Annika Luschin, Djahan Manuela Mazhari Peret
Annika Luschin was born in Graz in Austria. After finishing her studies at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, School for New Dance Development, in 1999, Annika has been working as dancer, choreographer and producer. Together with composer Lars Skoglund she founded the performance group Wildlaks in 2008. Their music and dance productions have been shown on festivals and venues across Europe (Tanzsommer Graz, Theater am Lend, Nordlysfestivalen, Mørke Nu, Rom for dans, Tanzquartier Vienna, werkSTATT 2.12, Carovana danza, Rijksmuseum, Musikprotokol etc.). Annika has received several scholarships from Austria, Norway and The Netherlands.
As dance and yoga pedagogue Annika has been working, among other places, at Amsterdam University of the Arts, Amsterdam University of Applied Science, Amsterdam Theatre Academy and Tromsø University. Annika is also an occupational therapist. She has received her Bachelor of Science for occupational therapy in 2019. She works with elderly people and people of all ages with various diseases on enhancing their independence and improving their quality of life. In 2021 she finished her education as mediator based on Non-violent communication.
Djahan Manuela Mazhari Perez is a colombian/iranian dancer/mover born in Teheran in 1970. She grew up in different countries, yet mostly in Paris. After being part of the first generation of post-modern dancers in Colombia, who recieved workshops from Pep y Maria (Malpelo), Angels Margarit, David Zambrano, Marianella BOan (cuba), she ended up creating a company called: Nowruz. She studied one year in the SNDO (Amsterdam) where she met her actual husband and discovered Aikido and Kalari. As a consequence she left the school to go to India where she studied Kalarippayattu a strong beautiful martial art from Kerala which combines self defence with a massage/healing system based on Ayurveda. She also studied Mohini Attam the classical Kerala dance form which is a story narrative in dance with rich mudras, body sways, feet work and strong facial expressions. Back in Holland she has been working with different choreographers always inspired by themes with some urgency, while teaching Kalari workshops in Amsterdam/Colombia/Berlin (to dance companies).
She has mainly worked with physical theater, as performer/maker and loves to use text as source of inspiration. People she most enjoyed working with: Sassan SAghar Yagmai, Agaath Witteman (theater/dance), DIck Hauser (songs from the roof:live opera/music/dance), DOX, Miranda Lakerveld (opera/live music/dance), Nicole Beutler, Embassy of India, Cat Smith company and lately: Sublab scene/Nomads collective. She has created choreographies for festivals with pure Kalarippayattu, or mixing it with post modern dance, and also performs regularly solos of pure indian dance Mohini Attam. She feels engaged socio-politically to also use dance as a form of protest/expression to move people whenever possible and necessary, like her creation with non dancers last december against the female/ human rights violations and non stop killings in Iran.
She gave birth to three daughters, who are now big, which is an incredible physical/soul experience, and is now graduated as an Ayurvedic Practitioner.