Musical Bodies – a monthly series for dance & music

Dancer and choreographer Naïma Mazic selects a Viennese dancer and a Viennese jazz musician, who are commissioned to create a duet together lasting at least 30 and no more than 45 minutes.

The task is to explore new avenues in the communication between dance and music, to establish a non-hierarchical dialogue between the visual and the auditory, and to share a common pulse at least once. The artists are free to decide whether and how much they wish to rehearse and research, or whether they will meet for the first time on the day of the performance. Following the performance, there will be a 7-minute audience discussion in which attendees can share their impressions.

MUSICAL BODIES by more2rhythm is a monthly series for dance and music in 2026 at the Strenge Kammer

Proceeds will be donated to a charitable organization.

Bita Bell is a dance artist, writer, and composer based in Vienna. Her practice is grounded in the concept of the body as an archive, focusing on the intersections of collective memory and individual narrative. Her recent performance, The Sun Is Gone, premiered at and in co-production with Tanzquartier Wien. Her next piece, Our Moon Never Stops, will premiere at and in co-production with studio brut wien.

Kenji Herbert is a Vienna-based guitarist, composer, and improvising musician. Raised in Osaka and Kobe, Japan, and shaped by a decade in Brooklyn’s creative music scene, his work invites spontaneous dialogues between seemingly disparate musical and aesthetic worlds, resulting in a sound that resists easy categorization, yet feels at home in a wide range of contexts.

He leads a trio with Vinicius Cajado and Lukas König, whose debut album A Million Forests of the Fall (Unit Records, 2024) received the Austrian Jazz Prize for Album of the Year. The project weaves a compelling narrative that draws on influences from indie rock to ambient soundscapes, brought to life through the trio’s dynamic interplay. His previous releases include As If For Now (Urchin Records, 2021) and The Way the Light Falls (Inner Circle Music, 2016).

Herbert co-leads The Scruffy Herberts with Peter Herbert, as well as a trio with Jordina Milla and Sofia Labropoulou. He is a member of Andras Dés Quartet, Matthew Halpin Group, and Georgia Weber’s Sleeved Hearts, and contributed to Grammy Award–winning artist Arooj Aftab’s breakthrough album Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam, 2021). Along with Keisuke Matsuno, he was featured in Misaki Matsui’s 2017 documentary “mit Kenji & Keisuke – Brooklyn, New York.”