Courtney May Robertson: HUNTER – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin

Courtney May Robertson:
HUNTER

One person leans over another person who lies on their back. The upper person touches the mouth of the lying person with their tongue. The scene is lit in warm, reddish light.
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HUNTER is an interdisciplinary performance that critically examines the pervasive misogynistic roles assigned to women in three key “Body Genres” in Film: Pornography, Horror and Melodrama. Together with her hyper-realistic life-sized doppelgänger in doll form, Courtney May Robertson weaves a tapestry of images in which the grotesque, (sexual) perversion and emotional excess become triumphant symbols for bodily autonomy and empowerment. The duo – one of flesh and blood, the other crafted from foam and silicone – map out the internal torments and ecstasies of an individual in conflict with an archaic society that upholds purity as a moral standard.

Spectators are invited to enter the depths of a private locked room where the rigid dichotomy between repulsion and attraction dissolves. Robertson is convinced that when shame is suspended the emotion of disgust, generally associated with aversion, has the capacity to transform into paradoxical intrigue. Propelled by an industrial soundscape composed by Acidic Male, in HUNTER self-destruction is embraced as an act of self-preservation.

HUNTER was awarded the VSCD Mime/Performance Prize 2024 at the Nederlands Theater Festival and listed in newspaper NRC’s 10 Best Dance Performances of 2024.

Ticket
Ticket

The information on accessibility is still in progress and will be updated as soon as possible. If any questions remain unanswered until then, please feel free to contact the communication department at barrierefreiheit@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 35. Please note that details may change by the day of the event. Therefore, if you find out after you have purchased your ticket that the performance is no longer accessible to you, you can contact us for a ticket return at ticketing@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 45 until 5 business days after the event (Monday through Friday between 10am and 6pm).

Early boarding

If, for artistic reasons, the door to the auditorium does not open until very shortly before the performance begins, there is the option of early boarding.

Tickets

  • Reservations can be made via the ticket telephone at 030 283 52 66, Monday to Friday from 4pm-6pm
  • Via the online ticket shop
  • At the box office

You can also find more information about accessibility at the house here.

Concept, choreography, video design, performance: Courtney May Robertson
Sound design: Puck Schot (Acidic Male)
Light & stage design: Manuel Boutreur
Puppet design: Ronald Schinkelshoek
Dramaturgy: Lara van Lookeren
Wig design: Zoe Morgan
Costume design: Matija Franjes
Discomfort devices: BNDSN
Movement assistant: Olympia Kotopoulos
Creative producer Creation: Lena Meijer
Technical producer tour: Stefan Prokop
Tour technicians: Stefan Prokop, Merijn Boers, Jelle Rebel 
Tour manager: Anna Møller 
PR & Communication: Jannes Heidinga
Thanks to: Yoko Haveman

A production by Courtney May Robertson in coproduction with Dansateliers, Dans Brabant, ICK Artist Space and Grand Theatre Groningen. With support by Stimuleringsfonds Design Grant, Fonds 21, AFK and Gemeente Rotterdam. Medie partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.

Courtney May Robertson is a performer and interdisciplinary maker based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Upon graduating from The Scottish School of Contemporary Dance in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts, she began her professional career with Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club. In 2017 Robertson entered into an on-going collaboration with Flemish choreographer Jan Martens, performing in RULE OF THREE (2017), any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones (2021) and VOICE NOISE (2024). Meanwhile, she performed in Festzug (2021) and A Divine Comedy (2021) by Austrian performance artist Florentina Holzinger. Most recently, she worked as a performer with Maxime Dreesen in Peekaboo (2025) and soon with Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe in A RITE OF SPRING (2026).

Robertson’s own choreographic voice began emerging in underground spaces in the Netherlands. Her work as a maker is driven by the raw, the rigorous, and the ruptured, often exploring sociopolitical questions through the lens of the personal, the grotesque, and the uncanny. She crafts work that insists on emotional intensity, layered contradiction and sharp conceptual edges, inviting audiences into sensorial universes where feeling precedes understanding. 

 Though rooted in her background in a range of dance styles, Robertson’s practice is in constant dialogue with various artistic disciplines cutting across performance art, video, computer coding, puppetry, and visual design. Whether battling light beams, surrendering to algorithmic systems, or navigating a monstrous double, she builds haunting and immersive encounters that blur the boundaries between control and collapse, rigor and rebellion, chaos and structure.

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