Event: Micromanege – less is more

main organizers: sinje.grenzdörffer & tian.oppitz

helping hands: jens.domi.eli.mim

cooperation partners: fusiondancebern & zirkus wunderplunder

live artist: sia

July, 14th 2025 on a warm Summer evening.

From far you can hear inviting tunes and the sounds of feet sweeping and stepping in tune with the alluring vocals of some live music. Soft laughter here and there. Curious, you follow your ears in the rhythms that you hear. Transitioning from walking to dancing, you arrive at the entrance of a circus tent with the inviting sign

“micromanege – microfusion under circus stars”

With sparked interest, you enter the tent, and you fall into the following scene:

A group 50-60 people dancing on a very tiny circus stage to the tunes of a female vocalist with her loop station. Not only is the stage tiny, but also the movements of the dancing people are attuned to the reduced space that they have.

You feel a little shy and not ready yet to join the dancing crowd. So, instead, you start an explorative journey of the space. You find a buffet with local and plant-based food where you stay a moment to refill your empty stomach and refresh a little. You also find a station with finger paint and the invitation to draw your visions of “less is more” in or off tune with the music. You stay a little to reflect, to express, to create.

Finally, you muster the courage to join the dancers. On your way back to the stage, you notice a small gallery of posters that were put up to raise awareness on adequate behaviour on the dance floor.

A sigh of relief. You feel safe. This gives you the final reassurance to enter the stage and soon enough, you as well, are carried away by micro-movements and melodies.

Behind the curtains

Something like this could have been your experience of the event “Micromanege – less is more”. The motto of the event “less is more” was expressed in the reduced amount of space and in the focus on effectful and well-connected micromovements as a dance element to play with.

However, for us as organizers the motto included even more than this. In the following, we want to give you a glimpse behind the curtains and some insights on the overall design of the event.

Beyond a celebration of the beauty of micromovements, we also connected the motto “less is more” to questions of sustainability and socioecological justice. By creating  a best-practice example for traceless celebration and dancing, we considered strategic, social, ecological aspects as well as aspects of local embeddedness in our event organisation (as illustrated in the graphic above). We ensured the support of local artists including fair financial compensation for everybody who essentially contributed to the event. Another aspect of local embeddedness was the use of the already existing local infrastructure of our cooperation partner “Circus Wunderplunder”.  We further ensured collaboration and possibilities for participation for the local dancing community, particularly FusionDance Bern.

Regarding other social aspects, we raised active awareness to inclusive and safer-space policies on and off the dance floor. We also included these elements in the offered dance workshop. Throughout the event, we were attentive to the different sociocultural backgrounds of the participants (e.g. through asking about languages or offering children-friendly activities). Furthermore, we had clearly marked care-team members who could be approached in case of needed support.

As we wanted to cause as little material impact as possible to reduce the amount of used resources and waste, we developed a “less is more” communication strategy without an overload of wasted advertising materials. In terms of food, we invited to bring local and plant-based contributions to a joint buffet and we provided a basic quantity of food with the same criteria. Like this, we wanted to ensure that we do not buy more than the number of people attending, which we did not know before-hand. Together these measures, including the amount of energy used for sounds and electricity led to an amount of 148 kg CO₂ of directly measurable impact. According to CO₂ emission calculators, this requires a so-called compensation equivalent of 4 CHF, which we did. However, we are aware that there are probably more indirect non-measureable CO₂ and other environmental impacts on biodiversity, land use, resources, etc. We are also aware that compensational donations to reforestation projects cannot make up up for the negative impacts that were already cause. So, there is always potential for improvements in our next events.

All donations made by participants went into the named aspects of the event organisation. As the event was also financially supported by the “dancing-for-future” project, we made a surplus, which allows to create plans and tools for socioecologically just “less is more” dance events in the future.

©sinjegrenzdoerffer & ©tianoppitz

We hope that our micro story left some tiny traces on your (dancing) paths – and might even inspire you to carry out similar events:

what are your moves?