Belle Santos & Emi Ogura: MORNING TIME – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Belle Santos & Emi Ogura:
MORNING TIME
When one experiences loss, how does one enter grief? What rituals are needed to find a way into mourning? Which community holds one when feeling all alone? What routines and which gestures provide steadiness when everything else seems out of place? What textures and smells bring comfort? And when does grieving become work?
The performance MORNING TIME explores these questions in a time when grieving seems difficult to access but is so often needed. Losing a close person disrupts everything and society invents rituals to bridge the void left behind. But what happens when these rituals are over? And what about erosions one experiences that don’t find an echo in society? When silences grow heavier, and the body carries an absence, a space and a time is needed in which one can simply be with what remains. In ancient times, professional mourners were thus called. Their work helped the bereaved to enter their state of grief, and allow the transition to the life after.
In MORNING TIME, the Sophiensæle Kantine is covered with simple white sheets, which serve as projection surfaces, working materials, landscapes and fabric. In relation to them, a unique system of care, presence and work unfolds.
The sheets begin to dance.
„During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone.”
Blue Nights, Joan Didion
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.
Artistic director, scenography, costume design: Belle Santos
Choreography: Emi Ogura
Composition: Nozomu Matsumoto
Performance: Nagao Akemi, Emi Ogura, Nagao Akemi, Belle Santos, Mervan Ürkmez,
Developed together with: Susanne Sachsse
Lighting design: atmospheric solutions
Dramaturgy: Bendix Fesefeldt, Rahel Spöhrer
Production management: Wiebke Wesselmann
Video: Adam Kaplan, Yoshihiro Inada
Translator: Momoko Watanabe
Collaboration partner (fragrances): Meabh Mc Curtin (IFF Paris)
A production by Belle Santos & Emi Ogura, as part of the KAC Co-program 2024 at the Kyoto Art Center. Supported by the SAISON FOUNDATION International Projects Support Program (2023–2025) and the Goethe International Co-Production Fund, Goethe Institut Kyoto Villa Kamogawa. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Belle Santos is a Berlin-based artist working across installation, performance, text and costume design. Her work has been shown at the Kyoto Art Center, transmediale studio, Pogo Bar x KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the Athens Biennale. She was a resident at the Saison Foundation, Tokyo, Goethe Institut Villa Kamogawa, Kyoto and Cité International des Arts, Paris. Her current work explores themes of girlhood, hysteria, trauma, mourning and expressions of grief.
Emi Ogura is a performance maker and festival director based in Kyoto, Japan, working across the performing arts, music, dance and Burlesque. She studied opera singing, dance, drama and theater at the music school of OGAKI Gifu prefecture, from 2006 until 2010. After that she started her career in contemporary dance and joined her first projects. In her artistic practice she creates works centered around universal human themes, such as love, jealousy, life, sex, and death. Since 2022 she has been organizing the festival KYOTO Cultural Festival that rethinks the characteristics of the theater as a meeting-place. She is also the Program Director for Kyoto International Dance Workshop Festival since the 2025 season.