Patricia Carolin Mai

COME AS YOU ARE - INSIGHT INTO COMMUNITY DANCE PROJECTS

Dancing empowers - but what exactly triggers this feeling? Is it the physical movement alone or is there more to it when we train together, develop choreographies with different bodies and teach people to dance across generations? In the VHS course Come as You Are, choreographer Patricia Carolin Mai presents movement approaches and principles from her dance productions. What dancing and mediating potential lies in the transitions from one physical state to the next - in the fleeting and transformative moment of the in-between? She will also present the results of the EU project Empowering Dance - Soft Skills in Dance. Implicit forms of knowledge will be revealed, a reflective approach and the practical application of soft skills in one's own dance and dance-mediating practice will be tested and discussed together with the participants.

in german | open to all interested with and without previous dance experience, for (dance) mediators and (dance) teachers

Registration is ONLY possible via VHS Hamburg

www.vhs-hamburg.de

Patricia Carolin Mai

Patricia Carolin Mai is a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of MAI:COMPANY. She studied dance at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp and performance studies at the University of Hamburg. Since 2015, she has been producing dance pieces with production bases at Kampnagel and K3 | Tanzplan Hamburg. Her artistic work explores movement as a somatic and empowering practice, and the body in various states and extremes, often within intergenerational and participatory contexts. Her productions have been staged internationally, including in Belgium, France, Italy, Israel and Korea. Since 2019, she has been conducting research on soft skills in dance education as part of the EU project ‘Empowering Dance’ and works as a lecturer and mentor both in Germany and abroad. In 2025, she founded MAI:COMPANY – Hamburg’s first cross-generational dance company comprising people from the city. From 2026 to 2028, as part of the Tanzpakt Stadt-Land-Bund initiative, she is further developing her work on community, participation and physical diversity.

^{(Status: 2026)}

http://www.patricia-carolin-mai.de/