TanzTausch Festival, Cologne — Photo: Marisol Valqui Julius
Premiere 9 Dec 2022 — EinTanzHaus Mannheim · approx. 48 minutes
The cipher is a familiar urban dance practice: a circle in which dancers meet in physical dialogue and negotiate their skills in question and answer. With deciphered, Jonas Frey and four dancers dissolve this form and shift the focus from the individual to the group — a choreography about social space and claiming the stage.
TanzTausch Festival, Cologne — Photo: Marisol Valqui Julius
"The more urban dance seems to be deciphered, the more powerfully these brilliant dancers conjure a mysterious pull into the contemporary."
Nora Abdel Rahman · Mannheimer Morgen, 11 December 2022 (translated from German)
Deciphered is a choreography for four dancers equally at home in urban and contemporary dance, who together re-examine the cipher — the circle as a space for danced dialogue. The cipher, a familiar urban dance practice, traditionally serves as a space in which dance skill is negotiated through question and answer.
Photo: © Lys Y Seng
con.nect Festival, Bamberg — Photo: Marian Lenhard
Deciphered deconstructs this form and shifts the focus from the individual to the group. Rather than individual display, what moves to the centre is togetherness. The four dancers explore their social space, the distances between each other and the space around themselves, expanding the cipher into the shared stage space. What emerges is a collective danced dialogue that unfolds beyond the circle.
Supported by the Landesverband Freie Tanz- und Theaterschaffende Baden-Württemberg e. V., with funds from the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the Cultural Office of the City of Mannheim, and the LBBW Stiftung. Developed in Inter-Actions Studio. In cooperation with EinTanzHaus. In residency and in cooperation with Tanztendenz München e. V.
Jonas Frey is a choreographer, dancer and dance educator rooted in hip-hop and breaking, based in Mannheim. His artistic practice is shaped by co-creation — together with Julie Pécard, he founded COTA projects in 2025 as a platform for creation and collaboration.
More about Jonas Frey →
info@jonas-frey.com
+49 179 795 2005
Mannheim, Germany