International
Culture
Project
2020-2023

/ International Culture Project

In the face of stirring global events, the civil society cultural project HUMAN [ˈhjuːmən] invites people to set varied, powerful and creative accents for more humanity. Initiator and artistic director of the project is the composer Helge Burggrabe (*1973).

"It is," says Helge Burggrabe, "absolutely necessary and at the same time a wonderful opportunity to use the universal language and power of music to set many distinctive and powerful signs for more humanity and peaceful coexistence across all borders."

On the way to the anniversary year 2023: 75 years of UN human rights (1948-2023).

To this end, he composed the "HUMAN Music Work for Orchestra and Percussion" (60') - as a "basic melody" and inspired by the 30 articles of the UN Convention on Human Rights.

The composition, conceived as a circle of life, uses the sound language of a chamber orchestra, expanded by a percussion ensemble and piano, to explore the basic processes and tensions of being human in a nuanced, forceful and powerful way: Birth (1), basic needs (2), freedom (3), equality (4), brotherhood (5), love (6), home (7), protection (8), work (9), recreation (10), creativity (11), community (12) and death (13). The respective opposites and tensions also resonate: Freedom and unfreedom, protection and defencelessness, equality and inequality, or as another central theme that concerns and touches every human being: home and foreign.

HUMAN music is moving - and also wants to move in the literal sense: "Because the essentials of UN human rights really have to 'move' everyone, so that they can become an attitude of their own and also really be lived. That is why I have also always had HUMAN music in dance, especially in community dance, in mind." (Helge Burggrabe)

The HUMAN Community Dance performances at the Bremen Theatre and the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels (summer 2021), directed by the international team of choreographers led by Wilfried van Poppel and Amaya Lubeigt, demonstrated how that can be possible (cf. film of the premiere). Starting in Bremen and Brussels, they realize numerous HUMAN school projects with their concept "Five days to dance".

If many people get involved, great things can happen!

Conductors, orchestras, dance companies, teachers, initiatives ... are also warmly invited to join in with HUMAN Music and to set expressive accents with HUMAN music and ideas. Selected ideas and tips can be found here.

An application is not necessary.

Of course we are happy to receive information about your HUMAN initiatives and HUMAN projects and will gladly publish them on the website.

Reach out to the project management:

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News

Grand HUMAN School Project at the Lessingtheater Wolfenbüttel

Erste gemeinsame Probe

For the first time, around 100 students met on the Lessing Theatre's studio stage on 7 March 2023. Beforehand, each group had chosen a theme from the HUMAN Suite and presented it in class.

"THE LITTLE PRINCE"

The premiere is the day after tomorrow!

On Saturday, choreographer Bryan Arias and the Leipzig Ballet will present a completely new, poetic version of Antoine Saint-Exupéry's work.
The

News overview

Mitarbeiterportraits Lessingtheater Wolfenbüttel - April 2018

Even the first rehearsal together was full of touching, humorous, exciting moments. It was a great feeling to see how intensively the students had already engaged with human rights and music. I am looking forward to the big performance in June.

Lena Simon

Cultural Office of the City of Wolfenbüttel, Director of the HUMAN Project at the Lessingtheater Wolfenbüttel

I’m so enthusiastic about HUMAN because this creative dance project brings my somewhat gutsy composure to the fore where there is no dividing line between a playful presence and depth, spirituality and human rights.

Pierre Stutz

Author of the HUMAN book "Menschlichkeit JETZT!"

In a dance project like HUMAN, everyone can participate. One's own abilities are taken into account and the best is brought out.

Madita Brünjes

Ensemble member, HUMAN Dance Premiere Bremen

It fills me with great joy and confidence to weave the loving, appreciative togetherness of the human family in free dance, together with other dancers.

Vera Griebert-Schröder

Participant of the HUMAN project with free dance / Conscious Dance, Munich

In this community dance project, the human right to cultural empowerment can be experienced. I am sure that the HUMAN performances will raise awareness of this important issue. We all have to commit to the concrete realisation of human rights!

Karoline Ott

Violinist and dramaturge of the Kammerensemble Konsonanz, HUMAN dance premiere at the Bremen Theatre

I am extremely proud of our students as well as the whole school family. The performance has demonstrated what our kids are capable of when given the chance. What was clearly noticable tonight: Our diversity unites us.

Florian Hölzl

Major of Markt Pfeffenhausen/Lower Bavaria, on the 20th jubilee of the school partnership of the primary and secondary school Pfeffenhausen and Szkoła Podstawowa in. Marii Konopnickiej in Jaworzyna Slaska

A great project! I wish all participants deeply lasting and happy impressions and experiences. I would love to dance along right away! And finally, I also hope that the message will get to places and people where it is most urgently needed, so that human rights can really be rights for all people.

