Constantin Trommlitz | Maria Mercedes Flores Mujica | Robert Ssempijja

MEET THE CHOREOGRAPHERS - PITCH FOR PROFESSIONALS

The K3 residency is a unique opportunity for young artists from all over the world to focus on their research for eight months and to develop new pieces.

This year, cologne based choreographer, dancer and performer Maria Mercedes Flores Mujica, choreographer, filmmaker and breaker Constantin Trommlitz and the choreographer, researcher and performer Robert Ssempijja from Kampala are guests at K3. At the end of the residency and after the premieres of their new pieces, the three choreographers will present themselves and their work online to an interested professional audience.  After ten-minute presentations - designed and choreographed by the artists - there will be time for questions.

This event is for professionals, programmers and curators. You can register here.

_{Moderation: Monica Gillette
With: Maria Mercedes Flores Mujica, Constantin Trommlitz, Robert Ssempijja}

Constantin Trommlitz

is a German dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker based in Amsterdam. With a background in Break Dance and after competing for many years in the battle scene, he performed as a dancer for different Dutch companies. In 2021, he started to create his own work, always ranging between dance and film. Currently, Constantin is seeking the development of his choreographic language and the research of (chronic) pain through movement. Constantin’s work is supported by Korzo, The Hague amonst other places.

At K3, Constantin will continue his movement and choreography research Antibodies which addresses the topic of chronic pain. After a medical diagnosis about his chronic pain, he started to use dance and digtal art to to process and express pain. He will explore his relationship with pain as a dancer with a background in breaking, and include perspectives of dancers with other styles. Interested in how movement can be a tool to share pain, Constantin wants to change the narrative of pain being a limitation into a motor.

(Stand: 2024)

Maria Mercedes Flores Mujica

is a Venezuelan dancer and choreographer living in Cologne. Before moving to Cologne to study dance at the University of Music and Dance, she studied modern languages and translation at the Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela. Since 2018 she has been creating her own work in collaboration with various and in 2024 she received the NRW KulturSekretariat Tanzrecherche scholarship. Her choreographies are based on the complexity of rhythm and its perception, and on knowledges of folk and contemporary dance, celebration, and rituals.

For her research at K3 she will be engage in an exploration of Joropo, a couple dance where gender roles are binary, and inspired by the syncretism of Venezuelan spiritism. This dance gives voice and volume to unheard cosmologies, voices silenced due to patriarchal-colonialist developments. Creating a celebratory, ritualistic and interactive environment, Maria seeks, together with the audience, to celebrate, reconnect and heal the relationship with the female voice muffled over time.

(Stand: 2024)

Robert Ssempijja

is a Ugandan contemporary artist, dancer, and researcher who works in traditional and non-traditional spaces in an era of post-colonialism and decolonization. Working between Africa and Europe, he studied at École des Sables (Dakar, Senegal), danced for Christoph Winkler in Berlin, had residencies at PACT Zollverein, showed his own work at Sophiensaele Berlin or received the Pina Bausch Fellowship. Through his work, he is searching for a regenerative art practice that moves away from exploitative relationships.

Departing from the colonial origins that shaped the architecture of his home town Kampala, at K3 Ssempijja will research its contemporary repercussions. The project aims to examine the enduring legacy of the city’s colonial past, the resilience of its inhabitants, and the role of structural design in shaping identity. In doing so he challenges the notion of growth and prosperity for a country, a city, and its people when their foundations were neither constructed nor intended for their benefit.

(Stand: 2024)