The dance piece combines stories about African rainmaking rituals with the poetic representation of climate data of melting glaciers in Europe. In this way, two phenomena of “disappearance” are brought into context and made tangible with the help of three-dimensional projections.

Christoph Winkler has created more than 80 dance pieces as a freelance artist since 1996 and is one of Germany’s most distinguished and versatile choreographers. His work covers a wide spectrum of formats and ranges from very personal to political themes. Under the umbrella of Company Christoph Winkler, he brings together dancers from all over the world to work together as temporary collectives on a broad spectrum of content.

Ur-Opera #9 “Wirrwarr Brennt!”

In coded dance, heart seven blossoms,
Where veils of love the rose in the storm defeats.
No chance guided them, fate’s web woven,
In mist blurred, mystery raised.
Through hidden paths, her heart guided,
In moonlight, secrets prepared.
Woven in the dream, the rose awakes.
Love springs, in the tangle of night.

 
Das Helmi Puppentheater Kollektiv from Berlin has been at Ballhaus Ost since 2006. They combine many artistic languages and directions in their shows, in which the Helmi puppets and a self-written music always take leading roles.
 
With their series »Die Suche nach der Ur-Oper« (The Search for the Pre-Opera), they have been performing on their own small new stage at the Ballhaus Ost bar every month since January 2023. Because: What you can’t talk about because it’s somehow so big and incomprehensible, you can maybe sing about. (Emir Tebatebai) 

For families with children from 5 years

In SCHRUMPF’s version of »Songs & Dances about the Weather« about glaciers and rainmaking rituals, we see an excerpt, move along with the performers, hear their stories, and tell our own stories about rain and water.

LOUDsoft is a think tank for projects that create access to the world of classical or contemporary music and musical theater for children, young people and their parents. LOUDsoft was founded in 2018 by violinist and performer Daniella Strasfogel, out of an impulse to create family events that she herself would love to go to with her family. LOUDsoft seeks to build bridges between the worlds of children’s art and adult art, bringing interactive and challenging musical experiences to the stage for young people and their families.

No sooner is the world created than a struggle for self-determination and equality begins: Lilith, the first woman of Adam, becomes the first fighter against patriarchy. Her permanent conflict of having to subordinate herself is discharged in arias and songs of contemporary music. The unconditional urge for self-determination is shown in tender but also very physical dance and fight scenes.

Anna Peschke works as a director for performance, music theater and Peking Opera in Europe and Asia. Together with the composer Christoph Enzel, she is currently also developing »Kinderlieder zum Wald – von einem Erwachsenen zu singen« and the choral piece »Officium für einen verbrannten Wald«.

Bodo is 59, has no musical training and cannot read music. In 2014, he completed the album North End, on which he composed all the tracks himself and recorded them tone by tone with the help of a computer software. Based on Bodo’s music and story, Björnsson/Marx and an ensemble of professional musicians explore dilettantism as a creative force and aesthetic strategy. In a world full of experts, the aim is to take up the cudgels for the dilettante who has the courage to be creative on his or her own initiative, transcending professional and genre boundaries.

Since 2018, Thorbjörn Björnsson and Julia Marx have been forming the music theater duo Björnsson / Marx. Together they develop music theater pieces whose themes often move at the interface between the everyday and the existential, the intimate and the abstract.

»Antigone pitched« subjects the Antigone material to a queer crip reading, reducing it to three characters and a law-breaking act of care. Voices and gestures are distorted, alienated, and hysterified to the point of unfamiliarity: A hyperformalized play that complicates and poeticizes embodiment.

Under the label ANTISEPT, Julia*n Meding invites different collaborators to work on self-empowering readings of chronic illness / disability and alternative concepts of healing. Together the constellation develops rehearsal strategies and forms of sensual mediation.

»La Memoria Futura« makes the material of the biographical family archive of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo accessible with a site-specific performance and subsequent sound installation. After the premiere in Buenos Aires at Parque de la Memoria, the multidisciplinary team from Argentina and Germany now brings the work to Ballhaus Ost and the neighboring Cemetery Park.

Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo was founded in Argentina in 1977 by the mothers of those who disappeared during the last Argentine dictatorship. Their goal is and has been to locate all the disappeared children and return them to their rightful families. In 1999, the Abuelas founded the Biographical Family Archive for the grandchildren who had not yet found out who their mothers and fathers had been. Today, this material has become one of the largest oral archives in Latin America, consisting of documents (photographs, writings, letters) and more than 2200 interviews, 144 of which belong to the grandmothers who have left their testimony so that the transmission through generations is not interrupted.

Hysterisches Globusgefühl embark together with the audience on a search for pure and liberated fun, a utopian place where no one loses their laughter and everyone has an equal amount to laugh about.

The performance collective Hysterisches Globusgefühl (Berlin/Vienna) direct their artistic work against the heteronormative patriarchy with full heart and solidarity and develop utopias for an anti-racist, classless, queerfeminist and respectful future. In 2011 awarded the jury prize of the festival “Arena… der jungen Künste” for “Macht was: Macht nichts!”, the experiences of this first production became the basis for further performances, in which public and theater space are intertwined. Always at the center of the work the question of conscious action, political interaction and global malaise.

Kafkas berühmte Erzählung kommt als radikale Performance auf die Bühne. Mit einem Akt zwischen Sadismus und Masochismus wird der zum Käfer verwandelte Gregor Samsa als Sündenbock präsentiert, der geopfert werden muss, damit eine dysfunktionale Gemeinschaft wieder funktionieren kann. Aber wie nachhaltig ist so ein Opfer? Welchen Wert muss es haben? Wie viel Schuld darf es tragen? Und wie wehrlos muss es sein?
Finden Sie es heraus. 
Wer ohne Sünde ist, werfe den ersten Apfel.

In seinen bisherigen Arbeiten hat Manuel Gerst in unterschiedlichen Konstellationen, u.a. unter dem Label Monster Truck, immer wieder bestehende Machtverhältnisse im Theater in Frage gestellt und unterlaufen. In seinen Arbeiten beschäftigt er sich häufig mit dem Themenfeld „Behinderung“ und Ökonomien im Theater. »Die Verwandlung« ist seine erste Arbeit am Ballhaus Ost.

In »Hotel Utopia« Christiane Mudra and ensemble invite the audience to change perspectives. Equipped with passports from different countries and data based on real biographies, the audience embarks on a Kafkaesque transit room in search of recognition in a new country and encounters the challenges of the German welcome culture. Reports on the experiences of refugees and migrants are interwoven into the evening, as are background discussions with case workers and experts. On their journey through waiting areas and offices, the participants encounter stories of flight and migration and experience individual (in)freedom depending on nationality, global political situation or ranking in the “passport index”.

After »Selfie & Ich«, an evening about mental illness, meritocracy and the terror of happiness in private apartments in Neukölln, »Hotel Utopia« is the second part of a trilogy that deals with the de facto evaluation of people in the “community of values”.

What bodies and which dances are necessary for the present times? What does it mean to be dangerous? Or dangereuses – implying a plural feminine entity. In this choreographic work, six performers take the risk of intimacy and gentleness as subversive, intersecting it with practices of self-defense, protest, training and preparation for combat.

Julia B. Laperrière and her team work in an intersectional perspective and are interested in trust, respect and love as pillars for artistic collaboration. Composed of artists navigating between many countries and cultures, the mix of languages, places, practices, people and genres —both artistic and identity related— constitute an integral part of their practice. Seeing dance through a queer feminist lense,they believe in the body as a place of change and exchange.

A Durational Online Festival A new festival: It’s about time! It’s about time! (Es ist Zeit!) It’s finally about time! (Es geht endlich los!) It has been about time (Die Zeit war reif) since November 2020. Back then many people were supposed to come together for four days in very small spaces for very long or very short performances. But the festival went with time and transformed its essence: It moved its program into the endless time and space of the Internet and will present itself there from September 2021. Curated by Anne Brammen, Monika Gintersdorfer, Tina Pfurr and Daniel Schrader, the Durational Online Festival It’s about time will develop, present and archive artistic works by Barbara Lenartz, Club Real, Elisabeth Tambwe, Felizitas Stilleke | Smruthi Gargi Eswar, GRUPO D3 CHOK3, Markus&Markus, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, vorschlag:hammer, vt corp. and many more for an unpredictably long period of time. It’s about time is a tribute to durational performances that allows art to take its time. It is a festival that will last.