Julia Jentsch

Film and theatre actress

It was a once in a lifetime experience. Reconnecting with oneself and everyone around.

Eliane Eid

Ensemble member, HUMAN Dance Premiere Bremen (2021), Performing artist, digital narrator and creator

The human project made me meet new people and visit new places, to create an amazing choreography.

Íris Santos

Participant of the "Five days to dance"-Erasmus+ project at the Lernhaus am Campus in Osterholz-Scharmbeck

Music and dance express what cannot be said and what is impossible to be silent about. Man must not be silent and must not be silenced. That is why we dance.

Mareike Windorf

Managing Director, Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin

People dancing together is the ideal way of engaging with each other in a spirit of openness, respect and acceptance.

Wilfried van Poppel

Choreography Team HUMAN Premiere and head of HUMAN school projects

The HUMAN International Culture Project as a process of human rights education honours human rights and also all those who participate in it.

Gerhard Ziener

Pedagogical-Theological Centre Stuttgart

It's unbelievable what the group has developed on human rights in such a short time. The interpretation is beautiful and has touched me very deeply.

Mirjam Rohde

class teacher 12a, on the HUMAN dance project at the Ida-Ehre-Gemeinschaftsschule, Bad Oldesloe (March 2023)

More than ever, our world needs humanity. So I' m very happy that HUMAN wants to work with young people to overcome opposites in order to realise the dream of equality and unity of cultures in a loving and humane way.

Aldegonde Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn

Initiate the HUMAN performance in Brussels

It's a great project, with the best instrumental music I've ever heard! ♥️

Yagmur Sahin

Participant of the "Five days to dance"-Erasmus+ project in Meppel, Netherlands and Viseu, Portugal

Dancing together is so wonderful. Dance is a great language that all people understand. For me, it is a great joy to express the 13 pieces on being human. I am really gripped by dance fever!

Yeroh Saw

Ensemble member, HUMAN Dance Premiere Bremen

I very much hope that many will be so inspired by the innovative and exciting HUMAN Culture Project and the young people's work for human rights. We are happy to contribute to this.

Prof. Dr. Karin Luckey

Rector Hochschule Bremen/City University of Applied Sciences

julio-HSB_Chor - Stefanie Kirche_29.6.2019_MMP5332

A project such as HUMAN underlines what is common to all people and lets us reflect on the importance of human rights. I like to contribute to bringing more awareness of their importance to society.

Julio Fernández

conductor of the HUMAN dance premiere at the Bremen Theatre, founded the IntoNation Choir of the Bremen University of Applied Sciences in 2014 with the aim of developing choral works with singers from all over the world

Movement arises out of itself, that's how I dance. Doing this for human rights holds archaic moments and touches my heart - it is healing. Taking the movement of our VALUES into the world is simply wonderful.

Andrea M. Nossem

Participant of the HUMAN rights conscious dance group, Munich

It was an exciting and intense week where the students pushed themselves to their limits while living humanity with grace and energy. A wonderful experience for all involved!

Barbara Meyer und Annette Bildhauer

Teachers at Gymnasium am Wall in Verden/Aller

The idea of the HUMAN project is to bring young people together and give them a voice so that they are heard as individuals and as a group.

Royston Maldoom

Artistic choreographic support

HUMAN offers an inspiring and empowering opportunity for young people and all others involved to work together on an artistic project, and with a focus on the values, needs and desires that are common to all human beings, to creatively counter the current tide of global issues that are shaking our inner stability.

Susan Barnett

Choreography Team HUMAN Premiere

The dance project was truly unique. It has been so nice to feel how much joy the impaired people had to be able to dance with us.

Anina Hartmann

Participant of the first inclusive HUMAN project in June 2021, Rudolf Steiner Schule Zürcher Oberland, Wetzikon

»[…] We are tonight in the HUMAN dance project spectators or participants of a new human-human relationship without ifs and buts. […] The only essential thing is the encounter at the same eye level in the presence of the full individuality of each other. […]«

Domenig Christian Gaegauf

initiate the first inclusive HUMAN dance project in Switzerland (June 2021; communicated via Supported Communication)

Being HUMAN is our reality, but feeling HUMAN is our right. Through this project and through dance we want to invite participants to love and express life, feeling, understanding and working together for a better world.

Amaya Lubeigt

Choreography Team HUMAN Premiere and head of HUMAN school projects

The project was a totally new dance experience and a really wonderful time to be together, without the stress of having to take notes. We were all able to contribute and problems were also dealt with directly.

