Tanztage Berlin 2025 will take place from 9 to 25 January 2025 in the Sophiensæle. The 34th festival edition presents 4 premieres, 6 revivals and a discourse and workshop program on scarcity, body politics and burnout. After initial plans to shorten the festival, the Sophiensæle have found a way to present the usual 10 selected works from over 200 submitted over 17 days.
Image above: © Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė.
Tanztage Berlin 2025 combines critical reflection with artistic experimentation. The 34th festival edition is obsessed with freedom, just as the pioneers of modern dance were over a century ago. It explores the burdens that bodies carry in a world that sees them primarily as problems to be solved. Between absence and overpresence, depth and surface, limitation and liberation, bodies inhabit ambiguous interstices. They refuse fixed definitions or to be pinned down to rigid narratives. As vehicles for joy and anger, survival and denial, they invite us to loosen up, redistribute weight and insist on taking up space.
In almost three decades, the festival for young Berlin dance talent has often reflected the aesthetic and political divisions in the scene or its economic precariousness. As the first festival of the year and the prelude to the annual cultural calendar, Tanztage Berlin has repeatedly been forced to be the avant-garde of problem-solving, tackling the tensions and crises that hit the cultural landscape. This time is no different.
As the expected funding for Tanztage 2025 fell victim to the budget freeze, the budget had to be cut in half. For the artists and the team, this meant several months of stress, uncertainty and ultimately disappointment. For a unique, Europe-wide recognized production platform like the Tanztage, this means a step backwards: fewer premieres, no new group works, smaller formats and teams and, above all, much less money for Berlin’s young talent, who are already working under precarious conditions.
In contrast to politicians who put their neoliberal austerity policies above social welfare and critical art, Sophiensælen feels responsible for both Tanztage Berlin and the most fragile independent scene. he motto “less is more” has been a guiding principle of Tanztage in recent years, and for this edition the decision was made to do more with less. After considering shortening the festival, a way was found to present the usual 10 selected works from over 200 submissions over 17 days. In response to the austerity measures, the focus is on a rich diversity of choreographic perspectives, shared knowledge, care and community. The dance scene is celebrated in its intensity, as is the audience. The Dance Days are honored as a space where we come together, ask questions and shape the future together. The aim is to create space for the chaos of what is, what was and what could be.
Leo Naomi Baur: The Disempowered
The Disempowered deals with unavailability. With the unavailability of the sick body and the unpredictability of one’s own presence. The installative video work deliberately focuses on physical and emotional states that are often relegated to the realm of private fate and testifies to the longing for shared experiences. In the field of tension between absence and participation, viewers are invited to temporarily inhabit the resulting free space together. With the audience in the room, The Disempowered creates a choreography without live dance, a film without a screen, an audio walk without a predetermined path. Based on the concept of Aesthetics of Access, The Disempowered makes artistic use of the dismantling of possible barriers.
Tentacular Figurings: WET HOT WOMBS – Bathing into other Bodies
If I am alone with my body – am I ever alone with my body?
In WET HOT WOMBS – Bathing into other Bodies, the body repeatedly eludes our gaze, revealing itself to be constantly in the process of becoming. In a messy dance with objects, masks, dolls and an organ, a single body is sung about and conjured up, examined for non-human relationships, freed from attributions and opened up to the indescribable and its plurality. Emerging bodies, hybrid bodies, fluid bodies, bodies between human and sea creature, woman and monster, punk and diva. In search of a queer-feminist, post-human physicality, the stage space oscillates between the deep sea, outer space and the subconscious.
We are lost in space. We are all at sea. We are all in the same boat.
“[…] The problem is that we didn’t know who we meant when we said “we”.” (Rosi Braidotti)
Kysy Fischer: Super Superficial
Super naked, super exposed, super flashy. Super Superficial addresses the transience of surfaces by bending and breaking them. The performance of movement and sound shows a deceptive image of bodies, an image in which they deform and shift and merge with the surfaces and boundaries of space.
I fake it ergo sum.
Super Superficial asks how the view of the naked body can be stripped bare by exaggerating identities instead of searching for an essence. Between comedy and anger, attributions from the outside and physical resistance, the piece provides a powerful and lively response to the relationship to the naked female body in art and society. Super Superficial is about women who decide to do whatever they want.
