Sophiensæle

Calendar

Programme

Programme
Today | 20:00
Lecken
Queer Social Reproduction
Lecken©Souad_Hervé 02
June 01 | 20.00
Other
Kantine | Eintritt frei

What are the actions, responsibilities, and relationships that go into queer world-making, and who is doing this labor? The queer-feminist rave collective, Lecken, devotes the second issue of their zine, Queer Social Reproduction, to these questions, along with an evening program surrounding its launch.

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Tomorrow | 18:30
Freddie Wulf mit Alicia Jane Turner
we are all made of stars
stars_freddie wulf_credit manuel vason Fierce 2022_pink2
June 02 | 18.30
Performance
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

we are all made of stars is a journey through the body as a living landscape. Performed in a bathtub using an endoscopic camera, movement & lip-sync, Freddie Wulf explores the close-up textures of body, water and plant. Inspired by philosophies of vital materialism, the show combines visual languages from body horror and nature documentaries, moving between atmospheres of discomfort, dis/connection, and bliss. With a live sound score by Alicia Jane Turner.

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Tomorrow | 23:00
Lecken
Queer Social Reproduction
Lecken©Souad_Hervé 01
June 02 | 23.00
Rave
Kantine | 15 €

The queer-feminist rave collective, Lecken, features on the second day of their program the foremost prefigurative practice of queer worlding – an all-night rave expanded with dance performances, public sculpture, and light installations.

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June 08 09 | 19.30
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

“Main character syndrome” is a social media/pop culture invention in which a person behaves as if they were the main character of a fictional story. The performance uses this notion to explore and challenge senses of selfhood and togetherness in times of pornographic narcissism. It blurs the lines between personal and fictional, experienced and represented, individual and relational.

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June 08 09 | 21.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Criptonite is a crip-queer theatre project by Edwin Ramirez and Nina Mühlemann. In their current manifestations as Dionysos and Medusa, they invite the audience into the underworld. Surrounded by the rivers of hatred, wailing, fire and oblivion, we find ourselves on the islands of pleasure, celebrating the intersection of pain, pleasure and kink. What does it mean to negotiate consensual giving and receiving together in a pleasurable way, through movement and care? Where do we find moments of pleasure despite pain or exhaustion? 

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June 10 | 15.00
Eintritt frei

With the Sophienstraßenfest we call the neighborhood around the Sophiensæle into the street. For one day we celebrate the neighborhood of Spandauer Vorstadt, its residents and their stories. In the afternoon, neighborhood choirs (Kiezchöre) sing in Sophienstraße and a photo exhibition shows its transformation. For the crowning finale, we invite you to a joint street dinner in the evening: everyone brings their own seating furniture, dishes and culinary delights of choice – with just enough for your direct neighbors to enjoy as well. Together with neighbors and guests, we form the longest dinner table in Berlin.

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June 12-16 19-23 26-30
July 03-07 10-14
Performance

After the success of The River I in the summer of 2022, this special boat tour now returns on Berlin’s waters. The team surrounding Aimé C. Songe invites you to an encounter in a rowing boat, alone or in pairs with a friend or loved one, just in time for sunset. Together with various artists, participants embark on a dreamlike journey to question the concept of an active and productive life, while to taking time to unwind.

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June 13 | 16.00 - 21.00
June 14 | 18.00 - 21.00
June 16 | 16.00 - 22.00
June 17 | 18.00 - 22.00
Kantine | Eintritt frei

Sickness Affinity Group (SAG) is a group of art workers and activists who work on the topic of sickness/disability and/or are affected by sickness/disability. In a cozy installation – with places for rest and hanging out, stimming and wiggling – SAG now looks back on their six years of existence. At the Zine-Library, in collective co-writing and co-reading sessions or group meditations: We invite you to share sick, sleepy, caring crip time with us.

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June 13 14 | 19.00
Tickets
15/10 €

Lay Me Low looks at the terror of standing still and standing up for yourself or others when physical and emotional balance is a struggle. The performance also ponders on why taking a break, resting and cutting oneself some slack is such a pain today. Hence it looks at the techniques, as well as joys and fears of going down and feeling horizontal.

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June 13 14 | 20.30
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

EveryBody’s Fantasy explores erotic fantasies and questions how we look and experience them. The performance is inspired by Gertrude Stein’s 1937 Everybody’s Autobiography. Considering the biographical, the life-lived as an accessible format for others to enter, visit or witness with care and understanding, this work looks toward what would happen, what we could anticipate happening again and the fantasy that rests just beside.

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June 14 | 16.00 - 18.00
Kantine |

The collaborating queer BIPoC disabled group KIWI – Knowing institutions from within invites to an open meeting in the SAG space on Wednesday June 14. The group, hosted by Tizo All, is an attempt to bring folks to share their experiences in working with institutions.

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June 14 | 22.00
Eintritt frei

This self-governed talk between Liz Rosenfeld and Jen Rosenblit offers an encounter to reflect on what it is to hold one’s own flesh and what it is to witness that intimacy. What these two artists show and how they show it in their work. The functions of their bodies as desired objects and how they approach similar topics from completely different practices and perspectives. What are their magics and how do they enact them?

