Isabel Lewis & Djibril Sall: Sip & Speak – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Isabel Lewis & Djibril Sall:
Sip & Speak
Sip & Speak
3–8 PM
Relaxed Performance
Sip & Speak takes place as part of the projects of the Artistic Advisory Board of Sophiensæle.
Isabel Lewis & Djibril Sall invite the audience to a special space for conversation and music, in which they exchange stories and explore the influences and experiences that shape their current artistic practice. They address topics such as death and dying, belonging, looking outside of Europe for the future, coming and leaving.
This informal format is a hosted listening session arranged as an ataya tea ceremony, a Senegalese hosting ritual where strong green tea is continuously brewed over the course of a conversation and served over three rounds. Ataya can last up to three hours and is used as way to structure the temporal rhythm of a conversation.
Isabel Lewis is part of Sophiensæles’ Artistic Adivisory Board. Since the 2024/25 season Sophiensæle has an artistic advisory board at its side. It is important to us to sustainably integrate the perspectives of artists into our structures in order to further develop the artistic vision of our space in a mutual exchange, to review production conditions for artists and to strengthen the cultural-political situation of the Sophiensæle. Four artists with different focuses and practices are appointed for two years at a time. The members for the years 2024-2026 are Simone Dede Ayivi, Isabel Lewis, Enad Marouf and Hendrik Quast, who will each host an artistic exchange format. Simone Dede Ayivi’s Schwarze Kantine took place February 28th, 2025.
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).
Relaxed Performance
- All shows take place as Relaxed Performance.
- Relaxed Performances would like to welcome all visitors for whom sitting still for a long time in the theatre is a barrier. This applies, for example, to neurodivergent people (including autistic people, people with Tourette's or ADHD), people with learning difficulties or people with chronic pain. Noises and movements from the audience are welcome. Visitors can leave and return to the auditorium at any time.
Light
- The lighting mood is rather bright.
- There are no abrupt changes of light.
- Most of the time, there is light throughout the room.
Sound
- There is an atmospheric music backdrop.
Smell
- It smells of green tea and mint.
Audience
- Seating: bean bags, chairs and cushions on the stage.
- The audience can also sit or stand directly on the floor and move around the hall freely.
- 2 beanbag seats bookable subject to availability
- 2 wheelchair seats bookable subject to availability
Early Boarding
There will be a long, relaxed admission. It is possible to leave and come back to the hall at any time.
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.
With: Isabel Lewis, Djibril Sall
Djibril Sall is a queer Senegalese performer, choreographer, and writer. Born in Dakar, he grew up in a working-class family in the Deep South of the United States of America and was educated at the “elite” Wesleyan University. He describes himself in these terms to illustrate the range of privilege he holds as someone who worked from the peripheries of the Global South to someone who can now move unencumbered within and outside of the borders of the Global North.
His work is situated at the intersection of (racialized) migration and belonging, where he questions the reasons that compel people to leave. This questioning includes his own migration background and his insights into (non)belonging and being in-between. The central question he poses to himself and his audience is: How can trauma become a departure point for exploring pleasure, letting go, disclosure, and open-hearted connection? Djibril was the 2024 Berlin Cultural Exchange Fellow at Cité Internationale des Arts Paris and was the inaugural resident at Emerging Change Festival.
Isabel Lewis is a Dominican-American artist active in the fields of theater, music, and dance and is particularly recognized for introducing the format of the Occasion to the field of Contemporary Art with her presentations at the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2013) followed by Frieze Art Fair London (2014). Through persistent experimentation and embodied research methodologies Lewis creates formats for alternative modes of sociality between human and more-than-human-agents. For Lewis any given format suggests ways of ordering the sensible and so how to engage with format is a deeply political question.
She employs an expanded sense of the choreographic that centers its focus around generating affective bodily experiences that address all the senses in her collaborative practice. Her work has been presented by Dia Art Foundation, Performance Space New York, The Kitchen, Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Basel, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Tanz im August, Kampnagel, Gropius Bau, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Palais de Tokyo, Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Sharjah Biennial, Karachi Biennial Trust, and Kunsthalle Zürich among others. In 2021 she became Professor of Performative Arts at the HGB Leipzig. Together with Rio Rutzinger, Isabel Lewis will take over the artistic direction of the Tanzquartier Wien from the 2025/26 season.