Auro Orso: PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDO
PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDOS examines reggaetón as a cultural force, tracing its origins and its resonance with racialized bodies while questioning the power structures that have influenced its development. A duet between human flesh and a silicone mold, the performance oscillates between pleasure, distortion and transformation, exploring crevices and asses. PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDOS deconstructs colonial binaries as the work reshapes a drag king persona into a multifaceted, fluid figure.
Following Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “almas entre dos mundos” – souls navigating between multiple worlds – the work interweaves this idea of shape-shifting with the liberating potential of reggaetón and the perreo dance style. PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDOS emphasizes the ability of this dance form to create new identities and realities that are not bound to the colonial legacy of culture and gender, and to empower and subvert them. By incorporating fluidity, hybridity, contradictions and introspection, the piece opens a portal to perspectives and worlds beyond the boundaries of Western ways of thinking and invites the audience to engage with the complexity of gaze, entitlement and privilege.
vAL: Intermission
Reality has become so absurd that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction, and we, spectators and subjects alike, are numb. When our authentic selves are clouded by the devastating effects of social ills, what is left to break through this psychic disturbance and share with others? The answer might lie in our dreams. But what if we are so overwhelmed and oversaturated that we can only stare into a dreamless abyss?
INTERMISSION is a solo piece based on a collective dream archive that aims to fill in the gaps of a fragmented memory. By going through a series of poses stored in his body archive, vAL searches for clarity in a dense fog of torn dreams. What remains of the memory is shared through a mixture of narrative, ballad and physical evocations that provide a new idea of what dreams might sound or look like. The archive is brought to life through its own performative doubt, variability and curated interruption. This relentless search for lost dreams inspires an anarchy that ultimately becomes vAL’s cure. What might finally erupt as we sit together in our confusion?
Hanako Hayakawa: Lurker
Under the influence of endless streams of information, the figure of the “lurker” often describes someone who reads the messages in a chat room without actively participating. At the same time, a “lurker” is also a figure that lies hidden, lies in wait for an ambush, observes, is playfully hidden in the shadows and allows ambiguity to arise. In her performance, Hanako Hayakawa shows a ghostly, empty, floating body – an unsteady being that is reluctant to commit to a single identity, immersed in sensations and emotions, digressing and pausing to reflect.
Hayakawa’s artistic approach draws from both Para Para and Nō theater. Para Para is a popular club dance style from Japan in which synchronized choreographies have been danced from the 1980s to the present day. Nō theater influences the creation of archetypal characters and the interplay between the everyday and the supernatural. In Lurker, Hayakawa wanders through a landscape of eerie animated objects, while the dance stretches time and offers the audience space to linger. The performance is a physical exploration of contemporary ways of being, in times characterized by crisis, rupture and displacement, a homeopathic medicine and a tool to overcome alienation through estrangement.
Shade Théret: Daybreak
Daybreak thematisiert die Spannung von Nicht-Auffindbarkeit und Überwachung durch die Figur der Vagabundin. Das Vagabunden-Dasein steht für die Freiheit, anonym zu leben, und kann dafür sorgen, dass wir uns von der Kommerzialisierung des Sozialen – unsere Verbindungen, Beziehungen und Freund*innenschaften – und deren Umwandlung in wertvolle Daten befreien.
In dieser Arbeit, die in einer von Lynn Suemitsu komponierten und gespielten Live-Soundlandschaft stattfindet, akzeptiert die Vagabundin (Shade Théret) ihren Platz in der Machtstruktur der Welt nicht. Sie entscheidet sich dafür, außerhalb von allem zu leben, was ihr folgt und sie auffindbar machen könnte. Deshalb lebt sie buchstäblich draußen – an einem kalten Strand, auf einer leeren Baustelle, in einem überwinterten Garten. Wenn sie jemandem begegnet, bittet sie nie um etwas, entschuldigt sich nie und sagt nie Danke. Sie fordert, sie nimmt sich, was sie will, und geht dann weg.
RAYNE&CEREMONY: For All Intents and Purposes… I’m Somebody, SOMEBODY!
