IF YOU LEAVE ME (NOW)...

Collisions 2026

© Juli Reinartz

The project week "If you leave me (now)...", hosted by Claire Cunningham with artist/choreographer Juli Reinartz, explored feelings of time and the act of leaving in performances.
Key questions included:

  • When do/would you leave?
  • What does it mean to exit – a performance, a space, choreographic material, a narrative, a system?
  • How could we hold space for the unfinished, interrupted and absent?
  • What if we made performance that invited people (audience or performers) to leave? How does this shape content, form, duration, venue, design?
  • How could leaving be a mutual act of care?

Drawing on crip and disabled artists’ work, Claire and Juli will explored leaving through the lens of access aesthetics and choreographies of care, considering how accessible design shapes performance and audience experience with reference to space and time.

The lab invited participants to reflect on personal and collective experiences of time —as audiences and performers—while examining the social pressures and stigmas around it. Activities included conversation, reading, writing, accessible movement and spatial arrangements.

"If you leave me (now)..."

was part of the interdisciplinary project week at the UdK Berlin

from January 5–9, 2026

led by: Claire Cunningham & Juli Reinartz

Claire Cunningham  (Chorography, Dance and Disability Arts) is a performer and creator of multi-disciplinary performances, based in Glasgow.  One of the UK’s most acclaimed and internationally renowned disabled artists, her work is rooted in the study of Crip & disabled experience, practices of care and questioning societal ideas of knowledge and value. She is the Einstein Professor of “Choreography, Dance and Disability Arts “at the Inter-University Centre for Dance in Berlin and in 2024 she premiered her new solo work, Songs of the Wayfarer.

Juli Reinartz (Making A Difference, Uniarts Helsinki) is a choreographer and artistic researcher exploring crip time as a choreographic strategy and question to collective experience at the Theater Academy of Uniarts Helsinki. Her endocrinologically turbulent body increasingly shapes her perception of time and forms the core of her research. Alongside her research, Juli co-directs the project Making a Difference in Berlin, which supports and crips artists in artistic leadership positions and fosters anti-ableist working conditions.

Kollisionen ist die transdisziplinäre Projektwoche der UdK Berlin. In der ersten Januarwoche kommen Studierende und Lehrende aus unterschiedlichen Studiengängen zusammen, um gemeinsam an künstlerischen und experimentellen Projekten zu arbeiten. Im Austausch verschiedener Perspektiven und Kompetenzen entstehen neue Formen der Zusammenarbeit, die Raum für Begegnung, Experimente und fachübergreifendes Lernen schaffen.

 

Notes from Class about Time

Text of the final presentation to "If you leave me (now)..."

performed as part of the GRAND FINALE of the Collisions 2026