In this multimedia performance, two female artists and two young female kickboxers examine the relationship between female fear and patriarchal dominance culture and test martial arts as a means of transforming fear into strength.

Between performance, theater and video, artists Klara Kirsch and Milena Bühring have been working as a duo and in changing constellations since 2020. For »Fighting 4 Fear«, they are collaborating for the second time with dramaturge Enrico Bordieri. It is their first piece in Ballhaus Ost.

What does normal actually mean? And who decides that? Come to the funfair, let’s take a spin on the disco carousel! Together we’ll set the dancefloor of normality in motion and dance against society’s centrifugal forces.

Sebastian Mauksch & team stage theatre for young audiences as a shared space of experience for audience and performers. With Ballhaus Ost, they have created productions such as »Warum der Hund das Fleisch durch den Fluss trägt«, »Junge Leute« and »Fennymore oder wie man Dackel im Salzmantel macht« (invitations to Augenblick Mal! and Wildwechsel 2021).

In »Dogs of Love,« the queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS explores the intimate connection between two people that transcends space and time. Starting from their own love for each other in the here and now, the two performers* move away from each other in the course of the performance and pass through time. On the virtual path into the future and the past, respectively, they explore and relive the equally real and fictional history of queer togetherness. Located in the interstice of visual art, performance, dance and scientific research, Chris Gylee and Richard Aslan use (auto)biographical narration as well as meticulous research on life realities that go beyond the consciousness of heteronormative “normality” for »Dogs of Love«. The result is a semi-fictional family tree of queer belonging, in which Reinaldo Arenas appears as well as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Jack Bee Garland, Audre Lorde and Samuel R. Delany. Chris Gylee and Aslan are working as a queer performance collective under the name ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS since 2012 in the inexhaustible field between disciplines, combining theater, film, choreography and scientific research. For their poetic works, the two performers* use (auto-) biographical narration as well as meticulous research on queer life realities. The starting point of their projects are both selected research questions and a strong connection to people who see the world from a perspective that is unfamiliar to them. perspective that is unfamiliar to them. Their collaborators may be specialists, have a particular life experience or skill, think about things in fascinating ways, or simply be open to playful exploration. Their ongoing research is dedicated to diverse phenomena such as queerness, empathy, marginalization, and activism. To realize these working focuses, they use elements of performance, theater, installation, and choreography as raw material. The result is a series of contemporary rituals closely linked to performative mechanisms and laboratories. These similarly charged spaces open up uncanny experiences, provoke surprising thought patterns, and shed light on human interaction.

»Say YES! Yes or Nice! You have the choice! Or do the Monbijou da-da-dance? Make up your mind, Fennymore!« What is this strange little town where it rains all the time and everyone has to wear a rain hat? Where Doctor Uhrengut – mayor, doctor, hat monopolist and gymnastics club chairman all in one – is constantly singing the praises of the brave new world? It’s election time and Doctor Uhrengut now wants to be mayor for L-L-L-life. Fennymore, that is the childlike main character of the story, is also allowed to vote. But before that, he wanders through the small town and meets Aunt Else in her pub »Zum Dackel im Salzmantel«, Fizzy from the drinks warehouse, the sports teacher Mr. Muckenthaler, the stubborn bicycle Monbijou and – wait! – was that death back there? »Fennymore oder Wie man Dackel im Salzmantel macht« is an interactive acting performance with the audience as the main character. The stage is a walk-on and experienceable art installation with sound-composed light spaces. At the end is the mayoral election for life. The outcome depends on the result of the election and is decided anew at each performance. Kirsten Reinhardt works as a freelance writer. Her debut »Fennymore oder Wie man Dackel im Salzmantel macht« was awarded the Oldenbug Children’s and Young People’s Book Prize in 2009 as an unpublished manuscript and translated into five languages. Since then, two more children’s novels and a picture book have been published by Carlsen Verlag.Sebastian Mauksch is a freelance director and dramaturge for performance theater. He directed the youth venues of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, and his works with P14 made guest appearances at numerous festivals. From 2008 he staged world premieres at Ballhaus Ost with texts by David Lindemann, Helene Hegemann and Anne Tismer. For the Berliner Festspiele he is researching the art of adolescence.