Nele

student on the HUMAN dance project at Ida-Ehre-Gemeinschaftsschule Bad Oldesloe (March 2023)

Edris - a young Afghan who danced in this project - won my heart! Between despair and tears in his eyes from laughter, he made me live through everything in the four days. At the end, he gave me a Turkish euro, which he must have had with him as a lucky charm on his escape. It was really as if someone was pressing a gold treasure into my hand out of sheer gratitude of being seen. THAT touched and impressed me deeply.

Nina Baldinger

Choreographer, director of a HUMAN Community Dance project in Freiburg (9/2022) with 20 people aged between 6 and 74 from seven nations (Madagascar, Turkey, South America etc.).

Very special the opportunity to share with others and to bring forever in the body movements, images and claims of Human Rights like Liberty, Equality, Creativity ... through HUMAN and the dance-theatre.

Pablo García Bartolomé

Psicólogo colegiado M-33251 especialista en arte terapia, salud comunitaria y educación para la salud.

Dear friends, thank you for the HUMAN project and for the determination, cooperation and organisation of the youth exchange. May Pfeffenhausen be a symbol of mutual understanding and friendship.

Jan M. Malkiewicz

Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Munich, he visited HUMAN Performance Performance on the 20th anniversary of the school partnership of the primary and secondary school Pfeffenhausen/Lower Bavaria and Szkoła Podstawowa in. Marii Konopnickiej in Jaworzyna Slask (October 2022).

Our German-Polish student exchange week in cooperation with the HUMAN project days has been the most impressive event ever to take place at our secondary school. The 45 children from Germany, Ukraine, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, Hungary, Syria, Spain and Peru also really got beyond themselves in the Community Dance. It was a very touching and moving demonstration of humanity!

Gabriele Lechner

Rector of the Primary and Secondary School Pfeffenhausen/Lower Bavaria; the school has had a partnership for 20 years with Szkoła Podstawowa im. Marii Konopnickiej in Jaworzyna Slaska. For the 20th anniversary of the school partnership, the HUMAN Community Dance Workshop ended with a performance of the HUMAN themes "Home", "Protection" and "Love" (Choreographer: Wilfried van Poppel, Amaya Lubeig, Susan Barnett; 10/2022).

Young people who are interested in people in other countries develop a deep understanding of a Europe of diversity, of a Europe of peace and democracy. This is the great asset of this school partnership and the HUMAN performance is a powerful, distinctive sign of this.

Ruth Müller, MdL (SPD)

Second Vice Chairwoman of the SPD in the Bavarian State Parliament, District Councillor in the Landshut District, Municipal Councillor in Pfeffenhausen and Foundation Member of the Friends of Pfeffenhausen-Jaworzyna Slaska e. V.

Well, I think human rights are an incredibly brilliant idea! The fact that human beings as a species, which is very much characterised by survival of the fittest, can conceive of such ideals of equality, freedom and solidarity is a phenomenal achievement.

Morten Reisemann

Ensemble member, HUMAN Dance Premiere Bremen

To us as a label, the HUMAN project means empathy and enthusiasm for interpreting the UN’s declaration of human rights in music and dance in a brand-new way.

Marcus Heinicke

Senior Product Manager, Edel Kultur/Berlin Classics

It's all about confidence. HUMAN is a very nice project where you can express your self and I think that's amazing.

Rita Pereira

Participant of the "Five days to dance"-Erasmus+ project at the Lernhaus am Campus in Osterholz-Scharmbeck

Participating in the Human project has given me the opportunity to recognise and transmit through the expression of dance universal sensations and feelings of human rights in a wonderful and unknown environment for me. Both in terms of the artistic landscape and the group of people who have shared this project.

Gloria Madrigal Mir

Participant in a HUMAN dance project in Asturias, summer 2022

A HUMAN performance that took us with it. Two-way unification and decoding of movement and music. Deep and joyful at the very same time. A touching reminder of human rights, so valuable and so much under threat.

Katharina Vollmer

Pastor, Swiss German Reformed Parish of Geneva, on the HUMAN performance on UN Human Rights Day, 10.12.2022 at the Temple de Madeleine (Direction by Prof. Nathalie Effenberger Dance School Youra Tcheremissinoff)

Don’t be afraid to be big, it was one of the best experiences in my life.

Joana Laranjeira

Participant of the "Five days to dance"-Erasmus+ project in Meppel, Netherlands

To dance with other people is always very moving and fills the heart immensely, specially when you see so many people who didn't know each other before, dancing together a piece like HUMAN on stage.

Susanne Eule

Choreographer, director of a HUMAN Community Dance project in Freiburg with 20 people aged between 6 and 74 and from seven nations (Madagascar, Turkey, South America etc.).

For me, HUMAN is the chance of an intercultural embrace by people who respect life.

