Meet the Startup Forum Presenters at Spring Forward 2025
22 January 2025For the fourth consecutive year, a group of emerging dance presenters will be guided through the festival by Aerowaves Partners, addressing current programming issues. Support will be offered to three of them to plan and present projects involving Aerowaves artists when they return home.
Picture: Startup Forum group 2024 – © Anna Kushnirenko
Aerowaves board member and former director of Dance Umbrella, Betsy Gregory, leads the initiative, alongside Francesca Manica (Romaeuropa, Rome), Frosso Trousa (DAN.C.CE Unitiva and Arc for Dance festival, Athens), Ingrida Gerbutavičiūtė (Tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf) and Roberto Casarotto (Aerowaves Co-Director).
Vár B. Árting (Faroe Islands)
Vár Bech Árting is a self-producing freelance dance artist from the Faroe Islands with a BA from Northern School of Contemporary Dance, UK. Through projects and her activities as co-artistic director of RIVA The Faroese Dance Company, alongside Rannvá G. Niclasen, she is working towards establishing dance as an integrated part of the Faroese art scene. She is active in Nordic collaborations through organising projects with GÁTT Nordic Arts Festival, bydans festival and the North Atlantic Islands Dance Network.
Jiaxin Chen (The Netherlands)
Jiaxin Chen (1991, the Netherlands) has a hybrid practice. She graduated from Dancer Creative Contemporary at RijnIJssel and went on to study dance dramaturgy under Merel Heering. Since then Jiaxin has worked for several dance and theatre institutions, as a dance dramaturge and/or as a programmer, such as Dansateliers and Korzo theater. She teaches at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, Codarts Rotterdam and Fontys Tilburg, and is simultaneously developing her own choreographic practice. Jiaxin’s approach and work derives from her personal urgency for a more inclusive field, with more multiplicity of voices, stories and bodies.
Joaquín Collado Parreño (Spain)
Joaquín is a dancer self-taught in ballroom, urban and contemporary dance. Since 2017 he has been developing his own choreographic practice, through which he blurs the boundaries between the human and the animal, dance and performance, the body and its “monstrosities”. Diving into metamorphic processes, Joaquín’s choreography explores the grotesque with the poetic. He has been involved with dance organisations such as La Caldera (Barcelona), the Mercat de les Flors, the Artdanthé Festival, La Briqueterie CDCN, the Grec Festival, Dansa València, Paso a 2 – Certamen Coreográfico de Madrid and El Graner in Barcelona (where he is currently an associate artist). In 2021, Joaquín founded the Paisaje dance festival in his hometown Villamalea (Castilla La-Mancha, Spain) which he directs.
Kristyn Fontanella (Ireland)
As a choreographer/dance artist Kristyn Fontanella focuses her past knowledge of Irish step dancing and presents it in a contemporary context. Having toured for many years with Riverdance, Lord of the Dance & as lead soloist in Gaelforce Dance, her current mission is to show another side of the complex world of Irish Step dancing to future generations.
Kristyn resides in Co. Galway where she creates, directs and produces her own work which has successfully toured across Ireland and internationally.
Kristyn was newly appointed in late 2023 as Executive Director of Galway Dance where she runs the dance organization which supports dance artists in the West/Northwest of Ireland.
Mariia Kondratieva (Ukraine)
Mariia Kondratieva is a Ukranian dancer, performer, researcher, teacher and curator, originally from Dnipro city and now based in Lviv. Focused professionally on contemporary dance and performance, in recent years she has worked primarily as a solo artist, exploring themes that have emerged in her life due to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She is a founder and curator of Mansarda 11, a new space for dance, performance, body and movement practices in Lviv. Mariia is working on her PhD research at the Choreography and Direction Department of Lviv National University.
Ana Lorger (Slovenia)
Ana Lorger holds a degree in philosophy and a master’s in comparative literature and dramaturgy. Since 2020, she has been writing theatre and dance reviews covering both institutional and independent scenes. As a cultural journalist, she works on the national Slovenian radio and currently, she combines journalism with curation. Ana worked on the performance selection for 30th International Festival of Contemporary Art – City of Women, which takes place in Ljubljana every October, and she is now preparing the next festival edition. Within the festival, she is also the editor of the web blog Reflecting. In addition, she is part of a musical duo, shape(s)witch, and writes short stories for various literature platforms.
Yewande YoYo Odunubi (UK)
Yewande YoYo Odunubi is an artist, researcher and cultural producer whose practice revolves around the enquiry: “What does the body need to dream?” Viewing the body beyond the idea of a singular fixed form, identity or function, she is interested in how we see, read, shape and practise ourselves. Inspired by freestyle/improvisation as choreographic and pedagogical methodologies, Yewande experiments with movement, performance, film, music, text and facilitation as a means of translation and dialogue with the body’s present and imagined possibilities. Yewande is part of the Rose Choreographic School’s 2024-2026 cohort and is a Producer & Project Manager at International Curators Forum (ICF).
Valerio Verzin (Italy)
With a background in contemporary dance, performing arts management, and literature, Valerio has collaborated with numerous Italian festivals, acquiring in-depth knowledge of the performing arts field. In 2018, he relocated to Sicily to serve as a producer for Scenario Pubblico/Compagnia Zappalà Danza. He later joined IterCulture, an association committed to promoting and expanding access to the performing arts.
Since 2022, he has been co-organising the international performing arts festival Teatri Riflessi, taking on its artistic direction alongside Dario D’Agata. In 2024, he became the Sicilian representative for the Anticorpi XL Network, the Italian network supporting emerging choreographers.