Sophiensæle

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Programme
Hendrik Quast
Spill your guts
HendrikQuast_SYG_Foto_Florian_Krauss-0644
March 31 | 19.00
April 01 | 19.00
Tickets
Performance
Festsaal | 15/10 €

A ventriloquist’s show of a different kind: In a dialogue with a chronically ill clap-mouthed puppet, Hendrik Quast explores the stubbornness of intestines. A relationship drama with scatalogical humor, parody therapy and ventriloquism unfolds between the ventriloquist and the sick doll. With tools of the performing arts, the events of chronic illnesses that often remain invisible are staged; opening up new humor spaces in which illness is no longer a taboo.

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April 01 02 | 17.00
April 04 | 20.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

Milliarden Jahre Widerhall was created after Naoko Tanaka’s travels to the contaminated area of Fukushima – a place where people’s connection to their habitat is forever destroyed. In a performative installation, Tanaka negotiates the ambivalent and conflicted relationship between humans and the earth, inviting us on a journey into inner landscapes.

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April 03 04 | 19.00
April 03 04 | 21.00
Tickets
Kantine | 15/10 €

Montag Modus: archive of futures presents a performance-installation set at the liminal space between film, dance and theater. Inspired by an encounter with three elderly dancers who were part of modern dance in Hungary in the 1930s, Figuring Age is a choreography of memories that explores how resilience, silences and traumas are inscribed in the body and in the movement.

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April 06 07 08 09 | 20.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

The choreographic concert We are going to Mars is dedicated to the history of the first African space program in Zambia. Created from video works by local artists in Uganda and the USA, it is being performed with live music by Mourning [A] BLKstar. 

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April 14 15
Tickets
Film/Video

The film version of The Making of Pinocchio is also available online as video on demand - for those who can't or don't want to come to the theater. The Making of Pinocchio is a queer re-appropriation of the tale of the lying wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy”. Artists and lovers Cade & MacAskill reflect on MacAskill’s gender transition and their relationship. With their characteristic playful humour, The Making of Pinocchio moves skillfully between reality and fiction, fairytale and autobiography, the personal and the political. >> GO TO THE VIDEO VERSION

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April 14 15 | 19.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

The Making of Pinocchio is a queer re-appropriation of the tale of the lying wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy”. In a technically innovative live film shoot, artists and lovers Cade & MacAskill reflect on MacAskill’s gender transition and their relationship. With their characteristic playful humour, The Making of Pinocchio moves skillfully between reality and fiction, fairytale and autobiography, the personal and the political.

» more

April 14 15 | 21.30
Tickets
Kantine | 15/10 €

The concert-performance accompanies the release of Astrit Ismaili’s first solo pop music album, produced by The Performance Agency in collaboration with Obsequeen, Lotic, Katu, Colin Self, Nömak, Europa and Mykki Blanco. The lyrics tell the story of a plant undertaking a physical and spiritual transformation to become the world’s First Flower. The project queers contemporary pop aesthetics and manifests how creativity can be a strategy to overcome existential limitations, echoing the artist’s own path.

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April 17 18 | 20.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Sorour Darabi’s work engages with potentials of re-appropriation to uncover what is hidden by binary thinking. In a kind of futuristic mythology with roots in both visible and invisible, preserved and lost dance traditions, Natural Drama questions the concept of “nature”, exploring representations and constructions of the so-called female body.

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April 20 21 | 20.00
April 22 23 | 18.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

In this immersive work between performance and film, Liz Rosenfeld and their international, intergenerational team explore moments of change and transition. Through the story of the main protagonist, URSA, an unfillable hole, they reference the Greek myth of the constellations Ursa Major and Minor (the Big and Little Bear), while they consider their own bodies in transition.

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April 22 23 | 20.30
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Untitled (Holding Horizon) is a choreography that continues Alex Baczyński-Jenkins’ engagement with negotiations of desire, the materiality of gestures, and affections of a queer commons. Through sensual, alienated gestures and the box step – a movement used in several social dances – synchronization, pleasure and alliance coexist with disorientation, limitation, and loss.

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April 27 28 29 | 20.00
April 30 | 18.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

There’s no business like show business. Melanie Jame Wolf and Teresa Vittucci ask: What does it take to make a show great? Both known for their intense solo work and powerful stage presence, the artists take a close look at popular entertainment, theater and the politics of spectacle. As a double act, they explore its tender intimacies, its power dynamics and the impact of audience and stage space on the show.

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April 28 29 30
May 01-08

Philosophiermaschine Online is an artificial intelligence that brings dead thinkers back to life. At the click of a button, the online audience enters into dialogue with Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Ernst Bloch and others, and can renegotiate their themes for the present: Freedom, dissidence, otherness, censorship, social utopia, hope - central concepts of postwar European philosophy.

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May 10 12 13 | 19.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Every successful blockbuster needs a second part. For the Markus&Markus theater collective, that’s why TITANIC II has to take the stage. The sequel starts where the film left off: at the bottom of the sea. So, it needs sand, really a lot of sand. Every year, mankind consumes twice as much sand as all the rivers supply. The consequences of this overexploitation are tangible. TITANIC II is a collision course, a melodrama, a telegram from a sinking ship.

