Discover Samira Aakcha's Profile

 

I arrive in DOCK 11 one rainy December evening, a little too early for the class led by Samira Aakcha. Her ‘Contemporary für Anfänger’ class is evidently popular. There are already others in the waiting area – regulars remarking about how they have been enjoying her classes. The next hour and half is packed with Samira’s proposals that encourages qualities of grounded-ness in the entire body, particularly in our hips, and evoking fluidity in the spine. She encourages tapping into sensation. Right before we jump into an improvised score across the floor, she says, “Think…No, Don’t think. Just feel.”

Here I see Samira Aakcha in her element as a teacher of dance. Later in the week, I watch a video of her performance-sharing along with Bresa Ayub as part of the Ada Studio residency.

My shallow dive into her work becomes the basis for my ensuing conversation with Samira, in a café to speak further about her practice.

 

PARVATHI: You mentioned earlier that you wanted to be a dance pedagogue. I am curious to know how about your arrival at this juncture of becoming a dance pedagogue. Why teaching? 

SAMIRA: It has been a journey these last few years. I did my education with focus on pedagogy, choreography and performance. I started in 2021 with my first classes in Berlin and since this year in May I'm more settled in what I'm doing. Now I feel like I have developed a frame for how I want to work.
With teaching, I realized recently that I find purpose for myself in it. I enjoy that the people who are coming are actually participating and they have a physical experience. They don't come and only watch what I'm doing but they're also go into it, discover things about themselves or expand their way of moving. their movement language. And I also always say when I teach that it's just one approach of many so it doesn't mean that it has to work for everyone.
I'm also teaching teenagers and kids. Through these classes, we have this kind of ritual every week where we meet, dance together, learn together and build a certain relationship with each other. I also discover what they need as a group or individually. I feel that this is something that's also influencing in how they move through their daily life. Sometimes they reflect that they really enjoy coming to the group because they feel very safe, and feel very appreciated by me as a teacher and by the other teens or kids that are participating in the class. So I feel It's a very important space for young people but also for adults for their daily lives.
For me I think the point of people participating and making their own physical experience or emotional experience is something I really appreciate about teaching movement or dance.

 

PARVATHI: In your three years of teaching, what are some of your reflections on being able to read bodies about what they need?

SAMIRA: In every class through the warm up, waves section and improvisation, I kind of start to observe the individual people and how they are responding to what I'm saying and how they take it into their bodies. 
In general, I try to create a space where people can arrive and understand that this is time they have for themselves. So it's something also protected. Like, I feel sometimes we bring a lot of things into our practice, it could be working out, or doing something leisurely for yourself like taking a dance class. But I feel it's also the moment when I realize it's my decision how I enter the room and what I allow to enter my mind. Whatever else is going on, I cannot solve it anyways now in these 90 minutes of class. So I can also decide to put it away for this time and just enjoy myself being in this class and moving. So I try to create more this kind of protected place where people can also feel like they empower themselves to be curious about the body, about the people around them, and to learn that nothing outside the class is important right now. 
There was a time during the last year where, because we are in a lot of crisis at the moment, I found myself wondering why am I teaching, and why am I performing. It took me a while to understand and to remind myself what the purpose could be in guiding a dance class. I realized that it's so beautiful that we come together here for 90 minutes, we're not on our phones and we just spend this time together and make an experience with each other. And not being distracted and no one really cares about where one comes from. it's kind of this space where everyone is equal with each other. 

PARVATHI: How do you navigate decisions between framework vs freedom in your teaching practice? 

SAMIRA: I think the framework actually gives me lot of freedom because I don't have to think about what I'm specifically going to do but I have the freedom to fill it out with what I think is necessary in that moment, especially with my improv practice that I’m also bringing into my classes. This is an approach I learnt from doing workshops with the Humanhood Dance Company and with Sita Ostheimer. It's a certain simplicity that they were teaching in their approach to movements. I feel like this gave me the freedom in my body to feel like I have infinite possibilities. I'm not putting myself into a certain form but I give my body the freedom to find its own forms, expressions through movement. I frequently say in my classes: you want to take the impulse from the floor and then you let it travel through your whole body. I feel like this is what gave me a lot of freedom in my movement research.

PARVATHI: It appeared as though the theme of framework vs freedom also featured in your choreographic sharing with Bresa Ayub at Ada Studio.

SAMIRA:  True! Bresa and I worked with very short sequences, and in between we were just improvising. But we had points where we could meet each other, help each other to either calm down again or to make the decision. We had the freedom to be on our own for a moment and the other can rest if they need to, or and then the other can join again in that sequence that we create together. But it was like very short sequences like little islands in this practice where we can go to if we need orientation again. We had this very specific approach of listening and we started off with mirroring and then it turned out that we're actually listening to each other's body. So at one point we didn't even have to look at each other to know what the other person is doing because we were so sensitive to each other in the space. This gave me freedom to make my own decisions, but also the security to know there is someone accompanying me. I think a certain frame also gives a certain kind of freedom. 

I share with Samira my notes from their performance sharing. Some words pop out: Grounded. Flowing machine. A machine of two bodies as one. A machine of muscles and knowledge. Internal jingle.  A quirk through personalized musicality. Airiness and expansion. Arms and limbs as extensions of a fluid spine.

PARVATHI: How would you describe your movement language and physicality? 

 

SAMIRA: I think I would describe myself movement quality wise as being very grounded, with lot of flow and probably also waves or spirals. I think I'm using a lot of spiralling in my practice and having this connection throughout my whole body. I can still isolate certain parts and yet somehow it's still connected. When I’m moving my arm, its still like moving my whole body. But I can still isolate like certain things or like drop just my elbow and from there take another impulse that can carry me through space. 

PARVATHI: Do you describe yourself as someone coming from hip-hop going into your pedagogy? 

 

SAMIRA: I don't know if I would say it like this. I think my natural way of moving is quite grounded and Hip-hop has always been part of my dance journey. I was first going into that quality or style, as I learnt a lot from videos when I was younger. But I was always very interested in the music and in the community aspect of it. And yes, it's just my grounded quality where I feel very connected to that style or technique.  

 

From here we jump into a word association game. I offer a word, and Samira pops what comes to her mind. 

PARVATHI: Teacher.

SAMIRA: Guidance.

PARVATHI: Audience.

SAMIRA: Emotional participation.

PARVATHI: Dream.

SAMIRA: A lot of possibilities.

PARVATHI: Spine.

SAMIRA: Motor.

PARVATHI: Group bodies.

SAMIRA: Dynamic and exchange. Giving and taking. 

PARVATHI: Is two people a group? 

SAMIRA: Yes, I think so.  because it's already a bit more complex system than being on my own.

PARVATHI: Since you're also so much in teaching and you said that you also will like to be in the learning front, what are your wishes in terms of learning next? 

 

SAMIRA: In terms of what I want to learn next, I don't know if it's so much about physicality. Sure, still I do want to develop physicality in a way that I want to keep growing and evolving in what I'm doing – To be confident about the things that I'm doing and to treat it as something precious for myself. 
Since I'm teaching so much,  I also need to find places where I can recharge again, and also to be faster at making a distinction of what is my responsibility while holding space in the class, and what are things I cannot solve. 
 

 

Published in March 2025. Text by Parvathi Ramanathan.