Magenta Craze

With “Magenta Haze,” Milla Koistinen investigates the behavior of individuals within a collective, as well as communal ecstasy and shared joy. As part of the :LOVE: collaboration between Tanzfabrik and Radialsystem, the work has its German premiere at Radialsystem from 2 – 4 March 2023.

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fake it till you… …make it, …break it, …break through. Fake it till it breaks you!

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2023 >>> Bully Fae Collins’ “Songs of the Dopamine Carousel” and Liina Magneas’ “She’s constructing the exit” present true orgasms and fake excess (and vice versa) at the close of the festival and deal with the performance struggles of our time.

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The Landscape of Dreams

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2023 >>> “Pariyestan: Tails of Sisters, 青蛇+白蛇: 緣起” by Parisa Madani invites the viewers into the world of dreams and fantasies. This “durational collective dream meditation” took place at Sophiensæle from 10 p.m. on 7 January to around 5 a.m. on 8 January 2023 in the frame of Tanztage Berlin.

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tanzschreiber articles about Tanztage Berlin 2023

All reviews can be read here >>> From 5 to 21 January, the 32nd edition of the Tanztage Berlin, organised annually by the Sophiensæle, brings together 10 performances by upcoming Berlin-based artists, accompanied by knowledge-sharing formats. Authors and guest authors from the Tanzbüro Berlin’s online review portal tanzschreiber are reviewing the 10 pieces selected for the Tanztage Berlin 2023 on tanzschreiber.de. Some of the texts are written by the six participants of the tanzschreiber writing workshop “Texte in Bewegung” under the direction of Agnes Kern and Johanna Withelm.

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Strange Mutations

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2023 >>> On 10 & 11 December 2022 at Flutgraben, “Bicho Raro”, a video and performance work by dancer and choreographer Danilo Andrés, examined the strange world of bodybuilding. Another version of the piece will be shown under the same title during the Tanztage Berlin festival in January 2023.

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Shots Fired

Cia Vero Cendoya’s “Bogumer (or Children of Lunacharski)” was shown at HAU1 on 17 November 2022, as part of the NO LIMITS – Disability & Performing Arts Festival Berlin. It asks the question: once the boss has been fired (literally), who is left running the show?

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Restive Bodies

In Sergiu Matis’ “UNREST”, shown from 02 – 05 November 2022 as part of the FEMINIST FUTURES FESTIVAL from Tanzfabrik Berlin, ancient myths resonate through a cavernous industrial space, and are taken up as a material to question both the nature and the future of humanity. 

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Rearranging Time

PURPLE DANCE FESTIVAL 14-22 JANUARY 2023 >>> What happens when tomorrow becomes yesterday? In “Über Überüberübermorgen” (About the day after the day after the day after tomorrow), a science fiction journey through time that premiered on 6 October 2022 at FELD Theater für junges Publikum, Cécile Bally and Cathy Walsh investigate the future — with the help of their audience, which welcomes anyone 5 years of age and up.

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Longing for Mountains: Interspecies Performance Experiments

Barbara Berti’s “Zone of Acceptance” premiered at Uferstudios from 25 – 28 August 2022. Dance collective Mapped to the Closest Address first showed “Turn off the house lights” at Cordillera Raum für Körper und Utopien on 4 March and 21 May, and a new version from 18 August – 11 September in Japan as part of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in conjunction with their installation, “We like to watch clumsy-seeming mountains.” Both projects have evolved, and continue to evolve, out of collaboration and experimentation undertaken by humans with nonhumans: dogs, cats, plants, and landscapes.

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Grounding Ballet: In Conversation with Adam Linder

Calling from a cab on the way to the airport, the Los Angles-come-Berlin-based choreographer Adam Linder talks to Liza Weber about his new work “Loyalty” and renovating in the ruins of ballet. Shown at the Tanz Im August festival from the 25 to 26 August 2022, “Loyalty” was performed in three acts just like any ballet but proved, on several counts, unlike any ballet.

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The ‘I’ of Cyclops

“Cyclops”, conceptualized and directed by Zé de Paiva, shows us incomplete abundant fleeting images through his viewfinder. We see images of ourselves and those of de Paiva and co-performer Nasheeka Nedsreal in their avatars as cyborg-ed Cyclops. Images direct and challenge the narrative in this performance that was shown at Ballhaus Naunynstraße.  

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Blood, Sweat & Talent

Watching the premiere of Florentina Holzinger’s “Ophelia’s Got Talent”, I was reminded of an essay I once wrote that, using Ophelia in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ as an example, argued how women were drawn in fainter lines than their male counterparts. Nowhere is this further from the truth than in Holzinger’s show, which takes a fat marker pen to her name and, indeed, the name of every woman that has ever lived in her wake. Premiering on 15 September 2022 at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, “Ophelia’s Got Talent” opened the season with a celebration of womanhood that shouldn’t be missed.

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Caring for the Space

Anajara Amarante’s “Butching Cowboys” played at Sophiensæle as part of the Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer Festival from 15 – 17 September 2022. Part of the festival’s larger creation of an intersectional queer-crip space, the performance modeled care for everyone in the room.

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Aural Rorschach

In Die Hörposaune, Werner Hirsch (alias Antonia Baehr) and Jule Flierl drive audiences into a sonic exploration of bodies, objects, and textures. Without saying a single word in a recognisable language, they communicate a scholastic enterprise that is both serious and humorous at the same time. The performance premiered at the 1929-built silent-cinema theatre, Theater im Delphi in Berlin-Weißensee.

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To Dare to Create

“No. 60”, choreographed by Pichet Klunchun, sensually and systematically moves the edges of Thai Khon dance. By unpacking the traditional form and tapping into instincts from the head, heart, and gut, it democratises it and sets it free for new creative impulses. The work was shown at HAU2 as part of Tanz Im August 2022. 

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Don’t Blink

Marrugeku’s “Jurrungu Ngan-ga / Straight Talk” played at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele from 5 – 7 August 2022 as part of Tanz im August. Choreographed by Dalisa Pigram with direction and dramaturgy by Rachael Swain, it staged a ‘prison of the mind’ that was a call not to pity people suffering far away, but rather to wake up to the deadly incoherencies we live with here and now.

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The Art of Staying With the Subtle

I sit here with my finger poised on the keyboard, wondering how to begin writing about “H_SPACE_H” by Isabel Lewis and Sissel Tolaas with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and Ethan Braun. When words fail to come forth, I bury my face in the denim jeans I had worn the day of this durational performance (30 July 2022) near E-WERK Luckenwalde. An amalgamation of the many smells from the multi-site performative intervention still seem to linger in the fabric. My tongue is tickled by the memory of them, and questions tumble out.

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A Circle in a Square Place

Set up by Galerie Wedding – Raum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, as part of Movement Research ACROSS, the “Flexible Colour Circle”, an inhabitable outdoor stage, offered a space for performances and encounters over two extended weekends in June. Dabke Community Dancing” by Medhat Aldaabal and Adel Sabawi, presented by Sasha Waltz & Guests and Berlin Mondiale, was part of the curation at this site.

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Tell Me Another Story

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of opening their Kreuzberg studio, laborgras (Renate Graziadei and Arthur Stäldi) showed “Er… Sie… und andere Geschichten from 2 – 6 June 2022. In conversation, laborgras shared both a deeper insight into this work and a longer view of their decades as a collective.

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