What happens when togetherness becomes threeness? »All In« deals with triadic love relationships in which three people meet in the constellation of a triangle. Loving as a threesome questions just about everything we think we know about love, and requires the participants to enter a new terrain where there are few experiences and templates to fall back on. Three performer:s weave together collected interview material from people with triadic relationship experience into a polyphonic web of acting, dancing and singing that foregrounds the diversity of love forms. The socially accepted dual relationship model is questioned and encouraged to think differently about love and to open up new spaces and possibilities. And not just for love, but for all areas of life in which we limit ourselves by clinging to seemingly fixed models.   Daniel Hellmann is a dance and theater maker, singer and performer living and working between Zurich and Berlin. Layton Lachman is a performer, dancer and choreographer who has recently moved to Berlin after seven years of working in San Francisco. Anne Welenc is an actress and performance artist living in Berlin. All In is the first joint work of the three artists.

Daniel is a sex worker. In the solo performance »Traumboy« he tells about his experiences as a prostitute. He tells why he took up this work, describes his customers and their wishes. The audience experiences a young man who loves to prostitute himself. The only problem: the stigma. Kim is an actress. She is also a sex worker, once sold soap, is a barmaid, German, Polish… In »Traumgirl« Kim negotiates what it is like to work in the border area between “real work”, performance and so-called “dirty work”. »Traumboy and Traumgirl« move between documentary theater and autofiction and question the double standards of a thoroughly capitalized and oversexualized society as well as the meaning of sex and work in the neoliberal system. The bodies on stage become projection surfaces for fears, fantasies and contradictions. What is a woman/man allowed to reveal about herself? What not? And who pays the price? Daniel Hellmann is a dance and theater maker, singer and performer. His works examine bodies, bodily relationships and desire, and question social norms in the fields of sexuality, human and animal rights. After »Requiem for a Piece of Meat« and »All In«, »Traumboy« is the third work Daniel Hellmann presents at Ballhaus Ost. Anne Welenc is an actress and performer. Her works are research-based and deal with transcendence. She is interested in combining clear narratives with surreal elements.

The devised play tells of a porter. An outsider who works where others live. In the lobby in a city that never sleeps. A story about a working cosmos, the American Dream and a character that collapses when it can no longer be itself.

Meta Imbiss, founded by Stella Nikisch and Nathalie Schatz, mixes pop culture with theater, thinks content and aesthetics together and likes to collaborate, in short: it stands for fire, fun and fashion.

In his documentary »barfuß und ohne hut« (“barefoot and without a hat”), Jürgen Böttcher portrayed “Young People” (the working title at the time) with their visions of the future in the free space between school and working life in 1964. In the middle of Wedding, the Humboldthain Club will now be transformed into a beach bar on the Baltic Sea coast, where six performers will venture a reenactment with the audience: with music, in exhilaration, in movement, but also in relaxation, they will compare scenes from the film with their own professional hopes and desires.

Sebastian Mauksch & Team stage participatory theater for children and young people and research the art of adolescence for the Berliner Festspiele. Their works have been invited to AUGENBLICK MAL! – The Festival of Theater for Young Audiences as well as to WILDWECHSEL – The Children’s & Youth Theater Festival in Eastern Germany, among others.

Lisa Verbelen will not make a solo this time. In »TWO.« she forms a duo with celebrated jazz musician Hendrik Lasure.»TWO.« is an exercise to reverse thinking in opposites and to experience what is in between two extremes. Expect a musical and theatrical concert, words and music that make you feel and think, both hard and soft, both dark and light, with smoke and fire, water in the desert, not ugly nor beautiful, all yin and yang, about you and me.

Lisa Verbelen (1988) studied Theatrical Performance at De Toneelacademie in Maastricht, and a Master in Music Theatre at the Conservatory of Den Haag.  Together with five others, Lisa founded the theatre collective BOG. in 2013. BOG. is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and creates performances based on texts written by the creators themselves.  

Hendrik Lasure (1997) studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and was awarded with the Toots Thielemans Jazz Award at his graduation in 2017.  Hendrik is a musical jack of all trades, known for his band SCHNTZL, the ensemble Warm Bad, the trio Thunderblender, or APQ, or Bombataz or in the band of An Pierlé.

