Overview of Texts

The Most Beautiful Name of Fear, by Sofia Ó, was performed at Acker Stadt Palast on 12 and 13 April 2024. A gutsy solo, it hinges primarily on the charm of its performer.

Chaos Kompass, an ensemble-created production featuring 11 performers aged 16 to 27 under the artistic direction of Bahar Meriç, premiered in April 2024 at Theater an der Parkaue, with two additional shows scheduled in June 2024.

CARDIAC: The Heart is a Muscle runs from 29 to 31 March 2024 at UFER_STUDIOS Berlin. Katrina E. Bastian challenges the commercialization of love and the fetishization of effort in relation to one’s own body.

With New Report On Giving Birth (6 + 7 March 2024, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)), Chinese choreographer and dancer Wen Hui builds on her piece Report On Giving Birth presented 20 years ago. Together with three dancers, she takes stock: what has changed for childbearing bodies since then? What has not?

Shiraz, choreographed by Armin Hokmi, is a work inspired by the Shiraz Arts Festival, which took place yearly between 1967 and 1977 in Iran. The performance premiered at Heizhaus, Tanzfabrik Berlin from 29 February to 2 March 2024.

The Fold performance series (Tanzfabrik) presents ElseWhere Rhapsody from 29 February to 3 March 2024 at Uferstudios. Performance maker Jen Rosenblit takes the audience on an eclectic exploratory journey of queer desire. A collage somewhere between tender intimacy and sensory overload spectacle emerges through poetry, song, eroticism, line dancing, and utopia.

REMACHINE by Jefta van Dinther, showing at HAU Hebbel am Ufer/HAU1 from 29 February to 3 March 2024, fights to stake a claim for the mystical and the poetic within the grindingly mechanical.

From February 21 to 25, the 16th edition of Tanzplattform Deutschland presented ten particularly noteworthy dance and performance productions from Germany. Accompanying panels and discursive formats highlighted and discussed different perspectives of dance makers from Germany and around the world.

Kathleen Heil (dance journalist) and Rachel Oidtmann (author / dancer) write alternately in their native languages English and German about the Tanzplattform Deutschland 2024.

Kathleen Heil (dance journalist) and Rachel Oidtmann (author / dancer) write alternately in their native languages English and German about the Tanzplattform Deutschland 2024.

Kathleen Heil (dance journalist) and Rachel Oidtmann (author / dancer) write alternately in their native languages English and German about the Tanzplattform Deutschland 2024.

Kathleen Heil (dance journalist) and Rachel Oidtmann (author / dancer) write alternately in their native languages English and German about the Tanzplattform Deutschland 2024.

Staatsballett Berlin performs three groundbreaking works by William Forsythe, who remounted them with the company’s dancers. The evening offers a lively encounter with ballet as a process to decipher by dancers and audience alike. Premiering at Deutsche Oper on 16 February 2024, it also shows between 19–23 February, 4–14 March, and 1–9 April.

O (die shOw), choreographed and performed by Jan Kress, Jan Rozman and Julia Keren Turbahn, is a dance performance for both Deaf and hearing audiences from age six and up. It premiered at FELD Theater für junges Publikum on 14 February 2024 with further performances until 18 February.

BETWEEN SPACES – BETWEEN FACES by choreographer Nikoleta Koutitsa in collaboration with LUNA PARK is showing from 8 to 11 February at UFER_STUDIOS. Unknown spaces are explored and the familiar reinvented.

Melanie Jame Wolf’s performance More Ballads of Outlaw Feelings on 3 February 2024, as part of her expansive exhibition The Creep at E-WERK Luckenwalde from 21 October 2023 – 10 February 2024, offers a vivid characterisation of the way power patterns become, seemingly, inevitable.

The PURPLE – International Dance Festival for Young Audiences (20th – 28th January) opened on Saturday, 20th January, 2024 with Chotto Desh, a moving solo about the biography of dancer and choreographer Akram Khan.

URUBUS, by and with Aloísio Avaz, Anete Colacioppo, Daniel Brunet, Vinicius Giusti & MXM (Mirella Brandi X Muep Etmo), premiered at Acker Stadt Palast from 19 – 21 January 2024. The performance was a stage adaptation of the book with the same title by Carla Bessa, a Brazilian writer based in Berlin.

This resting, patience by Ewa Dziarnowska, presented from 3-6 pm on 13 and 14 January at Sophiensæle in the frame of Tanztage Berlin 2024, is an emotional passage of bodily tension rising, rupturing, releasing and regenerating through cycles of feeling as dancing.