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June 16 17 | 19.30
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

Planets, water, plants, inanimate objects, human animals – everything vibrates and resonates with each other. In different states we vibrate differently: in sadness differently than in joy, in fear differently than in ecstasy. Siegmar Zacharias, together with scent alchemist Liza Witte, textile artist Lea Kieffer, and musician Steve Heather, invites us to listen with our whole bodies and become a space of collective transformation as resonant bodies for one another.

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June 16 17 | 21.30
Eintritt frei

h0chbegabt deal with social structures and translate them into humorous fantasy worlds. Their latest work, VAMPIRE(N), is a mockumentary about the casting and production process of the new vampire film “Vampires in the Dark”. The mockumentary portrays two potential protagonists – real vampires – and provides insight into their lives. We accompany the two and the beginning of their special friendship in the face of discrimination and prejudice.

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June 16 17 18 23 24 25 | 22.30
Tickets
15/10 €

Who has always used the night as a place of resistance? What rituals were and are practiced under the protection of the night? Inspired by the “Take back the Night” demonstrations
that have been taking place on Walpurgis Night since the 1970s, the result is an interactive audio night-walk about nocturnal politics of pleasure and lust. Inspired by the figure of the witch, the young ensemble explores the allure of the night in hidden places in Berlin’s urban space, re-enacts various rituals, tests utopias and conquers the night.

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June 17 | 16.00 - 18.00
Kantine | Eintritt frei

Since 2021, Sickness Affinity Group (SAG) has organized a regular reading group engaging with critical thinking in queer and crip studies. In their first in-person reading group session, to be held at Leisure and Pleasure, they will collectively investigate ideas and feelings around different experiences intertwined with walking.

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June 17 | 22.00
Tickets
Concert
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Hans Unstern's lyrics oscillate between modern fairy tales, criticism of the myth of the binary gender system and of their own working conditions in capitalism. A concert between lyrical softness and punk moments, from pompous slide harp clouds to improvised free sequences.

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June 22 23 24 25 | 20.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

In Vanilla three performers explore the relationship of pleasure, sexual desire and food to question normativity in sexual practices.Through the intimate and vulnerable sharing of personal and fictional sex stories, the performance conducts a warm and soft exercise of imagination.

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June 23 24 | 20.30
Tickets
5 €

In this immersive live work, fragmented landscapes are built and unbuilt; transforming the basement of Sophiensæle into a dark room where people are invited to move through, cruise and lounge together. Inspired by the defiance of communal gatherings, public sex and specifically the politics of taking up space, an*dre neely and Liz Rosenfeld consider their own differently-gendered, differently-aged, differently-transitioning bodies and relationships. They are bound by notions of chosen family and resonating with desires of how to care for and be cared for by one another, or how to carry and tell each others stories.

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June 24 | 16.00
June 24 | 18.00
June 25 | 11.00
June 25 | 13.00
June 30 | 19.00
July 01 | 19.00
June 30 | 21.00
July 01 | 14.00
Tickets
Kantine | 15/10 €

Colonastics is the world’s first fitness workout without the exoticizing bullshit of Zumba, the pseudo-spiritual, esoteric shenanigans of white yoginis and neo-colonial appropriations! Why? Because it feeds solely on the physicality of white cultural practices. Stiffen your joints, throw your limbs around uncontrollably and perfect your air guitar. Feel white supremacy flowing through our collective consciousness and become part of a movement that will revolutionize the fi tness world!

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June 28 29 | 19.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Orientation is the perception of space through the body. Ceylan Öztrük, who received the 2022 Swiss Art Award, proposes a rethink of spatiality through disorientation. As disorientation involves becoming an object or a sculpture, a dreamy perception is created by text, choreography, costumes and an impressive stage installation. A narrative unfolds about the collision and fusion between the body and the building, the person and the institution, the bent and the stiff.

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June 29 30 | 20.00
July 01 | 16.00
Eintritt frei

In the Leisure Garden of Sophiensæle, a temporary island of the unblessed is being created. Nuray Demir invites to bar-chat conversations about loss, death, collective melancholy, and resistance.

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June 30 | 18.00 - 23.00
July 01 | 18.00 - 23.59
Hochzeitssaal | Eintritt frei

Rest Rebellion sets up a space for rest in a calm, low-stimulus environment and offers a training camp for those who want to learn more about the transformative quality of resting. 

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July 01 | 15.00
July 01 | 18.00
Eintritt frei

In 2020, a group of suddenly unemployed Berlin-based dancers started to regularly meet in public space to play Double Dutch – a rope-skipping game played with two ropes swung in opposite directions. What started as a response to the Corona lockdowns, has since blossomed into an ongoing practice where five artists regularly explore the jumping game’s connection to club culture – from early hip hop to techno; but also joy, creativity, non-productive artmaking, playfulness and togetherness as a safe haven within the twisted lifestyle of freelance dancers.

