Tag: Berlin

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Americas DACH region

People Watching Collective – Play Dead

January 15th – June 1st, 2025 Chamäleon Berlin, Berlin*
July 28th – 29th, 2025 GREC festival, Barcelona
August 1st – 2nd, 2025 La Strada, Graz
August 8th, 2025 Danseu Festival, Piles
August 14th – 31st, 2025 Letní Letná festival, Prague
October 23rd – 25th, 2025 Circa Auch, Auch
November 5th – 6th, 2025 MAC Créteil, Créteil
November 15th – 16th, 2025 Cirkuliacija, Vilnius
November 27th – 29th, 2025 Le Diamant, Quebec
March 6th, 2026 Steps Festival, Neuchâtel
March 8th, 2026 Steps Festival, Vevey
March 11th, 2026 Steps Festival, Baden
March 13th, 2026 Steps Festival, Bulle
March 18th, 2026 Steps Festival, Sierre
March 21st, 2026 Steps Festival, St. Gallen
March 24th, 2026 Steps Festival, Delément
March 26th, 2026 Steps Festival, Schaffhausen
March 29th, 2026 Steps Festival, Nyon
Duration: 70 minutes
*adpated version with longer duration

Canadian Circus Sensation

© People Watching Collective

With Play Dead, the Canadian company People Watching has created an astonishing debut work. The show will be re-staged exclusively for the Chamäleon in order to artistically expand the facets of the Chamäleon stage with its extraordinary and powerful aesthetic.

In a shifting universe of domestic trappings and interlocking stories, eight curious individuals dissect the beauty and absurdity of the human condition. A reverie, a purgatory, a place where anatomical logic and gravity don’t seem to apply. Through an otherworldly hybrid of acrobatics, dance and physical theatre, People Watching create contemporary circus that flows like water, sometimes gentle and reflective, sometimes relentless and impactful. Play Dead pushes physical boundaries at the intersection where circus and dance meet to celebrate life in all its eccentricity, the same way people desperately dance to the last song before the party ends.

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Carlos Aller & Cecilia Bartolino – A/way Home + Nothing Happens

January 9th – 12th, 2025 DOCK 11, Berlin
Approx. 80 minutes incl. 15-minute break

Double Bill of a Fascinating Duo

© Giampaolo Becherini

A/way Home

In A/way Home two essences intertwine – one veiled in opulence, the other adorned with the transient weight of existence. Through the choreography of being, strength and courage materialize in the affluent silhouette, transcending societal diversity. Simultaneously, the nomadic spirit unveils a dance of vulnerability, a silent rebellion against norms and expectations.

This evocative piece beckons viewers to immerse in the fluid interplay of acceptance, where two souls converge in an enigmatic narrative, learning from each other, challenging preconceptions and forging a unique bond. Within the shifting tapestry of existence, a symbiotic rhythm echoes on the stage, a heartbeat of compassion that defies expectations.

Nothing happens (Premiere)

Nothing Happens blends absurdity and irony to expose the conflicts of modern life, confronting global issues often concealed by a mask of normalcy. Inspired by Schrödinger’s Cat and Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, the piece reveals society’s unresolved paradoxes. The performers shift between fractured identities, suspended in endless, surreal loops that echo a world avoiding truth. Themes of hidden realities, shifting identities, silent wounds, and global warming reveal a culture that obscures itself. Their intensified movements capture the discord of our age, while AI voices drift through like echoes from a dream. In this hazy space between self and reflection, the work asks if we’re ready to break the silence and confront the pressing truths of our time.

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Mediterranea DACH region

Echoes of ’78 – Kontakthof

November 26th/27th/29th/30th & December 1st, 2024
Opernhaus Wuppertal, Wuppertal
May 13rd – 15th, 2025 Theatertreffen, Berlin
October 11th, 2025 Festspielhaus St. Pölten, St. Pölten
October 15th – 18th, 2025 Amare, The Hague
November 7th – 9th, 2025 SIDCT, Shanghai
June 4th – 6th, 2026 Opernhaus Wuppertal, Wuppertal
June 10th – 11th, 2026 LAC, Lugano
100 minutes

A New Encounter with Kontakthof

Photo: Ulli Weiss ©Pina Bausch Foundation

Originally premiered in 1978, Kontakthof is a seminal piece in Pina Bausch’s repertoire, created at a time when her work was beginning to receive international recognition.  

