Desert(ed) Dreaming is a sensual and poetic invitation to understand scarcity not as an end, but as a beginning—and to imagine new forms of coexistence and create possible futures amid global exhaustion. The desert becomes an ambiguous image: of dreams left behind and political drought, which at the same time holds the potential for change, care, and regeneration. Inspired by hydrofeminism, speculative fiction, and ecological approaches, the piece explores processes of extraction, deprivation, emptying, and depletion—physically, ecologically, and biographically. How can absence be used to create new imagination? What can be created on a stage that has already been devastated and has become an interspace, a place for memories and visions of the future? What remains when we leave places, bodies, or systems? In “Desert(ed) Dreaming,” Katja Cheraneva and Viktorija Ilioska embark on a choreographic search for traces along their shared migration histories between Russia, North Macedonia, and Germany.

Choreography: Katja Cheraneva, Viktorija Ilioska

Performance: Katja Cheraneva, Viktorija Ilioska

Dramaturgy: Chiara Marcassa

Outside eye / dramaturgy: Amèlie Haller

Light designer: Laura Salerno in collaboration with Carlos Franke
Costume Design: Laura Stellacci

Sound Design: Antonia Beeskow, Aran Kleebaur 

Stage Design : Nina De Ludemann

Technical Director: Patrick Faurot

Artistic Producers: take the money and run GbR
Images: Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm

A production by Viktorija Ilioska & Katja Cheraneva, in co-production with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Hessisches Staatsballett in the frame of Tanzfestival Rhein-Main 2025 and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia.
LLB network through Creative Europe program and Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Ministry of the Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana.
Supported by Uferstudios Berlin and Lokomotiva – Centre for New Initiative in Arts and Culture, Skopje.