Project INTUS by choreographer Hoyoung Im plays at UFER_STUDIOS from the 12th to 14th January, 2024 and tells a story of progress, global crises and looking inwards.

In Solo for Boy, which premiered at Dock11 on 11.1.2024, choreographer Sasha Amaya in dialogue with dancer Félix Deepen, works her way through Western representations of male beauty in art, fashion and pop culture.

Nasheeka Nedsreal opens the 33rd edition of Tanztage on the 5th January, 2024 with the dance performance NuReal Dust (5th – 20th January, 2024). 

Every Minute Motherland by the Maciej Kuźmiński Company plays on December 19 and 20, 2023 in DOCK 11 and tells of bodies as witnesses of war, trauma and normality. Every Minute Motherland by the Maciej Kuźmiński Company plays on December 19 and 20, 2023 in DOCK 11 and tells of bodies as witnesses of war, […]

WERDEN by Magda Korsinsky, which premiered at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse from 15 to 19 December 2023, searches for joy in Black FLINTA* community. 

The Staatsballet Berlin’s evening of ballet, 2 Chapters Love presented two world premieres at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden on December 9, 2023: Stars Like Moths by choreographer Sol León and Sharon Eyal’s eponymous work 2 Chapters Love.

The interdisciplinary evening Terrestrial Transit asks how we can embrace the earthly and finite transition of being as a way of life. With five performances at DOCK11 until December 9, 2023, the company Cranky Bodies concludes a nomadic project that began in Berlin and led via Brandenburg and the border town of Szczecin to the […]

HEKATOMBE III by Martha Hincapié Charry, which premiered at Radialsystem on 2 and 3 December 2023, shares valuable wisdom of the Wixarika and the Kággaba Communities.

MIKE (2023) by Dana Michel, presented across three afternoons from 1 to 3 December 2023 by the Berliner Festspiele at Martin-Gropius-Bau, creates a sensitive, tolerant and humorous space for contemplations and questions about how bodies are put to work. 

Dangereuses by choreographer Julia B. Laperrière runs in Ballhaus Ost from 30 November until  3 December 2023 and conjures up the dangerous female entity in all its facets.

The series Fold (Tanzfabrik) ends the year with works concerned with ghosts and demons. In The Multiplicity of the Other shown from the 30.11 until 2.12.2023, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández dwells on the Other as a ghostly presence in one’s own body.

Soldier M.I.A., by Ming Poon, picks apart the classic legend of Hua Mulan, before attempting to reassemble it for (and with) its modern audience. The work had its premiere on 23 November 2023 at the English Theatre Berlin.    

“Moving in Concert” by choreographer Mette Ingvartsen premiered in Germany with the opening evening of the Potsdamer Tanztage 2023. The performance that is read here as a formal study of the interaction of light and movement inspires a short choreography handbook.

After years of supposed development and support, ‘environmental stage’ is still an emerging category. Choreographed by Ini Dill, Street Fabrik was viewed at Haus der Statistik on 28 May 2023.

Mossbelly, which can be seen until 28 May 2023 at HAU2, is the culmination of Angela Schubot’s many years of exploration with moss and the trituration of plant material. A connection with her grandfather, whom she never met, emerged out of this project and prompted her to change her artist name to Angela Vitovec.

Following MOVE OUT LOUD (2021), choreographer Modjgan Hashemian returns to work with the ensemble of Theater Thikwa, which consists of disabled and non-disabled artists: Dance Loves Music Loves Dance is an interactive quiz-dance show that brings Thikwa dancers together with guest dancers. The work premiered on 17 May 17 2023 in Theater Thikwa and can […]

Against the Grain is a night of short dance works that champions diversity and, as organiser Manuel Meza states in the introduction to the evening, aims to “open doors” for those otherwise excluded from dance because of gender, race, ableism, body characteristics or other exclusionary factor, presented on 20 May 2023 at Theaterforum Kreuzberg.

In Pumpitopera Transatlantica created and performed by Mexa and showing at HAU2 on 19 and 20 May 2023 as the initial stop of the collective’s first international tour, absences and gaps in understanding are not mistakes. They are the lifeblood of a performance that rewrites the future without losing sight of the material reality of past and […]

The ensemble piece “Yum Yum” by Haus Sommer, led by choreographer and dancer Dasniya Sommer, playing from 12-14 May 2023 in Ballhaus Ost, confounds the supposedly unrelated while unraveling the possibilities of artificiality.