David Cisternas

Violinist and dramaturge of the Kammerensemble Konsonanz

The purpose of the HUMAN project is to empower and allow young people to flourish.

Helge Burggrabe

HUMAN Initiator and Composer of the HUMAN Suite for orchestra

To express in free dance what is manifested from moment to moment on these compositions by Helge Burggrabe on elementary themes of being human, unites us as a group and brings our individual expression of humanity into the world. From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for this great present!

Oranna Erb

Direction of the HUMAN dance project with freestyle dance in Munich

For me, HUMAN is about essentials: Beyond language and cultural barriers, we are people - with bodies that want to move. Community Dance can overcome walls and build bridges! So let us dance!

Nanni Kloke

Choreography Team HUMAN Premiere

16_06_22_Grenzen_bewegen-94Alexander_Melliger

Human encounter in movement, where the sparks fly before the dance begins. And suddenly we spectators are also part of this warm-hearted community of people who are all on the same way.”

Semya Ayoubi

Visitor of the HUMAN Community Dance performance at the Inclusive European Congress "Moving Borders" in Zurich on June 16, 2022

The moving engagement with human rights set positive processes in motion in the participants and promoted and enriched communication between all.

Katharina Gutzeit

Dance teacher and cultural mediator, director of the HUMAN dance project with Year 12 students, Ida-Ehre-Gemeinschaftsschule Bad Oldesloe (March 2023)

The human rights are the minimum common framework on the grounds of which the individual can develop. Therefore, they must be collectively demanded and protected. In the workshop team formed by Amaya and Wilfried, we are all pieces of a beautiful puzzle whose elements join together to form a whole. But the message is never clear, it requires audience members who are challenged by what happens on stage.

Angélica López de la Manzanara

Jurist, participant in the HUMAN Community Dance project in Asturias in summer 2022

Bremen and dance, Bremen and human rights - they all match in a wonderful way. I am very happy that this exciting and important project is starting here in Bremen and I wish that it will reach many young people and sensitise them to the value of human rights until it ends in the year after next.

Dr. Andreas Bovenschulte

Mayor, President of the Bremen Senate, Patron of the HUMAN dance premiere at the Bremen Theatre

HUMAN project is about us all. No matter your color, country of origin, age, background, disability, or culture … it is about you too. And it’s a privilege to be part of it!

Albino Moura

School director Escola de Dança Lugar Presente, Viseu/Portugal, Partner in the Erasmus+ project

The book Menschlichkeit JETZT! by Pierre Stutz and Helge Burggrabe is an appeal to stop separating taking good care of oneself from developing compassion. I discover something in the book and in the HUMAN project that also inspires the work of our publishing group as an impulse: Live well and live the good!

Ulrich Peters

Director Verlagsgruppe Patmos

The HUMAN project strives to encourage young people to develop their own strengths and visions so that they can make their own way as part of a free and tolerant society.

Kurt de Prins

Director of the IMELDA school in Brüssel-Molenbeek

For me, this HUMAN performance expressed a new human right, as essential as any other: the right to be who you are!

Yann Lenggenhager

History teacher, Lead Educator Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, Switzerland

For me, participating in a community dance project means being able to express myself without boundaries. In HUMAN, we thus present the basic rights of humanity, which unfortunately are not respected in many countries.

Sandra Calvo Pastor

Ensemble member, HUMAN Dance Premiere Bremen

For me, dance makes my world better. I tell stories and images with it. It's something very personal, intimate and at the same time very communal.

Mina Raschiatore

Ensemble member, HUMAN Dance Premiere Bremen

Participating in the Human International Cultural Dance Project in Pfeffenhausen has been an unforgettable adventure and a wonderful learning experience for the Polish students.

Barbara Dzikowska

The HUMAN International Cultural Project is a very touching community dance project and as a part of the school exchange it can hardly be topped. Barbara Dzikowska, teacher, Szkoła Podstawowa im. Marii Konopnickiej in Jaworzyna Slaska; the school has had a partnership for 20 years with ‘Grund- und Mittelschule’ Pfeffenhausen/Bayern. For the 20th anniversary of the school partnership, the HUMAN Community Dance Workshop ended with a performance of the HUMAN themes "Home", "Protection" and "Love" (Choreographer: Wilfried van Poppel, Amaya Lubeig, Susan Barnett; 10/2022).

During the project, we started to think more about the topic of human rights. We couldn't stop thinking about the fact that some privileges, such as the right to work or education, don't exist in many countries. We don't even think about it any more because these rights seem to be self-evident to us, but through the intense immersion through movement and words, we realized how much we still have to struggle in this area.

Eva Beilharz and Merle Horn

Students, 12th grade of the Freie Waldorfschule in Freudenstadt. Parts of the HUMAN project has been developed in the eurythmy class.

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