From May 28th to June 2nd 2019, the Performing Arts Festival Berlin invites you at well over 50 locations in the city to experience the artistic diversity of Berlin’s independent scene across all genres of the performing arts: with theatre, dance and performances, figure, object and music theatre, new circus and site-specific events.
Image above: INSTINCTS Valentin Tszin, Photo Ulrich Heemann
Music robots, Madonna, Adam and Eve, as well as futuristic cyborgs gather at well-known production houses, small stages and unusual places in the city. Contemporary performances meet classical monologues, contemporary political questions meet moving bodies, theatre spectacles meet intimate dialogues, burlesque meets artistry.
The declared festival centre is the Haus der Statistik on Alexanderplatz, the building without windows that seems to be ready for demolition, on which these letters are currently emblazoned: ALLESANDERSPLATZ. There, in the low building to the right of the house (Werkstatt Haus der Statistik), you can obtain comprehensive information about the various events and also buy tickets.
Here are excerpts from the program overview:
Florentina Holzinger / CAMPO: „Apollon“
01. & 02.06.2019, each 7:30 pm, Sophiensæle
With five muses and god Apollon investigates Florentina Holzinger’s attributions of the Female. What does the perfect woman want and what does the audience want from her? Apollo combines fin de siècle Freakshow with Live Art of the 1960s to a spectacle physical virtuosity. Starting point of the piece is Balanchines Ballet quartet Apollon Musagète from the year 1928, which was performed to the music Igor Stravinsky’s traditions back then. With an aesthetic A tightrope walk between the occult fitness studio, cyborg bullfighting and neoclassical ballet Holzinger offers a new perspective on the choreography and bridges the gap between high art and entertainment. A coexistence of fiction and reality, of innocence and depravity with completely female cast. This performance contains scenes, which some I could find the viewers disturbing.]
Valentin Tszin: „Instincts“
30.05.2019, 9 pm, ACUD Theater
Primitive, rough and untreated – in “Instincts” the choreographer Valentin Tszin gives free rein to the wishes and desires that are all too often suppressed. Passing through different states of being, he drives his body and mind to the edge of exhaustion – with the aim of freeing himself from his own needs. In recurring motifs copied from life, he questions the possibilities of mastering one’s own instincts. Or does individual happiness lie in them?
Jared Gradinger & Angela Schubot: „YEW: outside“
29. & 30.05.2019, each 8 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer at Botanischer Volkspark Pankow-Blankenfelde
Out of a desire to recognize and interact with non-human beings, Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot enter into a deep connection with nature and its inherent intelligence. “YEW” (German: Eibe) is not a conventional choreography, rather an experimental evening full of intense encounters with a plant nature unfolds, described by Gradinger and Schubot as a “garden without earth”. The audience becomes witnesses of cross-species encounters and, beyond that, part of the garden itself.
Bishop Black: „becoming my body“
31.05.2019, 8 pm, Ballhaus Naunynstraße
Bishop Black transforms the burlesque into a medium of self-determination for queer blacks. The own body, reified in voyeurism and racism, object of multiple appropriation becomes here the material of the own artistic expression, the medium of self-assertion. The British performance artist expresses himself primarily by using his body as a language and politicized tool to shape sexuality and gender.
p.u.r.e.: performative urban research ensemble – p.u.r.e. walk #1: Drei Brücken und ein Tunnel
Performative Walk | 31.05.2019, 6 pm, in public space, Meeting pint: U/S Gesundbrunnen, Bellermannstraße
This walk invites to adventure, to rediscover the city, to appropriate it, to interrupt it and to shape it. p.u.r.e. is a collective of walking artists who explore the relationship between man and city, which is understood as a continuous, productive process. They decelerate, step out of everyday life and improvise.
gamut Inc.: „INTERZONE“
01. & 02.06.2019, Theater im Delphi
Self-playing music robots with light and projection beams that are made sculpturally visible by hazer mist. This “volumetric light” creates digital landscapes through light colour and form. From the myth of the golem to the fantastic apparatuses of Athanasius Kircher or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, different utopias of the machine are negotiated in “Interzone”. A retro-futuristic musical theatre.
Sesperisi AKA Özgür Erkök Moroder & Opening Concert: “Jenny’s Playlist” – „Once Upon A Time in an Unknown Future“
30.05.2019, 10 pm, Arka Oda Berlin
A synth-punk opera with music, singing, dancing and performance. An apocalyptic narrator leads through the evening with news from the future. He gives his impressions of the end of the world in songs and dance interludes. His performance is deliberately reminiscent of “The Wildman”, a mythological figure of medieval Europe who stands for wildness and anarchy in art and literature.
Cameryn Moore/Littler Black Book Production: „MUSE. An experimental session in life drawing and discussion“
29.05.2019, 6 pm, Wein Salon (Schreiner Straße 59, 10247 Berlin)
“MUSE” begins with a one-hour life drawing session with performer Cameryn Moore. She tells us what it’s like to be stuck in a body that is constantly exposed to critical observation, both in the studio and outside in the world. The audience is invited to ask questions or join in.
„Introducing…“
The platform for young talent at the Performing Arts Festival Berlin
Since the foundation of the Performing Arts Festival Berlin, the association presents from Ballhaus Ost, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensæle and Theaterdiscounter exciting new artists in and for Berlin. Together, the artistic management teams of the houses selected six newcomers from 165 applications and now include them in their festival programme as the series “Introducing…”. This year, those of us who are outgoing can look forward to a very inspiring and international round. All six positions negotiate for themselves the question of gender roles, intersectional self-empowerment and political spheres of action – in which they weave a common network of queer feminist images and solidary patterns of action. Six exciting positions in the performing arts, which are now with Berlin.
May we introduce – INTRODUCING 2019: Julia Plawgo introduct an open window in dance with size 2GB. Jan Rozman introduct the voices of things. Women and fiction introducen the stage as a feminist empowerment camp. CHICKS introduct the new, queer masculinity as liquefied desire. Paweł Świerczek introduct a rainbow in dark mining. Rodrigo Batista introduct Brazil’s anger about attributions and conditions.