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May 11 12 13 14 | 21.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

Inspired by the made-up creatures and mythological figures of Acâibü’l-mahlûkat, Göksu Kunak explores notions of camouflage and self-censorship. This Persian cosmology book from the 13th century was translated to Ottoman and later in Turkish with a foreword of the current President. From a speculative perspective on the Middle East, Kunak examines (in)visibility and (in)concealment and the concept of taqiyya from Islam as hypercamoufl age.

» more

Specials

Specials
Festival

Queer Darlings 4

Grafik
© Jan Grygoriew

april 14–23

For the fourth and final time, Sophiensæle presents the popular spring festival series Queer Darlings, bringing old and new favorites to Berlin. The works of local and international artists deal with personal and socio-political moments of change, transformation, crisis and transition(s). To do so, they overwrite folk dances and narratives, fairy tales and myths from a queer perspective to create humorous, immersive, sensual and imaginative stage worlds beyond binary norms – and celebrate the potential of queer imagination for new visions of coexistence.  

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Sheena McGrandles Figured + Flush

  • figured
    Figured | © Martin Rottenkolber
  • figured
    Figured | © Martin Rottenkolber
  • figured
    Figured | © Martin Rottenkolber
  • flush
    Flush | © Michiel Keuper
  • flush
    Flush | © Michiel Keuper
  • flush
    Flush | © Michiel Keuper
Dance/film
2021 February 20-28
2021 March 01-06
2021 February 20 | 19.00
Online

Available as Video on Demand until March 06.

Few/No language

Figured and Flush are companion works by choreographer Sheena McGrandles that are part of an ongoing series on radical temporalities and illogical intimacies. Since the performances cannot be brought to the stage due to the pandemic, both works are reworked as dance for screen. The film is streamed on the external platform dringeblieben.de. There you also purchase your ticket. After the purchase you will receive a code via e-mail which is valid on two devices for the whole two weeks the stream is online. Please note that you can buy your ticket in the presale, but the video will be only online and streamable from the 20th of February, 19.00 PM, until the 6th of March. The ticketshop will be open all the time until the 6th of March. If you have problems with the procedure please contact chittka@sophiensaele.com or 030/27890045.

FIGURED
Forward, backward, cut, all back, repeat: two figures move in front of a wall. Their bodies and their relationship to each other are constantly interrupted and so are the narratives that unfold and disappear again. Concentrating on a complex composition and a detailed execution of movement, choreographer Sheena McGrandles uncovers the absurdity and artificiality of the everyday gesture. With a soundtrack created from various field recordings ranging from refrigerator to demo, Figured sticks persistently to the detail and insists on putting his - and our - attention to it, over and over again.

FLUSH
Isn‘t it a nice place here? Looks gorgeous. Nestled between thorn bushes and dark cut out trees. They sink slowly into the surface of the earth. They soon realise it was a trap and blame their big eyes for misreading the situation…

Following Gertrude Stein's concept of the Landscape Play, choreographer Sheena McGrandles breaks down linear and traditional forms of narration to create FLUSH, a study on radical temporaries and illogical intimacies – which may even evoke a new lesbian timing and aesthetic. The highly technical and stylized choreography moves through formal ordering principles of juxtaposition, simultaneity, multiplicity, and repetition, exploring a new approach to traditional representations of time.

For questions or information about accessibility, please contact Gina Jeske at jeske@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 35.

Sheena McGrandles is a dancer and choreographer living in Berlin. She works in various contexts including theatre/stage, education and independent art and culture projects. Her current group of works explores radical temporality as a means of detailed exploration and exaggeration of movement. Her works create hyper-real, multi-narrative and humorous moving landscapes. Sheena presents her works nationally and internationally, including London (The Place), Amsterdam (something raw), Berlin (Sophiensæle), Mexico City (Museo Universitario Del Chopo), Los Angeles (PSSST). With Figured, Sheena McGrandles was invited to the Tanzplattform 2020.The piece FLUSH was shown at the TANZPLATTFORM 2022 in Berlin.

FIGURED: CONCEPT, director Sheena McGrandles PERFORMANCE Sheena McGrandles, Annegret Schalke SOUND Stellan Veloce LIGHT DESIGN Annegret Schalke STAGE DESIGN Sheena McGrandles OUTSIDE EYE Zinzi Buchanan FILM CO-DIRECTION AND EDIT Melanie Jame Wolf FILM CAMERA TINT Film Collective (Mireia Guzmán Sanjaume, Svea Immel, Katharina Voß)

FLUSH: CONCEPT, DIRECTOR Sheena McGrandles PERFORMANCE Sheena McGrandles, Annegret Schalke, Ewa Dziarnowska SOUND Stellan Veloce LIGHTING DESIGN Elliott Cennetoglu LIGHTS Sanja Gergoric DRAMATURGY Thomas Schaupp, Mila Pavicevic STAGE, COSTUMES Michiel Keuper, Martin Sieweke TEXT Sheena McGrandles, Mila Pavicevic FILM CO-DIRECTION AND EDIT Melanie Jame Wolf FILM CAMERA TINT Film Collective (Mireia Guzmán Sanjaume, Svea Immel, Katharina Voß) PRODUCTION ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture

Figured is a production by Sheena McGrandles. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, supported by Agora MOVE Berlin. Flush is a production by Sheena McGrandles and ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Siobhan Davies Dance London and the Goethe-Institut London.

Both films were made possible by funding from the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe. Media partner: taz. die tageszeitung