The Program & Artistic Leading Ensemble
Meet the Artistic Leading Ensemble and what they are teaching for the A!KO TANZ FEST 2026: a vibrant collective of exceptional artists hailing from both national and international countries.
Johannes Härtl (DE)
Johannes Hart is a German choreographer, educator, and director at Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance in Munich. His work focuses on personal growth, resilience, and artistic development, encouraging dancers to become both skilled performers and thoughtful individuals.
With a background spanning hotel management, medicine, pedagogy, and dance, Johannes brings a unique perspective to his teaching and choreography. He has also presented at TEDxTUM, sharing his ideas on change, creativity, and the transformative power of dance as a tool for self-expression and human connection.
Workshop:Extend Your Stage Presence
We learn the most through experience. That’s why this class creates immersive experiences that are also safe spaces—places where you can explore, discover, and express your own unique language.
Using the body as a tool of expression, we will work with everything that exists between the lines: emotions, impulses, presence, and intention. Through dynamic physical movement and playful exploration, you’ll uncover your authentic presence and the inner drive that makes your performance truly yours.
This class is an invitation to move beyond technique (to be beyond, you need to be there), trust your instincts, and expand your expressive range.
Extend your stage presence. Become the best version of yourself.
Jerca rožnik novak (AT/SI)
Franzi%20Kreis%20portrait_JPG.jpg)
Jerca Rožnik Novak is a Slovenian dancer, performer, and dance educator working between Ljubljana and Vienna. She trained in performance and dance pedagogy at the Anton Bruckner Private University and holds a masters degree and a bachelors degree in social work from the University of Ljubljana. As a freelance dancer, she has collaborated with choreographers such as Willi Dorner, Rose Breuss, Gisela Elisa Heredia, Matjaž Farič, Johannes Wieland and Magdalena Reiter and others. Since 2014, she has been a regular collaborator with SILK Fluegge and the editta braun company. She is actively dancing in their newest creations.
Workshop: Work the Floor
This floorwork class explores strength, efficiency, and freedom of movement through gravity, weight transfer, spirals, and momentum. Beginning with grounding exercises, the class develops body awareness, stability, and responsiveness before moving into rolling, level changes, and transitions between standing and floorwork.
Through movement tasks, partner work, and playful exploration, dancers discover how the floor can support, challenge, and expand movement possibilities. Open to all bodies, the class encourages each dancer to work with their own anatomy, cultivating strength, clarity, sensitivity, and a deeper connection with the floor.
Damián Cortés Alberti (AT/AR)
Damián Cortés Alberti is an Argentinian dancer, choreographer, dance educator, and multidisciplinary artist based in Austria. He holds a Master of Arts in Dance Education from Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität Linz. His artistic practice spans contemporary dance, Argentine Tango, theatre, and music, with a strong focus on embodied research, spatiality, and interdisciplinary approaches. Alongside his work as a freelance performer and choreographer across Europe and South Korea, he currently works as a resident choreographer at Stadttheater Bad Hall and is a member of Cie Of(f) Verticality. He is also actively engaged with CID Vienna Section, serves as a board member of RedSapata Kulturinitiative, and is co-producer of A!KO TANZ FEST.
Workshop: Moving Energy
This movement session explores the relationship between the body, music, and dynamics. Using musicality, rhythm, and shifting qualities of energy, participants are invited to approach movement with curiosity and discover new physical possibilities. Through playful exploration of the body and space, the session encourages dancers to expand their awareness, challenge familiar movement patterns, and develop new ways of moving, responding, and connecting within space.
Kim Yu Mi (KR)
Kim Yumi is a Korean choreographer and dancer, and the artistic director of Jajak Movement, a Korean dance creation collective based in South Korea. She completed her doctoral studies at Sejong University and teaches at Korea National University of Arts (K-ARTS). She has also worked as a dancer with the Incheon Metropolitan City Dance Theatre. Her artistic practice explores new possibilities of bodily expression through movement rooted in Korean traditional dance. She has a strong interest in collective creation, visual composition, and transforming diverse Korean traditional materials and cultural elements into contemporary performance works. Through Jajak Movement, she continues to develop choreographic works while expanding artistic collaborations and international exchange across diverse cultural contexts.
Workshops:
Korean Contemporary
Samsara of Blossom: Tam-mae (探梅)
This workshop takes the fundamental movements and vocabulary of Korean dance as a starting point, exploring how traditional forms can be transformed through contemporary creative approaches. By repeating, deconstructing, and reshaping movement patterns through changes in direction, speed, and rhythm, participants discover how traditional motifs can evolve into new choreographic structures and expressions.
Korean Traditional Dance
Buchae Ipchum
This workshop introduces the distinctive movement vocabulary of Buchae Ipchum, a Korean traditional fan dance. Participants learn characteristic dance movements and fan techniques, exploring how opening, folding, turning, and extending the fan can create dynamic lines, forms, and spatial images in relation to the body.
Gaia Lemmi (IT)
She is an Italian choreographer, educator, and artistic director of Areadanza School in Livorno. With a background in classical ballet and contemporary dance, she has dedicated her career to training young dancers and developing a distinctive choreographic style.
She is the artistic director of the international competition Livorno in Danza and is regularly invited as a jury member and guest teacher at international workshops and competitions. Her work combines artistic excellence with a strong commitment to dance education and creative development.
Workshop: Contemporary Ballet
Through fluid movement, expressive choreography, and a supportive atmosphere, you will explore creativity, musicality, and dynamic movement quality. Blending the precision of ballet with the freedom of contemporary dance, the class encourages artistic expression, body awareness, and versatility. A space to reconnect with your body, discover new movement possibilities, and experience the elegance and freedom of contemporary ballet.
LiLi Jung In Lee (AT/KR)
LiLi Jung In Lee is a Korean choreographer, dancer, and producer based between Austria and Korea. She is the artistic director of Lee Jung In CREATION and the founder and director of A!KO TANZ FEST, a platform fostering artistic exchange between Korea and Austria. She is currently a PhD candidate in Time-based and Interactive Media Art at Kunstuniversität Linz. Her artistic practice explores the body as a site of sensory experience, cultural memory, and transformation, with a particular focus on breath, rhythm, circularity, and embodied perception. By connecting contemporary dance with interactive media and technology, she investigates how movement can emerge, transform, and generate new relationships between the body, space, and audience.
Workshop: Free Flow
This class explores breath as the foundation of movement, using floorwork to investigate the connection between breath, the body, and the flow of energy. Through circular pathways and embodied awareness, dancers discover how movement naturally emerges, transforms, and expands. By integrating flexibility, strength, and balance, the practice encourages dancers to move efficiently with the floor while developing their own movement language, creativity, and expressive potential.