Margarete Huber »Kartographie« (2022, UA)

Rebecca Saunders »O« (2017) 

Travis Just »Quintet 1: Five Voices« (2006/ Version 2022) 

Andrea Neumann »Rencontre 5« (2022, UA)

Boris Filanovsky »Mariupol« (2022, UA)

The program »The extended voice« will present vocal music of the 21st century in the thematic field opened by the coordinates of ‘extended vocal techniques’, ‘language as musical material’ and ‘voice as physicality in movement’.

The Maulwerkers are a vocal ensemble, music performers, music theater makers and a collective of composers. They are specialists in the intersections of music and theater, music and language, in the interpenetration of music and space, of sound and silence.

The Maulwerkers present brand new pieces, freshly written for them, show you the special sounds they have developed and perfected over the years and teach you these extended techniques. Together we will make the Ballhaus Ost ring with our bubbling, shouting, warbling, hissing and much more!

The Maulwerkers are a vocal ensemble, music performers, music theater makers and a collective of composers. They are specialists in the intersections of music and theater, music and language, in the interpenetration of music and space, of sound and silence.

At SCHRUMPF! Berlin ensembles present their current productions – in family format. New art forms are discovered, places explored, movements tried out, sounds listened to – and everyone can join in.

Daniella Strasfogel is a violinist, performer and facilitator in Berlin. She is a founding member of the soloist ensemble Kaleidoskop in Berlin and founded LOUDsoft in 2018, out of the impulse to create multidimensional musical experiences for and with families.

. . . in the dark, starry sky in the middle of the sea — still mirroring water — I cannot tell where the line is between sea and sky; looking into my own eyes, I see both reality and fantasy reflecting back at me . . . 

I have met several selves of mine: so I am never alone; I’m not only one thing, I’m not only my body. I am a question mark.  »ANAL.IZANDO« exists within this ____?____ as a continuous transformation through non-binary figures — mythological, technological, corporal and non-corporal, — as projections of my utopian consciouses. Flowing through a constant state of becoming, it oscillates in an ecstasy of multi-layered selves. This solo performance outlines the complex and paradoxical endeavour of embracing a constant state of change, embracing reflection, shadow, ecstasy, and my question mark, while re-writing pleasure into the stories we tell about transformation and becoming. 

ronald berger is a non-binary dancer and performer from Costa Rica based in Berlin. Their connection to nature and its performative qualities influenced ronald. The conflict between their sexuality and the strong catholic and chauvinist context of their natal country, inspires debates, analysis and questions regarding social behavior. 

N O T E:

The play explores themes of sexuality, among other things, and includes depictions of nudity.

Stroboscopic effects are used in this performance.

»Planet Lubunya« is a queer sci-fi journey into space with multidisciplinary performative practices and live music. It is a critical journey into space searching for ultimate utopia while using humor as a vehicel.

The project was initiated by İrem Aydın (Berlin) and Efe Durmaz (İstanbul) in 2020 as a format for digital solidarity between queer people in Turkey and Germany. It now takes off as a theater production with (mainly) Berlin based artists and is heading towards interstellar collaborations with artists from a multitude of places.

At the annual small town folk festival, two former best friends meet again after a long radio silence. Anna’s career as a racer has taken off in the meantime and Milena is in the middle of her quarterlife crisis. Between Gasoline Queen choices and BFF memories, they try to revive their relationship and face their life choices.

A queer musical about friendship, Y2K nostalgia, the absurdity of heteronormative traditions and everyday competitive culture.

cmd+c was founded by the couple Marina Prados and Paula Knüpling with the intention to create queer structures in front of and behind the stage and to deal with them in a fair, respectful and creative way. Works have already been seen at Volksbühne, Schaubude and Ballhaus Ost, most recently »Ladybitch – ein Theaterabend über den Untergang Franz Kramers«

Six performers exchange their biographies with each other. Biographies as texts and postures that are stored in our bodies. A jaw dances the posture choreo of the will to rise, a back wheel has internalized the perfect turn of shame. Every biography is a singular narrative that never belongs to us alone.

The performance collective SEE! (SE Struck, Alexandra Knieps) from Cologne has been developing hybrid performance formats since 2005, staging open networks with a self-sufficient formal language that always addresses communalization and participation on theater stages and in urban social contexts. They were at Ballhaus Ost for the first time in 2018 with »ok panik« and most recently presented the dance solo »Sonderbare IRRE«, which was already their third invitation to the theater festival FAVORITEN.

