Baila España 2026

Let’s Talk About Trance: Transmuted Symphony
Andrea Peña

The choreographer Andrea Peña has the dancers of TANZ_KASSEL move within a highly athletic, contemporary movement vocabulary. Like being at a rave while standing at the edge of the crowd, the audience can initially encounter their own perspective from the outside, before gradually surrendering to the energy of the choreography, which develops such a rhythmic pull that the uncontrollable essence of dance and trance becomes palpable. On stage, an intense, hypnotic and captivating movement narrative unfolds, celebrating the resistance of the dancing body.

Andrea Peña describes the process of her creation as “Punk as the new sublime,” in which the rebellious energy of punk flows into the choreography. The raw yet energetically archaic power of punk breaks through every norm; the movements become “Poetries of Insistence,” expressing the urgency of movement. Through her art, Peña challenges conventional forms and vocabularies in dance, including those of ballet.

For the series Let’s Talk About Trance, Colombian choreographer Andrea Peña created “Transmuted Symphony,”featuring her distinctive physical and highly athletic choreographic style. She is a choreographer, cultural theorist, and artist who explores new forms of storytelling through her concepts. With a background in industrial design, she brings a strong sense of structure to her work and views the body both as material and as an actor within evolving systems. Peña is the director of Andrea Peña & Artists (AP&A), a dance company founded in 2014 and based in Montreal. The company has toured across several continents. Peña received the Ballet BC Choreographer Award in 2024 and the New Choreographies Award from La Biennale di Venezia – Danza in 2023.

Choreography: Andrea Peña | Dance: Manon Andrea Anna Andral, Sophie Borney, Anna Gorokhova, Myles L. Hunter, Selene Martello, Safet Mistele, Kesi Rose Olley Dorey, James Potter, Klil Ela Rotshtain, Shafiki Sseggayi, Matthias Vaucher, Tse-Wei Wu | Set and costumes: Sibylle Pfeiffer | Sound design: Coppélia LaRoche Francoeur | Lighting: Stefanie Franke | Dramaturgy: Thorsten Teubl, Lars Gunnar Anderstam