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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Lois Alexander Yeye

  • YEYE_Postermotiv_c_Chanel Kah Yin Liang
    © Chanel Kah Yin Liang
  • YEYE_120922_8
    © Chanel Kah Yin Liang
  • Yeye foto by kimani schumann 3
    © Kimani Schumann
  • Yeye foto by Kimani Schumann 2
    © Kimani Schumann
  • Yeye foto by Kimani Schumann
    © Kimani Schumann
Dance
2022 October 22 25 | 20.00
2022 October 23 | 18.00
Hochzeitssaal

Live-Premiere 

in English

October 24 | BiPoc-only: The show on October 24 is exclusively for people who position themselves as BIPoC. BIPoC is an abbreviation for Black, Indigenous and People of Color, i.e. people affected by racism or anti-Semitism. Including Black, Indigenous, (post-)migrant people as well as Sinti*zze, Rom*nja, Jews, Latino/a/x, East/South Asian, Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. etc. Everyone is invited to the other performances on October 22, 23 + 25.

Yeye pays homage to Yemayá, the goddess of the sea and motherhood in the Yoruba pantheon. In her latest performance work, created for the camera and now adapted to stage, choreographer and performer Lois Alexander explores the afterlife of slavery and the reverberations on our present.

In the novel Beloved, writer Toni Morrison, opens up reflections on love, trauma and memory when a mother is driven to commit the most unspeakable act. Influenced by Morrison’s writing style and drawing on her research into representations of Black mothers in mythology and religion, Lois creates her own language of blending personal narrative, historicity and spirituality. Looking specifically at icons such as the Black Madonna, Lois investigates the processes of syncretization, the blending of different religious views, and unveils their implications. Multi-layered tensions become palpable through the touching of, sensing with, and remembering through different materials, such as textile and sound.

Yeye incorporates these senses into an embodied patchwork to ways of attending to healing, and uses performance to practice strategies of refusal and resistance.Yeye is a deep reckoning of a modern era that is entangled with colonial histories, mothers and the ocean. What are the temporalities of a racialized body, one that is marked by visible and invisible wounds? What can be healing? Yeye explores memory, traces and notions of a motherland, moving through different levels of video, text and performance.

If any questions remain from the following information, please feel free to contact Hannah Aldinger at barrierefreiheit@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 35. Please note that details may change by the day of the event.

The show will last 50-60 minutes. The performance uses English spoken language. The lighting in audience will be dark. The audience area is seated in the last row. In the rows in front, there are seat cushions on the stepped grandstand. There are two wheelchair seats and two beanbag seats in the front row, which can be reserved or purchased in the online ticket shop or at the box office, depending on availability. If you need a specific seat or a more relaxed admission due to visible or invisible disabilities, please arrive 20-30 minutes before the performance begins to take advantage of our early boarding offer.

Lois Alexander is a choreographer and dancer living and working in Berlin. She graduated from The Juilliard School with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance in 2014 and worked in traditional German state theater before creating her own work in the independent free theater scene in Amsterdam and Berlin. Her first solo choreography Neptune has toured Europe through the Aerowaves Network. Lois is inspired by what Tina Campt describes as “textured identities” and uses the embodied nature of dance and performance to articulate an in-between, migratory state from black feminist perspectives.

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CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE Lois Alexander SOUND Sea Novaa STAGE DESIGN Nina Kay COSTUME DESIGN Sarah Seini DRAMATURGY Jasco Viefhues CINEMATOGRAPHY Diara Sow, Kimani Schumann PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Nick Germeys SOUND, VIDEO Julia Cremers PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE Ben Mohai ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Marisa Godoy, Mateusz Szymanówka, das Sophiensaele-Team

A production by Lois Alexander in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Media partner: RosaMagtaz, die tageszeitung.