Festival OSTEN, Bitterfeld-Wolfen / IMPULSE – Festival Performance, Theater und Tanz, Mühlheim an der Ruhr
2026
The Zschornewitz power station was once a place of work. At ‘Werk-Disko’, you can experience the power station in a whole new way: as a dance floor, as a space for sound, as a piece of history that you can feel with your body. Where workers once gathered to generate electricity together, people now come together to the sound of electronic music to release energy through dance. During a collective dance walk across the power station grounds, bodies, sound and history intertwine in a new way.
What is brought to life here is the result of extensive research carried out in both East and West Germany. The choreographer and dancer Mandy Unger, together with local people, explored former workplaces in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Zschornewitz: old industrial estates, factories and worksites. Places that were once centres of work and community and now stand abandoned.
The work was created as part of a networking grant from the Performing Arts Fund, under which the OSTEN Festival and the Impulse Festival collaborated to exchange views on experiences of transformation in the East and West.