Meet the Springback Academy 2026

Carl Aquilizan (NO)

Carl Aquilizan (they/them) is a Norwegian/Filipino dance artist based in Oslo, whose
artistic work explores decolonial and transformative practices, from a queer and multicultural perspective. Through questioning and disrupting societal norms and ideals, they want to create discourses that can inform, challenge and expand our ways of thinking. Transformation, multiplicity and complexity are used as frameworks to resist simplification and to reimagine new ways of being and thinking.

Their recent and upcoming projects are specifically looking into their Filipino heritage and ancestry, questioning what it means to carry ancestors’ knowledge and histories in their body. These projects also look into traces of pre-colonial world views in Filipino language, culture and trends. Carl has also been writing dance and theatre reviews for scenekunst.no.

Katarina Bogataj (SI)

Katarina Bogataj is an art historian and South Slavicist working across contemporary performing arts, criticism and cultural production. She has managed and produced international and institutional projects with organisations including the Forum of Slavic Cultures, the City Theatre of Ljubljana, Vila Zlatica Museum House, the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM), and Association of Artists (DUM), an interdisciplinary platform for contemporary dance and visual art. She completed an internship with WHW (What, How & for Whom), a Croatia-based curatorial collective active internationally.

Alongside her curatorial and editorial work—including serving as editor-in-chief of the student platform Artfiks, where she remains its most prolific editor to date—she is active as a performer in contemporary dance and dance films. She writes on dance and performance for SLOGI – the Slovenian Theatre Institute, Neodvisni and Radio Študent. Since 2021, she has been executive producer and deputy director of the DOKUDOC International Documentary Film Festival, focusing on programme development and international collaboration.

Franek Dziduch (PL/NL)

Franek Dziduch is a researcher and journalist from Poland, currently pursuing a Research Master’s in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. His main interests lie in environmental, decolonial, and migration studies, which he explores through the lenses of performance, theatre, literature and film. His creative writing has appeared in magazines such as Tlen Literacki and Sleepy Press, while his journalistic work can be found in Kultura Liberalna, Ecoes, and Amsterdam Alternative. His short film “I Would Like to Talk but You Don’t Have to Listen” was selected for the Amsterdam Student Film Festival 2025 (ASFF). He recently joined Sonic Acts, an Amsterdam-based arts organisation, as Media & Communications intern. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Soapbox Journal.

Markus Hallmark (SE/USA)

Markus Hallmark is an artist who moves between dance, writing, photography and video. With a background in hip hop and contemporary dance, he has trained and performed across Europe and is now focused on creating his own projects. He holds a BA in Political Science and Spanish Linguistics from University of California, Berkeley. He is interested in exploring the intersection between politics and dance, cross-disciplinary collaborations and cultivating community and collective organizations surrounding art. You can find his projects and work at markushallmark.com.

Clée Jordier (FR/BE)

Clée (they/them) is a Brussels-based writer and emerging performance critic.

With a background in theatre and classical literature (hypokhâgne/khâgne), Clée is interested in dramaturgy, embodied spectatorship and the politics of performance. Their approach to criticism is shaped by the desire to write accessibly for readers outside the arts field.

Since 2024, Clée have been part of PLAYWATCH, an initiative by pzazz.theater bringing together young writers to explore performance criticism through collective practice, workshops and mentoring.

Alongside criticism, Clée works as a writer and content strategist, and develops independent editorial projects at the intersection of culture, care and social justice.

Dan Mussett (BE)

Dan Mussett (1988, BE/UK) is a freelance dancer, choreographer and writer based in Brussels. He trained as a dancer in Spain and Belgium, where he graduated in 2017 from the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. Since then, he has worked as a dancer for various choreographers such as Ayelen Parolin and Jan Martens. On top of this, he has made several of his own choreographic works exploring the effects of digital technologies on the body, most recently Fully Automated Luxury Dancing! (2025), a dance show choreographed by a computer. He also writes – both poetry and non-fiction – and has had several poems published in magazines such as The Moth and The Rialto, and has begun writing dance criticism, contributing to a recent edition of e-tcetera.

Marie Pullerits (EST/NL)

Marie Pullerits (1989) is an Estonian dance and movement practitioner and former choreographer-dancer based in the Netherlands. With an interdisciplinary background in psychology, theatre studies, choreography, and physiotherapy, she approaches dance through embodied attention and lived experience. Since 2014, she has written and edited for Estonian cultural publications and worked in cultural management and journalism. Combining her movement practice with physiotherapy, she focuses on sustainable bodies and long-term movement approaches. She is interested in collaborative, horizontal modes of working and explores how collective thinking, shared perception, and new ways of sensing contemporary society can emerge from embodied practice and writing.

Lizzy Tan (UK)

Lizzy Tan is a dance artist, movement director and critic based in London. Her creative practice centres on the philosophy of image and representations of the femme performing body, drawing upon queer and feminist literatures, art history and philosophy. Her solo and collaborative projects incorporate contemporary dance, performance art, installation and digital technologies, often working with ‘found material’ from online and personal archives. Lizzy’s work has been presented in the UK, US and Germany.

Alongside her dance writing, Lizzy works in international climate policy. She holds a BFA in Dance and BA in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MSc in Local Economic Development from the LSE. Lizzy writes reviews and features for Dance Art Journal, Everything Theatre, Moving Discourse and London Theatre Review.

Ana Riscado (PT)

Ana Riscado is a creative producer, visual researcher and dramaturge with a strong interest in performance, dance and contemporary theatre. She holds a Master’s in Visual Cultural Anthropology and a BA in Public Relations, both from Lisbon, as well as a Music Management Certificate from ESE London. Over the years she has collaborated with international organisations, festivals, independent artists and curators across Lisbon, Berlin, London, Brussels and São Paulo. Her interests span cultural analysis, performance studies, art history and literary criticism. She received support from DIS‑TANZEN des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland and Produktion Bande. Her engagement with criticism began through video‑essays, using frame‑per‑second as a tool to reflect on image‑based knowledge production, later expanding toward historical reception and spectatorship in film and live art.

Mila Volkova (DE)

Mila Volkova is a dance researcher, performance artist, and astrologer based in Berlin. Originally from Saint Petersburg, she has been active in the contemporary dance scene since 2013, combining artistic practice with managerial and communications work.

She graduated in 2020 from the School of Journalism at the European University in Saint Petersburg, where she developed a strong interest in narrative, media, and cultural communication. In 2023 and 2024, Mila worked in social media and communications for the local festival “Dance Crazy About Itself and About Love,” and co-authored the dance podcast “Facultative” with Masha Sheshukova. She relocated to Berlin in 2024.

Mila’s research explores collective sensibility in dance, the symbolic and mystical aspects of movement, and how choreography communicates with its audience.