»Pump« is the beginning of the evening, and maybe of a party. A warm-up, a ritual, a rehearsal of strength. Between choreography and bodybuilding, two performers explore muscle not as domination, but as relation—a medium of touch, support, repetition. They lift and pose, strain and hold, not to perfect a body, but to complicate what strength can mean. Between drag and discipline, spectacle and slowness, it opens a space for shared exertion. Posing becomes gesture, becomes form, becomes commemoration, becomes shared joy.

»Pump« is a project evolved through the participation of Rahel Crawford Barra, Nattan Dobkin, Emil Maria Ertl, Sarah Leghissa, and Simon van Saarloos, and will be performed by Rahel and Nattan in this iteration.

The sports edition of the performance »On Horses« sends powerful narratives into the race. Two performers and a life-size wooden horse go all out between pony farm and hard dressage. It’s about the life and death of horses as sports equipment, about recreational fun and an interspecies (competitive) battle.

Eva Hintermaier | Simon Kalus are a transdisciplinary team at the interface of performance, installation and literature.

As a child he remembers first being drawn to the beautiful game, not by the game itself, but rather the colourful jerseys which the players wore. Using his football-dance practice as a departure point, Ahilan Ratnamohan now delves into this mystical connection to the sport, a connection which he slowly distanced himself from as he began to play more seriously, cataloguing the developments of fashion in football over the last 30 years. He zooms in on fabric and particular manners of wearing clothes, ruminating on what their possible effects are on the movements in football, literally and figuratively.

Ahilan Ratnamohan is a performance-maker based in Antwerp. He is inspired above all by sport and language-learning processes. His work straddles many different themes, aesthetics and contexts, from theatre to performance and choreography, international to hyper-local.

The immediate presence of violence has an indirect and direct effect on our bodies, our behavior and our perception of the world. In order to protect ourselves from violence, we attend self-defense courses and learn to fight for ourselves. Do I have to become dangerous to be safe? In the performance, we explore facets of self-defense – everyday protection rituals, fighting techniques, political and moral questions of defense.

Natasha Borenko and Lidiia Golovanova are non-binary theater makers with a migration background, living in Berlin and focusing on political participatory theater projects that deal with issues of gender, power and community through humor and theater of the absurd.

Sports move people. Sports generate emotion. Sports turn spectators into fans. Ballhaus Odds has stood for safe sports betting since 2025. The Ballhaus Odds Group’s actions are based on three pillars: trust, tradition and passion.

Barbara Lenartz is a freelance artist, scenographer and costume designer; she lives in Berlin and runs a dog racing track in Tempelhof. Anton Rose works as an author, director, pop singer and is a fan of Andrasch Starke.

Only a few kilometers to go. The athletic director whips you forward. Lactate conquers your legs. The interactive cycling installation between race simulation and performance diagnostics turns the Smarttrainer into a storytelling machine.

Yves Regenass works as a theater creator at the interface of game theater and digital dramaturgy. He studied cultural studies and aesthetic practice, is a qualified athletics coach and has a track certificate from the Grenchen Velodrome.

In »Fake Diamonds« René*e returns to the dance floors of her past, to gyms, community halls and ballrooms. She dances with and against herself as a former dancer in the competitive sport of Latin American ballroom dancing. In the sparkling glow of fake diamonds, René and her team are now choreographing the old dances anew. With a queerfeminist dance performance, they question sexiste and racist structures in competitive dance, the heteronormative ideal of the romantic couple and binary ideas of winning and losing.

René*e Reith (all pronouns) works as a choreographer, performance artist and dance scholar.

Our professional trainers are tough as nails and their regimen is merciless: the revolution will be ugly and we’ll have to be too.

FEELINGS comprises the artistic works, performative research, games, and feelings that Jil Dreyer and Joey Mehling have been developing with and for each other since 2017.

What would sports be without spectators?They are the ones who turn sport into an event, a spectacle, a celebration. Sports without festivals is like theatre without an audience: Spartakiads, gymnastics festivals, EuroGames, Gay Games – all these events have a celebratory character. Athletes display their skills, their performance, they perform. The audience applauds, cheers, and motivates. Whether on an international, national, or regional level, sports festivals are an integral part of sports. Sometimes we celebrate achievements, sometimes we celebrate sports heroes, and sometimes we celebrate ourselves. But who is this “we” in sports? Sports is often referred to as the “performance of society.” So, when we analyze sports festivals – both historically and in the present – we learn something about a society’s self-image. This is also true for the sports festival here at Ballhaus Ost. The exhibits on display here belong to the collection of the Sportmuseum Berlin, which has been located in the Olympic Park since 1997. Home to more than 10,000 objects and 1.5 million images, it boasts one of the most diverse and largest sports collections in Germany. The Sportmuseum Berlin is currently developing a permanent exhibition, which will be displayed in the Maifeldtribüne in the Olympic Park. The exhibition is slated to open in the summer of 2026.

At the age of 11, Norwin announces on Swiss television that he wants to play in the NBA, the best basketball league in the world, and dreams for years of growth spurts that fail to materialize. In the performance, Norwin now asks: What can I imagine for myself, for my body? – and gives himself permission to grow beyond his own given body.

Norwin Tharayil (aka elfrid the third) works at the intersection of literature, music and performance. In past audio pieces, (song) texts and performances, Norwin has explored the meaning of sleep and meditation apps in Western, capitalist societies, factory work and heartbreak.

The video work »Posters« questions in an unobjective way how the sporting highlights of recent decades fit into the lives of their viewers. Patinated and pixelated, the result is a portrait of those who remember.

Jasper Landmann is a linguist and filmmaker who specializes in the staging of visual art in European museums. His enthusiasm for sports came with his grandfather’s giant television.

In the performance »Olympia«, Jäckie proves their ability to compete in the Olympic pentathlon by drawing a parallel to the rigorous application process they had to navigate to access gender-affirming care as a non-binary person in Germany.

Jäckie Rydz is a non-binary theater maker. Through poetic texts and immersive stage design, they explore gender and the unwritten rules that shape society.

To come to terms with the trauma of the socialist athlete, »Trashtalk Dynamo« goes to an artificial ice stadium with Mielke’s head as a goal wall and seeks healing through fan chants and penalty shoot-outs.

Toni Jessen is an actor, lecturer and choir director. Sebastian Mauksch is a director in the theater for young audiences. Volkan Türeli is a musician, performer and director.