It is said that Pina often mused on the idea of seeing her original cast dance the piece when older. Now, 45 years later, a new encounter with Kontakthof is being created by choreographer Meryl Tankard, who was one of the main characters in 1978. 

Eight of the original dancers return to their roles as the production creates a poignant interaction between past and present. Kontakthof – Echoes of ‘78 integrates projections of archival footage from their performances as younger dancers, and with company members no longer on stage.  

Sadler’s Wells, Pina Bausch Foundation and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch

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Harald Beharie – Batty Bwoy

  • November 16th – 17th, 2024 Bari International Gender festival, Bari
  • November 21st – 23rd, 2024 Sophiensæle, Berlin
  • December 6th – 7th, 2024 Kampnagel, Hamburg
  • March 22nd, 2025 Artdanthé, Vanves
  • March 24th, 2025 Festival Le Grand Bain, Roubaix
  • March 27th, 2025 STUK, Leuven
  • April 1st – 3rd, 2025 Bora Bora, Aarhus
  • April 8th – 9th, 2025 Dansehallerne, Copenhagen
  • May 20th – 22nd, 2025 Tramway/Buzzcut Glasgow
  • May 28th – 31st, 2025 FTA, Montreal
  • June 7th, 2025 RCI93, Aubervilliers

75 minutes

A Captivating Solo

© Tale Hendnes

There are hints of dancehall dutty wine whirls, or sexy pelvis swaying. The movements are always ambivalent: they range between vulnerable, violent and ecstatic, yet become mechanical and ‘empty’ through numerous repetitions.

Jelena Mihelčić

Batty Bwoy is a solo performance in collaboration with Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce, Jassem Hindi and Ring van Mobius.

Through a reappropriation of the Jamaican term “ Batty Bwoy” (litteraly, butt boy), slang for a queer person, the work twists and turns myths to invoke demonic sensitivities and charming cruelties, unfolding vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. The horror and joy of Batty Bwoy, inherent to queer blackness, is unmasked. 

Scrutinizing the absurdity of a queer monstrosity, Batty Bwoy articulates the porosity of bodies and languages, their mouths swallowing and regurgitating the corporal fictions projected onto their skins.  

Batty Bwoy attacks and embraces sedimented narratives around the fear of the queer body as a perverse and deviant figure. The expression “Batty Bwoy” is used to evoke an ambivalent being that exists in the threshold of the precarious body, liberated power, joy and batty energy!

The work has found inspiration in mythologies, disgusting stereotypes, feelings and fantasies of the queer body and identities, homophobic dancehall lyrics, 70s Giallo films from Italy, resilient “gully queens” and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.

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Marina Otero – Kill Me

September 25th – 29th, 2024 Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris
October 3rd – 4th, 2024 HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
October 19th – 20th, 2024 Staatstheater Mainz, Mainz
October 31st – November 2nd, 2024 VIDY, Lausanne
November 5th, 2024 L’onde – Théâtre et Center d’Art, Vélizy
November 12th, 2024 teatr polski (Festival Prapremier), Bydgoszcz
November 21st, 2024 Temporada Alta, Girona
March 19th – 23rd, 2025 dansa metropolitana, Barcelona
March 26th – 29th, 2025 Les Célestins, Lyon
May 16th – 17th, 2025 FITEI, Porto
May 24th, 2025 Spring Performing Arts Festival, Utrecht
May 29th, 2025 Mittenmang Festival, Bremen
June 4th – 7th, 2025 Rising Festival, Melbourne
90 minutes

The Third Chapter of a Poignant Lifelong Project

© Sofia Alazraki

Bringing together Bach and Miley Cyrus, she creates with “Kill Me” a complete and radical work, sometimes unsettling, sometimes subversive, but always impactful.

Olivier Frégaville-Gratian d’Amore

Kill me (2024) is the continuation of Love me (2022) and Fuck me (2020), in turn it is part of the project “ Remember to live ”, in which I intend to present different versions of works until the day of my death.

Entering into the cliché of the midlife crisis, I began to film everything I did: with my heart open 24 hours a day, I recorded everything. 

