Chen Nadler is currently in residence at Workshop Foundation as part of the „Artistic Exchange” program of the Creative Europe project A Life Long Burning – Futures Lost & Found.
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Like a Lioness (wild, wide, lonely)
Work in progress by Chen Amor Nedler
First, she places herself. A body as a landscape. A gaze that reaches into— suddenly, you’ve been seen. Hands playing toward the absent, skin remembers what is uncommon.
How does it feel to return to a material already lived— a chant, a value, a wish, an echo? The same song, like nothing new under there. What has been, will be again.
Second, she arrives: visiting the self, visiting the
other, visiting a dance. A dance becomes a river, smashed into a body, yet the body is never full. Courage is summoned. History flickers. The future shivers.
This piece traces the expressive cross: one body
carries many, and loneliness revealed as an elemental
nature of living.
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Chen Amor Nadler (1992) is a choreographer and dancer based in Helsinki. Her work unfolds in the meeting space of dance, community, and philosophy through transcultural and cross-disciplinary approaches.
In her artistic work, she is interested in performance as a site of transformation where micro-political gestures emerge. Rooted in transcultural contemporary and traditional dance influences as well as lived realities, Chen loves to explore what the body can do—celebrating the knowledge carried by individuality and awakened through the collectivity of dancing bodies. Her creative search engages with the dilemmas of meeting the other: the emotional, energetic, and political forces that emerge from human encounters, along with the ethical questions and responsibilities that follow.
Chen’s work takes various forms, including interdisciplinary gatherings, performances, and video art projects, presented at international festivals. Shaped by both Western dance techniques and traditional, folk, and ritualistic practices, she welcomes the body as multiplicity—in a state of becoming—while questioning
the in-between space of performers and audiences, inspired by its uncertainty and tension. Through this, she hopes to generate connections, resilience and the possibility of a chaotic folklore.
She co-facilitates inclusive community projects in Germany and leads a multidisciplinary jam project in Helsinki, supported by the city’s cultural grants.
In 2025, her stage work The Feast—created with dancers,
musicians, and designers—received a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. In 2024, she hosted a workshop at ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival, sharing her bodily-visiting practice, which draws on rituals rooted in her Moroccan ancestry.
Chen holds an MA in Choreography from the Theatre Academy in Helsinki (2025), has studied for a B.Ed. in Steiner and Social Education (Haifa and Helsinki, 2022), and holds a professional dance certificate (Tel Aviv–Jaffa, 2013).
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Supporters: Life Long Burning, Creative Europe Program
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them