In “Foreland – Bach and Britten”, a supplementary program to soundance festival berlin, choreographer and dancer Nitsan Margaliot and cellist Isaac Lottman embody two suites from composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Benjamin Britten. The German premiere took place on 23 May 2023 in the St. Matthew Church.

A.PART Festival 2023 … macht Radau, taking place at ada Studio from 5-7 and 12-14 May, presents works by Berlin’s dance students and alumni. Each weekend introduces works of a different group of artists. Inky attends the opening night, which consists of five performances and a feedback circle. 

In “K L O F. cyberographies of folk,” choreographer Irina Demina uses artificial intelligence to develop a new kind of folk dance: an attempt to reflect contemporary digitalized everyday life. The remount runs at DOCK 11 until 7 May 2023.

Dancer and choreographer Caroline Alves, also known as a member of the dance company Grupo Oito, presents the piece “Transatlantica” from 4 – 6 May 2023 at English Theatre Berlin: an autobiographical dance solo in which she probes the gaps in the colonial historical record via the story of her great-great-grandmother.

Following a digital version in 2021, the live premiere of “safe&sound” by choreographer Lee Méir took place from 27 until 30 April 2023 in Radialsystem. The piece deals with linear and cyclical forms of time and with rhythm as a social and political instrument.

The trio “Weaver” choreographed by Anne-Mareike Hess, attempts different weaves of connections of formations for female togetherness. The performance is shown at DOCK 11 from 27 to 30 April 2023.

On 21 and 22 April 2023, Johannes Wieland’s new work “we will be removed”, the second part of what will be a trilogy that began in 2016 with “you will be removed”, transformed the traffic island of Charlottenburg’s Ernst-Reuter-Platz into a large open-air stage.

In “Blazing Worlds”, Sergiu Matis reworks a 350-year-old science fiction text among others, for its premiere at Radialsystem (20-23 April 2023), part of the collaboration :LOVE: with Tanzfabrik Berlin. 

Liz Rosenfeld’s “URSA-X”, playing in the fourth and final installment of the spring festival series Queer Darlings at Sophiensæle from 20-23 April 2023, is a meditation on the hole at all scales, from the microscopic to the planetary.

“Virtual S*Exploration” (for ages 14+), conceived by Jakob* and Christo Schleiff, utilises technology and VR to discuss the topic of sexuality. It premiered at FELD Theater für junges Publikum on 15 April 2023 with further performances until 18 April. 

In “Am I two?” Vasundhara Srivastava and Hannah Heyde explore their experiences with society’s expectations of women. This search for updated definitions was presented at the ACUD-Theater from 13-15 April 2023.

“Messa da Requiem” is a 2016 work setting ballet to Verdi’s choral and orchestral score. Choreographer/director Christian Spuck revives the work with the Staatsballett Berlin and Rundfunkchor Berlin, for this premiere on 14 April 2023 at Deutsche Oper.

In “HIGH TIDE,” choreographer and performer Pauline Payen addresses the haunting power of grief. The 60-minute dance performance can be seen until 2 April 2023 in DOCK 11.

What happens when a monk, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar? Scratch that…you probably know that one already. Okay, what happens when a Jewish performer walks up to their grandmother’s cupboard of antiques? . . . . Where do you think this was going? Is there space for this joke in a […]

Claire Vivianne Sobottke’s new work “à mort — A choreographic song cycle for three voices,” running from March 22 – 25 2023 at Sophiensæle, is a conglomeration of countless musical, physical, stage and costume design details, behind which lies an impressive ensemble performance. The piece recounts explicitly and with relish the futility of every attempt […]

In “Goosebumps”, choreographer Modjgan Hashemian explores the skin as archive of story and touch. The piece for ages twelve and up premiered on 11 March 2023 at Theater an der Parkaue.

Questions of time, space, and mathematics dominate in “Deepspace”, a choreography based in scientific collaboration and research from James Batchelor, viewed at Trauma Bar und Kino in Berlin-Moabit on 14 March 2023.

The two-part, nearly two-hour evening “Beethoven 7” (Sasha Waltz & Guests) premiered on 11 March 2023 in Radialsystem. Choreographer Sasha Waltz asks questions about freedom and social constraints, set to the music of contemporary composer Diego Noguera and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

“Time Out of Joint” is a concept and choreography from Jule Flierl and colleagues, targeting the perception of female* politicians speech. Premiering 8 March 2023, International Women’s Day, at Sophiensæle.