SLO | EN
SLO | EN
Premiere: 8 November 2025
Mousonturm, Frankfurt

Slovenian premiere: 15 April 2026
Kino Šiška, Ljubljana

DESERT(ED) DREAMING

Viktorija Ilioska and Katja Cheraneva

Choreography / Performance: Viktorija Ilioska, Katja Cheraneva
Dramaturgy: Chiara Marcassa
Text: Viktorija Ilioska in conversation with Katja Cheraneva
Outside eye / dramaturgy: Amèlie Haller, Patrick Faurot
Light design: Laura Salerno in collaboration with Carlos Franke
Costume Design: Laura Stellacci
Sound Design: Antonia Beeskow, Aran Kleebaur
Stage Design / Set: Nina De Ludemann
Artistic Producers: take the money and run GbR

A production by Viktorija Ilioska & Katja Cheraneva, in co-production with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Hessisches Staatsballett in the frame of Tanzfestival Rhein-Main 2025 and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia.
Funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Hessisches Ministerium für Forschung und Wissenschaft, Kunst und Kultur, LLB network through Creative Europe program and Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Ministry of the Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana.
Supported by Uferstudios Berlin and Lokomotiva – Centre for New Initiative in Arts and Culture, Skopje.
Organized by: Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia and Kino Šiška
Executive production: Jasmina Založnik and Mojca Prešern Levstek

With financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana, project Life Long Burning, supported by Creative Europe and Ministry for Public Affairs Desert(ed) Dreaming is a sensory and poetic invitation to understand lack not as the end but the beginning of something and – amid global exhaustion – to imagine new ways of living together and create possible futures. 

Here the desert takes on multiple meanings: it evokes abandoned dreams and political drought while at the same time retaining the potential for change, caring and regeneration. Inspired by hydro-feminism, speculative fiction and ecological thinking, the piece explores processes of withdrawal, voiding, extraction and emaciation – physically, ecologically and biographically. 

How can a new imaginative power be drawn from absence? What can be created on a stage that has already been deserted and transformed itself into an intermediate space, a place of memories and visions of the future. What remains when we leave places, bodies and systems behind? 

In Desert(ed) Dreaming Katja Cheraneva and Viktorija Ilioska launch a choreographic search through their shared histories of migration between Russia, North Macedonia and Germany. Viktorija Ilioska is a choreographer, performer, and artist who explores choreography through various mediums, including movement, text, voice, and sound. She studied at the Faculty of Music Arts in Skopje (BA in Dance Pedagogy and Repertory) and at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Gießen (MA in Choreography and Performance).

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 Katja Cheraneva is a freelance dancer and choreographer based in Frankfurt. She holds a Diploma from HfMDK, Frankfurt (Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Zeitgenosische und Klassische Tanz) and an MA in Arts from MA CuP (Choreography und Performance), ATW, Giessen (Angewandte Theater Wissenschaft).

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