replay investigates the formal relationships between movement and sound in pop, classical music, opera and drag. Drawing on her own biography, Olympia Bukkakis and her rebellious back up dancers raise questions about class and cultural hierarchies.
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Insel der Orgeln (Island of Organs) is a happening of dance, music, performance and installation and searches for experienced, repressed and dreamed concepts of life and survival. On the island, travelers bring together terrible and promising life stories to the polyphony of the organs in order to invoke the question of the healing power of the social family of choice.
Kontakthof by Pina Bausch is one of the most famous works of contemporary dance. In 2018, artist Dalibor Šandor wondered why Bausch never actually made a version with disabled artists. Dis Contact is a new work by artists belonging to communities and cultures that are systematically oppressed in the world where Kontakthof has a prominent status.
In OUT OF MIND Eva Meyer-Keller and her accomplices develop choreographic approaches to what we call consciousness and experience. She takes neuroscientific approaches as a starting point to undertake a dive into a slippery terrain of uncertainties and turns the theater space into an experimental laboratory in which more-thanhuman performers enter the scene as well.
Time out of Joint is a grotesque variety show of political speeches and a virtuously cacophonous concert of feminist struggles of the 20th century. Applying the tactic of tactlessness, utterances by historically influential female* speakers are dissected, distorted and recomposed. Dancing bodies explore rhetorical strategies as questions of rhythmic (re)arrangement and make voice audible as the battlefield of political representation.
What does the demand for a “decolonization of the University” mean for German-language theater studies? What could a post- or decolonial Theater Science look like in research and teaching? Together with contributors from the anthology Theaterwissenschaft postkolonial/decolonial, the editors Azadeh Sharifi and Lisa Skwirblies want to explore these questions.
Vanessa Stern has lost her way. She cried out bravely: “Social media, you are my enemy!” and founded a knighthood (complete with cute ponies) to go into battle against the dark forces of Reach and Attention. Theater without clicks and shares and likes! Be there when no one is following us! Another world is possible.
à mort is a performative-musical exploration of processes of domination, dying and killing. Excessive scenes of destruction emerge in a memento mori inspired installation of natural and artificial materials. The female voice emerges as a powerful physical presence in a dying world, challenging the grotesque human desire for dominance.
For his project, Hendrik Quast learns the art of ventriloquism in order to approach the chronic inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis artistically. In conversation with the disease, new ways of speaking and images of chronic illness emerge, opening up unusual spaces of humor for the ill and healthy audience.
JANUAR 05 – 21
Hey, why do you look so tired? "Urgency culture" expects us to be connected and responsive constantly. There is little to no time left to imagine the world otherwise. Tanztage Berlin – a yearly festival highlighting the work of the city's emerging dance makers – is back to diagnose the present and predict the future. Its 32nd edition investigates our daily overstimulation and chronic fatigue by reflecting on how we move to the rhythm of today's high-speed, social media-driven reality and its challenges.
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The SOPHIENSÆLE are pleased to present their new management team starting with the season 2023/24. JENS HILLJE and ANDREA NIEDERBUCHNER have been recruited as artistic directors. KERSTIN MÜLLER will remain with the company as commercial director. Together, Jens Hillje, Andrea Niederbuchner and Kerstin Müller will manage the SOPHIENSÆLE as an executive team from July 1, 2023.
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Sheena McGrandles composes stylized body landscapes calling both to the erotic and absurd. In a minimalist setting, three performers use a carefully assembled movement vocabulary that takes inspiration from video-editing techniques: It combines performing live slow motion, rewind, fast edits and endless repetitions, thus exploring non-linear narration and disunity in the body. The choreography focuses on everyday movements and gestures, making a spectacle of the mundane. While the familiar becomes increasingly unfamiliar the tiny details and subtexts that are hidden in situations are exposed.
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.
CONCEPT, DIRECTION Sheena McGrandles PERFORMANCE Sheena McGrandles, Annegret Schalke, Ewa Dziarnowska SOUND Stellan Veloce LIGHT DESIGN Elliott Cennetoglu DRAMATURGY Thomas Schaupp, Mila Pavicevic STAGE, COSTUME Michiel Keuper, Martin Sieweke PRODUCTION ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro
A production by Sheena McGrandles in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund, Siobhan Davies Dance London and the Goethe-Institut London. Media partner: taz. die tageszeitung
