Neukölln tanzt! – Inclusive Dance Festival

Inclusion on the Dance Stage

Neukölln tanzt! is one of Berlin's most distinguished inclusive school dance festivals – a format that unites contemporary dance, inclusive education, and neighborhood work in a single event. Students with and without disabilities aged 8 to 18 perform on stage, having worked towards the festival since the beginning of the school year in their schools and weekend workshops. The result: 80 dancers from six schools on a shared stage, with professional stage design and lighting – an experience that many students have for the first time in their lives.

Kia Paasch and Friederike Jentsch as Initiators

Dance educators Kia Paasch and Friederike Jentsch launched the festival in 2019 – and have been systematically building inclusive dance education in the Neukölln district step by step ever since. In 2026, parallel to the festival, the association Neukölln tanzt! inklusiv e.V. will be founded to permanently support this work. To achieve this, the two dance educators collaborate with special schools, primary schools, grammar schools, and community schools – they visit dance classes weekly and develop the choreographies for the festival with the students.

Theme 2026: (E)Motions

The theme of the 6th edition is (E)Motions – a play on the double meaning of Emotion and Motion. The focus is on the question of how movement expresses feelings and how feelings can be translated into choreographic forms of expression. This is a central theme for inclusive dance work, as it makes dance accessible as a language, even for students who have difficulties with other forms of communication.

Participating Schools 2026

• Walter-Gropius-Schule (Grammar School)
• Albrecht-Dürer-Gymnasium (23 students from seven classes)
• Schule am Bienwaldring (Special Needs School)
• Gustav-Meyer-Schule (Special Needs School)
• Jens-Nydahl-Grundschule (Primary School, Kreuzberg)
• Fritz-Karsen-Schule (Community School)
• Guest performance: inclusive Berlin dance company tanzfähig

The Gemeinschaftshaus Gropiusstadt

The venue is the Gemeinschaftshaus Gropiusstadt at Bat-Yam-Platz 1 – a community center planned by Walter Gropius in 1962, located in the heart of Gropiusstadt, the prefabricated housing estate designed by Walter Gropius in South Neukölln. For decades, the community center has been the cultural hub of Gropiusstadt and one of Neukölln's most important neighborhood venues. A place that perfectly suits the festival: architecture that honors the diversity of a prefabricated housing estate.