Symphony of Shamelessness

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 to contain the female naked body.

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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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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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High Space, Low Space

“We Are Going to Mars: A Choreographic Concert” by Company Christoph Winkler, playing from 7 to 10 April 2022 at Sophiensæle, is a kaleidoscope of music, movement, and image that locates the final frontier within its audience as well as beyond the reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere.

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Walling the Desert

In “Death Valley Junction”, playing 21 and 22 January as part of Tanztage Berlin 2022 at the Sophiensæle, Lulu Obermayer staged a ‘solo duet’ with one of her artistic foremothers that got me wondering where — in this love song to a performer and to performance — the audience fits in.

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To the Rhythm of Eternal Return

The “Living Room” project by Public in Private/Clémentine M. Songe (aka Clément Layes) will be shown from 25 to 28 November 2021 at the Sophiensæle. The cooperation between Songe/Layes and artist Jasna L. Vinovrški, architect Morana Mažuran, light designer Ruth Waldeyer, and visual artist Jonas Maria Droste resulted in an acrobatic performance that blurs the boundaries between bodies, objects, animation, and movement.

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Gosh, it feels like work!

How do you start a show? How do you end it? How do you break the fourth wall? And what does it take to be two onstage in front of the audience of many? Plenty of theatre and performance makers have reflected on these recursive questions to uneven, often hermetic, results — all bets were off for Teresa Vittucci and Melanie Jame Wolf. In “Show Business” (30 August to 2 September 2021 at the Sophiensæle) they deploy a full range of tactics from tongue-in-cheek acting and dance, to compelling visual allusions, spoken word, and even singing. They made me grin and laugh, contemplate in awe, and engage in a long after-show discussion with my friends.

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Tanz im August 2021 Talkabout #2

For the second part of their Tanz im August talkabout, Eli Frasson and Evgeny Borisenko attended the world premiere of Thiago Granato’s “The Sound They Make When No One Listens” at the Sophiensæle on 19 August 2021. After the show they sat together in the Sophiensæle’s brick-walled courtyard to discuss a show that explores the different facets and political connotations of the act of listening. The next day, on 20 August, Eli and Evgeny went to the Lilli-Hennoch-Sportplatz to attend the world premiere of “Breathe” by Milla Koistinen, in which she interacted with two huge brightly-coloured inflatable fabrics and the audience on the football pitch. After the show Eli and Evgeny found a spot near the ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof to sit and discuss the show.

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Onto the Weight Bench

TANZPLATTFORM 2022 >>> In “Being Pink Ain’t Easy”, Joana Tischkau gleefully stages gestures and habits of exaggerated masculinity derived from US rap. In the context of this year’s Performing Arts Festival Berlin – still available online until 3 June 2021 – Sophiensæle is showing the successful cinematic product of this previously live performance, which addresses white masculinity by citing Black culture and through conscious clashes.  

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Female Futures

Between December 1989 and March 1990, the Central Round Table met in East Berlin to discuss making reforms to the GDR, and to draft a new constitution. As I enter Sophiensæle, I am informed that the year is now 2090 and those visions have been implemented. “POSTOST 2090”, by Rike Flämig, Anna Hentschel and Zwoisy Mears-Clarke, is a celebration of 100 years of the draft constitution, of feminist utopias, and of ‘Ossifuturism’. 

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A Utopia Beyond the Norm and Anti-Norm

In a garish tutti frutti aesthetic, Angela Alves’ “NO LIMIT” (Zoom premiere 16 June 2020 at Sophiensæle) stages a distorted world in which the handicapped make up the normative majority and the unhandicapped suffer from syndromes like CCD (Can’t Calm Down) and KNL (Knows No Limits). The game show provides us with a lesson in accessibility without lecturing us.

Pre corona days, I wouldn’t have watched “NO LIMIT”. I would’ve been home in bed with a freshly operated on, swollen knee that I couldn’t bend and that had to be cooled and elevated – and I would’ve watched something uninspired on Netflix. I wouldn’t have subjected myself to the  effort of hobbling to the Sophiensæle and having to sit still for an hour with a constant twitch in my knee.

