The programme 23/24 of Sophiensæle starts on 07.12.2023
On 7.12.2023, after urgently needed renovation work, the 2023/2024 season will begin at the Sophiensaele under the new artistic direction of Andrea Niederbuchner and Jens Hillje. We will publish the programme for the opening and the season on 26.10.2023, which is also the day when the pre-sale begins.
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TO ALL EMERGING DANCE ARTISTS BASED IN BERLIN
Every new year, the Tanztage Berlin is not only the city's very first festival, it has also established itself nationally and internationally as an important platform for emerging dance artists since its founding in 1996. The next edition of Tanztage Berlin will once again take place under the artistic direction of Mateusz Szymanówka. The festival is currently planned for 5-20 January 2024. The festival offers emerging dance artists based in Berlin a framework for their new productions and revivals. The programme of the last two editions can be found at: https://tanztage-berlin.sophiensaele.com.
Live-Premiere
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: RosaMag, taz, die tageszeitung.