Until one day I collapsed, I was given a psychiatric diagnosis and I decided to make my next piece out of it. I called on four dancers with mental disorders and Nijinsky, to make a piece that talks about madness for love. 

But let’s say that the topic is about mental health so that it enters the inclusive agenda of the art market. 

Because that is my punishment, having to make works that sell and thus stay alive in the world (of theater). 

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Eisa Jocson & Venuri Perera – Magic Maids

September 20th – 22nd, 2024 HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
October 4th – 6th, 2024 Esplanade, Singapore
October 11th – 12th, 2024 Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna
March 7th – 9th, 2025 Kampnagel, Hamburg
March 14th – 16th, 2025 Arsenic, Lausanne
March 20th – 21st, 2025 Maillon, Strasbourg
March 25th – 26th, 2025 Points Communs, Cergy
March 29th, 2025 La Briqueterie, Vitry-sur-Seine
May 3rd – 4th, 2025 Festival DDD, Porto
May 22nd – 23rd, 2025 Spring Performing Arts Festival, Utrecht
June 21st – 22nd, 2025 Festival Theaterformen, Hannover
June 29th, 2025 Belluard Bollwerk Festival, Fribourg
July 4th – 6th, 2025 National Arts Festival, Makhanda
July 12th – 13th, 2025 Santarcangelo Festival, Santarcangelo di Romagna
80 minutes

Two Figures Engaged in the Ritual Act of Sweeping

© National Gallery Singapore

Interweaving ritual, pageantry, performance and possession, Magic Maids presents an encounter with two figures engaged in the ritual act of sweeping. The broom, a domestic tool for cleaning and the vehicle of the witch, becomes a symbol of both oppression and resistance. It is an extension of the body and a portal for metamorphosis. The art workers and their brooms exist in a continuous state of becoming.

Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera are from the Philippines and Sri Lanka respectively, two countries known for their significant export of domestic workers. Their collaboration began in 2022 when they noticed the absence of women at Basel Museum of Pharmaceutical History in Switzerland. This observation sparked their investigation of the historical persecution of witches; in Europe and its implications for the exploitation of female labour in colonised regions. They discovered that the accusation of witchcraft continues to be a tool for persecuting migrant workers from the Global South.

Magic Maids is a bodily response to their grappling with these complex entanglements. They call upon practices of incantation and intention, using their bodies to traverse multiple territories: physical, conceptual, transnational, emotional, and gendered. The labour in performance enables an embodied inquiry into questions of representation, political subjecthood and histories of oppression. Having individually presented solo work across international festivals and platforms that follows this line of inquiry, Jocson and Perera come together for the first time to sweep out and unsettle oppressive power structures. Rewilding the domestic, they aim to release, reclaim, rejoice, and reconnect with the primal energies.

Magic Maids is an invitation to witness and reflect on the visibility of the working body, the power of female solidarity, and the enduring impact of historical injustices on modern labour practices.

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Stefan Kaegi / Sasha Waltz & Guests – Mirror Neurons

August 29th – September 1st, 2024 radialsystem, Berlin
November 23rd – 24th, 2024, Tanz Köln, Cologne
November 28th – December 1st, 2024 Kampnagel, Hamburg
December 13th – 15th, 2024 TEATR ŁAŹNIA NOWA, Kraków
80 minutes

A Documentary Dance Evening with an Audience

© Bernd Uhlig

This piece is an experiment, conducted anew in every performance. It revolves around the human brain and its relationship with the body. The audience is an essential part of the experiment, because its members are invited not only to watch the dancers but also to find their own groove, to participate from their seats as an active part of a collective system, and to feel the sensation of belonging to a vast hive brain.

Spiegelneuronen (Mirror Neurons) marks the first joint project with Sasha Waltz & Guests. Following on from Andrew Schneider’s remains in 2020, this project continues the dance company’s openness to new styles as well as its commitment to broaden its repertory through artistic exploration and interdisciplinary cooperation with international artists. The collectives come from markedly different artistic directions, but are equally interested in the unconventional use of space and in interdisciplinary work. In this first collaboration, Stefan Kaegi will join forces with both the dancers from Sasha Waltz & Guests and the audience for an exploration of the relationship between the individual and society, conducted through the medium of dance in front of a large mirror.

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