For a while now, the Sophiensæle has been offering so-called “Relaxed Performances”, which are intended to offer greater inclusivity in a casual atmosphere. You’re allowed to go in and out, to talk quietly, and to move around. That would make Angela Alves’ “NO LIMIT” a hyper-relaxed performance since the show wasn’t performed live as planned, but rather in the virtual realm with the help of Zoom. And it is precisely this aspect of the digital that permitted me – temporarily immobilized – access.

As the cool pack rests on my elevated knee, “NO LIMIT” begins. The show, staged in a garish nineties aesthetic, aims to create the greatest possible level of accessibility for viewers. Its rhythm is determined by translation aids,  arranged in parallel,  in the form of audio descriptions, sign language, subtitles and the option to have the descriptions read out loud in a chat room by a screen reader. The pauses that arise, translation cuts and duplications and the resulting decelerated tempo, sometimes make those of us unhandicapped, with our efficiency thinking, impatient.  And they make quite clear that our expectations of how best to use time productively and efficiently are extremely questionable and egocentric. That is why all the performers leave plenty of time for their introductions. The sign language translator, Gal, the deaf moderator, Athina, the narrator, Simone, the dancer (and artistic director of the show), Angela, the musician, Christoph all describe in great detail how they look and their settings. Their garishly colored retro costumes, starry-sky backdrop, and the rainbow stairs are obviously invoking the parody RTL show “Tutti Frutti”from the early 90s – and “Tutti Frutti for All” is what today’s invitation to “NO LIMIT” promises. It takes on an interactive show element; a questionnaire where we can share – but are not obligated to – whether we have e.g. a disability, whether we’re part of the norm, or whether we know what a crip is  – namely, a community of people that feels like it belongs to a discriminated minority.

The actual main part of the show clarifies what it’s all about. During a talk show sequence in which Angela Alves, the personified representative of the minority of unhandicapped people, is interviewed by Athina, we discover: people without disabilities would have a harder time here if we didn’t join in solidarity to ensure their inclusion. Because it’s the handicapped community that defines the norms here. But Angela doesn’t want to be included. She calls for empathy, the recognition of her unique individual maladies (CCD, KNL), and needs. She immediately gets sympathy for her lamentable minority status: Athina refers to it as “diversity aid”. And how does she dance despite her lack of handicap? But then Angela gets cut off… No one really wants to know the answer.

Towards the end of the show, as  Angela, Athina, and Gal perform a kind of senseless sign language choreography in three Zoom windows, a choreography that becomes evermore chaotic, Simone’s linguistic translation reaches its limits. And it hits me: this is not about me –handicapped or unhandicapped – being able to follow everything. Instead it’s about a dedicated serenity that cares less about definitions of inclusion and more about a constant renegotiation of our social norms. Especially now.


“NO LIMIT” by Angela Alves will be performed once again tonight, 18 June 2020, at 8pm in the Sophiensæle. Duration: 75 minutes. Participation via Zoom. You can get a personalized access link to the webinar with pre-registration (ticket price: 5 euros).


“NO LIMIT”, premiere 16 June 2020, Sophiensæle Berlin — Artistic director, choreography, performance: Angela Alves — dramaturgy: Alexandra Hennig — performance, choreography: Athina Lange — performance, sign language translator, choreography: Gal Naor (The progressive wave) — performance, audio description: Simone Detig — sound, performance: Christoph Rothmeier — set design: Philippe Krueger 


English translation by Melissa Maldonado

Long Black Hair

Inky Lee embarks on a hairy journey, inspired by Areli Moran’s “La Postal de nuestra Existencia,” in which Moran becomes the goddess of ‘Hair, hair, long beautiful hair!’

“La Postal de nuestra Existencia” premiered at the Sophiensæle on 16 January 2020 within the frame of Tanztage Berlin.*

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Hands

Four deaf performers, Steve Stymest, Jan Kress, Rita Mazza, and Athina Lange, create a musical, “Vier”, using the richness and diversity of German Sign Language and Visual Vernacular to access music from a different angle. “Vier – A Visual Musical in Sign Language” premiered 17 December 2019 at Sophiensæle.

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Game Theory

Opening Tanztage Berlin 2019, Mirjam Gurtner’s “Skinned” places improvisation within a strictly delineated frame to create a contradictory, challenging work which belies any cohesive interpretation. Combining intuition and artifice, “Skinned” sets itself a difficult task, yet a generosity at its core entices us along for the journey.

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