various Croatian and international dance artists.

Since 2015, she has been an active member of the Zadar Dance Ensemble. She has also performed in works by Ida Jolić, Matea Bilosnić, Josipa Štulić, among others. In 2022, she co-authored and performed Melusine , presented at the Perforations Festival in Buenos Aires in collaboration with the Zagreb-based Domino Association. That same year, she performed in the Croatian Pavilion at the 59th International Exhibition of Visual Arts – La Biennale di Venezia.

In addition to her artistic and academic work, Nataša is a co-founder of OS, an artistic organisation that focuses on creating contemporary and interdisciplinary performing art practices.

Neda Ruzheva is the artistic director of Amsterdam-based choreographic label Trevoga. From hope-fanatics to doomers and affect aliens of all kinds, Trevoga is a chaotic intersection of performance artists who move against the flow. United by a desire to most literally be stressed – to let the present crawl under their skin and feel the world pressing against them – they channel anxiety not as a metaphor but as an embodied, visceral experience, where the future is still up for grabs – raw, uncertain, alive, and still worth losing sleep over. For Trevoga, the capitalist body is not a temple – it is an abandoned shopping mall, littered with consumerist relics, synthetic chemicals, and sexually suggestive imagery. Their work scavenges for the most unsettling undertones beneath the glossy surface of urban hyperreality. Twisting popular tropes and cultural symbols into sensuous, dissonant forms, they stitch together reflections of a perplexingly grotesque present – dissecting themselves as symptoms of its countless addictions and using the stage as a means to disentangle its many dissonant processes and conflicting forces. Trevoga is an Aerowaves Twenty24 Artists. Their debut performance “11 3 8 7”, co-produced by ICK Amsterdam and One Dance Bulgaria, was awarded “Best of Amsterdam Fringe Festival” and was mentioned in NRC NL as part of their critique’s top 5 performances of dutch season 23/24. Trevoga's second work "Xx-63" will premiere during Julidans Festival 2025.

w: www.trevogameansanxiety.com
i: @trevogameansanxiety