"What about Connection?" - School of Experiences 2026

From Thursday, 5 to Sunday, 8 November 2026, the fourth edition of the School of Experiences will take place. The series of events, developed by choreographer and dancer Ben J. Riepe and team, brings together perspectives from science, art and somatic practice around various questions. This year’s guiding theme, “What about Connection?”, places possibilities of connection, connectedness, approach and belonging at the centre.

In a time characterised by acceleration, digitalisation and isolation, we are at the same time more strongly interconnected than ever before. And yet many people experience loneliness, alienation and the loss of community. The Schule des Erlebens 2026 – What about Connection? takes this tension as its starting point and asks: How does connection emerge and what do we need to feel connected to others, to ourselves and to our environment? How can community be experienced without dissolving differences? At the centre is the body as a place of relationship.

Planned are impulse talks, an artistic focus with performance, dance and concert, as well as various opportunities for encounter. The artistic programme includes the performance “Holy Shit” by Ben J. Riepe, a participatory dance project by Patricia Carolin Mai, choreographer and researcher of movement as a somatic, empowering practice, as well as a concert by composer and double bassist Bára Gísladóttir and a choir project by Ari Benjamin Meyers, artist and currently substitute professor of sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Guests of the theory parcours include, among others, musicologist Bernd Brabec de Mori, who specialises in the ethnomusicology of the Amazon as well as music and healing. In interplay with encounter formats that make community physically experienceable through dance, singing, music and rituals, the individual programme elements come together to form a “Choreography of Experience.”

The Schule des Erlebens is aimed both at students from seven departments at five universities in NRW as part of the “Campus” and at a broad public. The “Campus” is understood as a closed event.

The event will take place on 5 and 6 November at the Pina Bausch Zentrum Under Construction in Wuppertal, and on 7 and 8 November at the Künstlerverein Malkasten as well as at FREIRAUM in Düsseldorf.

The Schule des Erlebens, as an interdisciplinary model format by Ben J. Riepe and team, places the exploration of new approaches to learning at the forefront.

The coming together of academic, artistic and somatic disciplines, practices and perspectives in polyphonic events aims at a comprehensive experience. At the centre is an understanding that is both cognitive and physically sensory. The previous editions of the Schule des Erlebens, with more than 250 students and several hundred visitors, explored the thematic fields “What about the Body?” (2021), “What about the Senses?” (2022) and “What about Reality?” (2025).

The full programme will be published shortly.

Participating universities and departments 2026:

Institute of Art History / Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Prof. Dr. Timo Skrandies)
Institute of Philosophy / Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Prof. Dr. Markus Schrenk)
Institute of Media and Cultural Studies / Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Prof. Dr. Maren Butte)
Scene & Intimacy Coordination at the Institute of Music and Media / Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf (Jun. Prof. Hanna Werth)
Centre for Contemporary Dance (ZZT) / Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (Dr. Johanna Hörmann)
Institute of Theatre Studies / Scenic Research / Ruhr University Bochum (Dr. Robin Junicke)
Institute of Contemporary Dance / Folkwang University of the Arts Essen (Prof. Dr. Stephan Brinkmann)

An event by Ben J. Riepe/FREIRAUM, funded by Kunststiftung NRW, the Cultural Office of the City of Düsseldorf and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, in cooperation with the Pina Bausch Centre Under Construction, Wuppertal, and the Artists’ Association Malkasten, Düsseldorf.

Photo: Michal Ramus