A physical and metaphorical race against time: three performers navigate their way through a world in which productivity is placed above all else. Time becomes a tyrannical force here, creating restriction and urgency. It reinforces the performers’ commitment as they struggle for autonomy in a system that is geared towards efficiency without taking individual experience into account. At the same time, the performance addresses the complexity of marginalized bodies in a society that values performance over well-being, questioning the cost of constant productivity and the possibility of reclaiming oneself in its relentless progress. A captivating exploration of power, play and the relentless march of time, dealing with the intersection of neurodiversity, body dysmorphia and societal pressures.
Luisa Fernanda Alfonso: Masterpiece
Drawing on her fascinations and frustrations, Luisa Fernanda Alfonso embodies and inverts the archetypes of the character dancer and the mariachi – known for their hyper-dramatic, hyper-moral and hyper-sexual traits. Masterpiece explores the excesses of these characters in the tumult of nostalgic and Latin American associations, tearing dance from its legitimacy, heritage and traditions. How can we create conditions in which these archetypes can exist with us today? How can we feel joy in spaces where we no longer know how to position ourselves? What resonates in our simultaneous fascination and irritation? In collaboration with composer Peter Rubel and a variety of speakers, Masterpiece explores the poetics of build-up and breakdown, repetition, modulation and interruption, and the abandonment of dances and songs that attempt to exist between harmony and dissonance.
Adam Russell-Jones: Release the Hounds
Release the Hounds is a dance through the crisis. On stage, the performer meanders through a series of song and dance numbers in the form of an open physical poem. Set on the dance floor of the performer’s psyche – reminiscent of a ballroom or the basement of a nightclub – the spectacle shows a man who can’t stop dancing. Inspired by the dance marathons of the 1920s/1930s during the Great Depression in the US and rave culture, both contemporary and Thatcher-era, Release the Hounds is a ballad about the working-class dancer. As he sways on the dance floor and floats in time, the question arises as to whether he is there for pleasure or to make money. The work explores the sensual and poetic experience of being the last person on the dance floor; an abstract representation of dance as an escape from reality, but also as a means of surviving it.
Inspired by the novel RAVE by Rainald Goetz, and the 1996 film They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, Release the Hounds follows a narrative in which one does not always make ends meet, but in which the work remains clear: the dancer must keep dancing.
Tanztage Berlin 2025 with:
Luisa Fernanda Alfonso, Leo Naomi Baur, Kysy Fischer, Hanako Hayakawa, Auro Orso, RAYNE&CEREMONY, Adam Russell-Jones, Tentacular Figurings, Shade Théret, vAL u.a./a.o.
WHERE?
Programme overview Tanztage Berlin 2025
Leo Naomi Baur: The Disempowered
09.01-11.01.2025, 19:00 h
12.01.2025, 16:00 h
Dance, Installation
Canteen
German, English, Arabic with integrated audio description in German (not all language skills required)
Relaxed Performanc
Tentacular Figurings: WET HOT WOMBS – Bathing into other Bodies
09.01-10.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
Dance, Performance
Ballroom
English, little language
Kysy Fischer: Super Superficial
09.01-10.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
Dance, Performance
Ballroom
English, little language
Auro Orso: PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDO
Premiere
10.01.2025, 19:00 Uhr
11.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
12.01.2025, 20:00 Uhr (BIPoC-only)
Dance, Performance
Wedding hall
English
vAL: Intermission
17.01-18.01.2025, 19:00 Uhr
19.01.2025, 17:00 Uhr
Performance
Wedding hall
English
Hanako Hayakawa: Lurker
8.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
19.01.2025, 19:00 Uhr
Dance/Performance
Ballroom
No language
Shade Théret: Daybreak
Premiere
18.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
19.01.2025, 19:00 Uhr
Dance, Performance
Ballroom
English
RAYNE&CEREMONY: For All Intents and Purposes… I’m Somebody, SOMEBODY!
Premiere
22.01.2025, 20:00 Uhr
23.01-24.01.2025, 19:00 Uhr
Dance, Performance
Canteen
Luisa Fernanda Alfonso: Masterpiece
23.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
25.01.2025, 19:00 Uhr
Dance, Performance
Wedding hall
Performance on 25.01. with German audio description
Adam Russell-Jones: Release the Hounds
Premiere
24.01.2025, 20:30 Uhr
25.01.2025, 21:00 Uhr
Dance, Performance
Ballroom
WHERE?
Sophiensæle
Sophienstraße 18
10178 Berlin