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July 01 | 20.30
Various Locations | Eintritt frei

For the festival and season closing, the Sophiensæle open their backyards and bars to everyone from 15 h. There will be an artistic program, drinks, snacks – and from 20.30 h also major and minor gala moments and surprises with artists, the Sophiensæle team and many friends. 

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Specials

Specials
Festival

Leisure & Pleasure

SOP_LEI+PLEA_Grafik_HP_2
© Jan Grygoriew

MAY 25–JULY 01

As a joyful finale of the last season under the artistic direction of Franziska Werner, Sophiensæle invites you to a festival on the political dimensions of Leisure & Pleasure. For six weeks, the festival explores the connections of pleasure and activism, questions art’s ability to heal societal exhaustion – and dreams of life beyond work.

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News

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2024 | SAVE THE DATE

SOP_TATA23_1200x900_SCHWARZ_pur
Jan Grygoriew

The next edition of Tanztage Berlin is currently planned for 4-20 January 2024, and it will again take place under the artistic direction of Mateusz Szymanówka. This year's open call will be published at the beginning of August.

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TANZTAGE BERLIN 2014 Barbara Berti / Lea Kieffer + Michael Shapira / Claire Vivianne Sobottke Aoouuu / Dry Love / Golden Game

hp_shapira-und-kieffer2_foto-michael-rowsome
2014 January 05 06 | 19.00
Hochzeitssaal

COACHING PROJEKT

The Coaching Project is a laboratory in which hypotheses can be tested. Or it is a field that can be dug up and cultivated with new ideas. The mentoring process is different each year. It orients itself toward the needs and interest of the participants. This year it consists of three projects that grew over a period of five weeks. In collaboration with the mentors, ideas have developed into something concrete. Thanks to the Allianz Kulturstiftung, it is possible for participants to carry out an exchange with the Solo Project Poznan, including a meeting with emerging Polish choreographers in Berlin. In spring 2014 the pieces will be shown at the Old Brewery New Dance in Poznan, in collaboration with the Art Stations Foundation by Grazyna Kulczyk.


BARBARA BERTI: AOOUUU

Barbara Berti studied dance, theatre and graphic design in Italy. Since moving to Berlin in 2011 she has collaborated with choreographers, dancers and designers as Judith Seng on the project "Acting things" and with Gabi Schilling "The Trunk". She studied with Julyen Hamilton, Hanna Hegenscheidt, David Zambrano, Renate Graziadei, Jess Curtis, Frey Faust.

"I am interested in issues of kinesthetic empathy and the embodied transmission of physical experience in the interaction with the audience. The experience of the other individuals’ movements is key for a deeper understanding of relationships, the being in a given environment and the own body’s freedom." -Barbara Berti

CHOREOGRAPHY Barbara Berti PERFORMANCE Barbara Berti, Sunniva Vikør Egenes COSTUME Barbara Berti SUPPORTED BY Tanztage Berlin / Sophiensæle


Lea Kieffer + Michael Shapira: Dry Love

LEA KIEFFER is a performer/ dance-maker whose work focuses on improvisation, the practice of wildness and contact improvisation. She combines a deep interest in physical challenges and rigorous physical work with imagery. She is a nomad artist performing and teaching in Europe and overseas.

MICHAEL SHAPIRA'S passion for Contact Improvisation has led him to study improvisation, which remains his main field of practice. In 2013 he received the Tanzstipendium from the Culture Administration of Berlin, and his solo Glorious George The Jewish Gargoyle, created in colaboration with Lea Kieffer, won the first prize at the solo contest in the Gdansk Dance Festival.

"Dry Love is a drive towards glory. A quest for two heroes. We imagine characters, situations and sensations, and let them feed our physical work. We create and map our own world of experience by engaging in a range of scores, including Contact duets, side-coached solo work, rituals and dialogues. In this frame of work a series of improvised episodes emerges." -Lea Kieffer + Michael Shapira

CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE Lea Kieffer & Michael Shapira MUSIC Manon Parent COSTUME Lea KiefferSUPPORTED BY Tanztage Berlin / Sophiensæle THANKS TO James Peachy

Claire Vivianne Sobottke: Golden Game


The German-French actor (*1982) with a degree from University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) considers the stage to be a possibility for resistance. She works in various contexts and was rewarded with the Einstiegsförderung des Berliner Senats for 2014. 

Golden Game is a childhood incantation, a catapult into the uncontrollable spaces of childhood, in their extreme emotional amplitudes fantastic identities and games. Identity and reality are unstable and complex. The games allow you to enjoy and stage every miserable, dramatic, heroic position.

CHOREOGRAPHY Claire Vivianne Sobottke PERFORMANCE Claire Vivianne Sobottke, Tian Rotteveel MUSIC Tian Rotteveel COSTUME, STAGE Claire Vivianne Sobottke & Tian Rotteveel SUPPORTED BY Tanztage Berlin / Sophiensæle THANKS TO Mathilde Julia Sobottke, Caruso, Anders Carlsson, Hermann Heisig, Bryan Campell, Emeline, Leonie, Anni Linnea, ANU

photo © Michael Rowsome