Two young men in a big city, two dancers in an underpass, in the market, by the roadside. Sometimes alone, sometimes close together, touching. They do not walk straight or forwards like everyone else, but seem to have lost their balance, lopsided, their legs wobbling, their bodies bending and contorting. Sometimes someone watches them. Most people hurry past. The world is spinning. The ancient Sanskrit word ‘saṃsāra’ means ‘world’ and ‘wandering’, and thus also refers to the concept of the cycle of life – more precisely, of life, death and rebirth – which affects all living beings. Or, to put it more simply: constantly going round in circles, never getting anywhere.

“Effetá” means “open yourself!”. It refers to a rite in religious traditions. Here, it is transformed into a danced liturgy performed by women. Compassion and tenderness drive the movements. Veils, tears and gestures tumble and shatter, thus freeing them from oppression. The group explodes; their voices, their breath, kisses and screams cut through the silence. They collide, push back, resist rejection, and break through it. Through this encounter, the strength of the collective emerges: this power persists, cares, and endures.

A dance thriller with a Hitchcock-esque opening, which draws on absurdity and a certain kind of humour. It contains references to earlier dance films such as DV8’s *The Cost of Living*. A poem is also incorporated. Like everything else, it is fragmented, its meaning chopped to pieces, perceptions torn to shreds, just like the feeling that wells up between stages of life when one is confronted with oneself.

A retrospective on life, viewed from the backstage area of a theatre. In an abandoned town. A man turns inwards, wanders into the realm of his dreams and memories. He wanders through this town, across the countryside, conjuring up the act of waking. Lutz Förster, who danced with Pina Bausch for many years, is the protagonist of these performances. He encounters two young dancers, including Pierre Geagea, who is deaf. Moving images, movement, literature (Heiner Müller, Franz Kafka, Fabiane Kemmann) or: spoken language, sign language and other forms of body language. Contradictions and encounters.

A young woman in tracksuit bottoms and a bomber jacket makes her way through the back streets of Seville on her way to a social housing estate. Carmen Aviles is a rising star on the flamenco scene. Here, tradition is broken – or expanded – through contemporary aesthetics. In a backyard in the Los Pjaritos neighbourhood, the film captures the raw energy of this southern Spanish dance and showcases a part of the city linked to flamenco’s roots in the Roma community and to its Moorish history. Red shoes on a rough stone floor: they make music together.

“The road does not belong to those who walk upon it, but to the sand that swallows every trace,” we hear at the beginning of the film. It is, therefore, about memory as it wanders across the land, through architecture and within bodies. In the city of Zaria, the desert meets centuries-old history. Nomadic rhythms are interwoven with embodied reflection. Walking, carrying, the gestures of migration, alongside the silent archives revealed in scars, reflections, prayer postures and daily survival. The walls, in turn, recall empires; the mosques, devotion; the ruins, the colonial era.

A wittily subversive punk rock dance film poem about identity and connection (or the lack thereof). Set in times of crisis, it loops endlessly. The film is an interpretation of the poem about a woman, ‘Madeline’, by Gherasim Luca, translated by Michael Tweed. It is also (or is not) a portrait of the artist Allison Beda.

A dancer who isn’t one / A choreography that never was / A record of a guerrilla-style spectacle that actually took place, live, on the street, but then again, it didn’t / A poem about a woman, as a self-portrait of another.

Men on the move: on the streets, riding, racing through the desert, and dancing and having fun. A group of friends set off on a motorbike trip from the Netherlands to Ghana. A break from everyday life – wow, everything’s so amazing. One of the five narrates the brief story in voice-over. Whether planned in advance or not, the camera stays focused on them (occasionally glancing left and right in a rather touristy sort of way); the friends love synchronised moves and jumps, and this has resulted in the latest film from the breakdance collective 155 (eenvijfvijf).

A hard sports ground surface is prepared for a form of enjoyment of a completely different kind: in socks. It is filmed almost incidentally, in snippets, from above, from below at knee height. Later, the image flickers. Then people really do start dancing on this surface; the musicians stand outside, the audience to the side, and the dance leaves its mark, black on white. It is a traditional dance of the region, light-footed, performed in pairs, into which everyone eventually joins in. The ‘ghosts’ of the title are perhaps the dance steps or the joy of dancing, which flow from a bygone era into these young people.