We would like to invite you to the first online showing happening in the frame of the residency program New Techniques at Sophiensæle. On December 17th, Rodrigo Garcia Alves and Liz Rosenfeld will share some of their ongoing creative research around the topic of queer hospice in the form of video scores, followed by a conversation with Mateusz Szymanówka, dance dramaturge at Sophiensæle.

How will we take care of each other as non-blood-related family? What do we require as queer people to ensure that we will be able to provide the end-of-life care that we envision? How can artistic research become a life-long commitment explored in different forms and iterations? During their residency at Sophiensæle Rodrigo Alves Garcia and Liz Rosenfeld met with figures who work with death in both pragmatic and creative ways: a palliative doctor, a death doula, a choir director, a bondage expert and a tattoo healer, among others. Together they deepened the knowledge around dying and queer care, creating choreographic scores, video works and auto-discursive writing dealing with questions of intimacy, asking how queer kin can continue to hold space for each other politically, artistically, architecturally and emotionally as they prepare for their hospice. In their residency, they had the privilege to spend studio time with Colin Self, Maja Zimmermann, Fercha Pombo, Andre Neely, Imogen Heath, Christian Küllmei and Dasnyia Sommer.

With the residency program NEW TECHNIQUES Sophiensæle wants to support dance makers who have not yet benefited from structural support. Until the end of 2021, one choreographer per half-year will participate in the residency for one month with their artistic team. In November/December 2020 Rodrigo Garcia Alves and Liz Rosenfeld will explore questions of queer care; in March 2021 Tiran Willemse Normanson will research the connection between race, gender and melancholia; and in November 2021 Angela Alves will work around the topic of pleasure and visualization. Sophiensæle is among nine Berlin production houses participating in the pilot project Residency Funding Dance of the Berlin's Senate Department for Culture and Europe.