As part of NO LIMITS – Disability & Performing Arts Festival 2022

“Who actually says what is sick – and what is healthy? As gods in white, the vorschlag:hammer collective and Theater Hora question supposed certainties of the health system – and have a lot of fun in the process.” (Valeria Heintges, nachtkritik.de)

N O T E:

The performance takes place with the auditorium darkened and the topics of hospital, surgery and death are discussed.

As part of NO LIMITS – Disability & Performing Arts Festival 2022

Nominated for the 2021 National Dance Awards the intimate performance is a peep into the shiny and sweaty push pull of living with shame while bursting with pride.

N O T E: 

The play is recommended for audiences 16 and older. In it there are depictions of kink experiences, suffocation, humiliation, dominant behavior and explicit sexuality and language, and feelings of strangeness are described. Part of the performance is loud noises, flashing lights and sexy people with disabilities.

If the climate and corona crises make us aware of our fragility, Sebastian Blasius and his accomplices experiment in five prototypical etudes with a theater model that starts from precisely these experiences: What are the potentials of a ‘theater of the unsovereign’?

The director, choreographer and theater scholar Sebastian Blasius realizes projects at the interface of performing, visual and acoustic arts. At Ballhaus Ost, he most recently showed »Die Räuber der Geschichte«.

On Nov. 25, 2022, following the performance, there will be a conversation with the team, »Vom Versuch, Theater von Fragilität ausgehend zu denken,« moderated by Dr. Marcus Quent (University of the Arts, Berlin).

A film whose image does not show itself. An exhibition whose context is missing. A song without artists. A piece within a piece without a piece. Identities that flush down the toilet. »Sexy Straight White People« is a theatrical performance about the power of gender identities. vT.corp challenge habits of seeing, living and sexing to question the lifestyles and loves of the heteronormative mainstream.

Hannah Müller and Max Gadow are a sexy white artist couple from Hamburg. Known as virtuellestheater since 2015 and merged into vT.corp at the beginning of 2020, they are already a well-established team at Ballhaus Ost. Most recently, they invited friends to spend time with them as part of “It’s about time”. Very close to the zeitgeist and extremely adept at transforming between the arts, their performances form hybrids of video art, performing arts, music and exhibition.

13 queer artists are developing a collection of multi-media artworks – an EP, a book, films, an online archive, and a live event – in response to the queer language Damiá and the political and artistic questions it raises.

The work is available digitally via a website archive – www.queertongue.com – and in limited edition analog formats. On December 02, 2022, the EP will be released online.

Once upon a time there was a fan from Thuringia. He was enchanted by a famous tennis player from West Germany. But one day, a nasty, moaning opponent from Yugoslavia appeared on the scene….

The piece tells the story of the attack on tennis star Monica Seles in the context of the global political events in the early 1990s and seeks ways out of media tales of good and evil, East and West, perpetrator and victim.

In his work as a director Demjan Duran deals with his country of birth, Yugoslavia. By researching the past, he digs out themes into and for today, and places them in an overall social context. »Ein Fan aus Thüringen« is his first piece in Berlin.

The documentary performance deals with the meaning of the body – the flesh – in today’s society. Three performers navigate through live music, live video and pan-European interviews with protagonists from the porn industry, the church, the food industry, and many more.

N O T E :
Part of the performance includes loud noises and flickering lights.

The multimedia performance is an allegorical performance-essay that speculates about the possibilities of returning to a primordial state of fluid equality amongst all lifeforms. With little action and much space for mind-wondering it invites to linger and digress while listening to atmospheric water sounds, pounding bass drums or the seductive voice of Baby Marcel.

In his works Max Gadow focuses on the investigation of Western myths and power structures and derives performative processes from them. The formats range from installations to workshops and stage productions.

Apart from the flock, a sheep encounters a wolf. To avoid being eaten, it devises a ruse. It asks the wolf to play the flute so it can dance one last time…

Based on a fable ascribed to the ancient poet and slave Aesop, the piece investigates figurations of resistance within asymmetrical power relations.

In »Queens« Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I are two washed-up, undead drag queens who have been living a shared existence in Limbo for some 500 years. Until an earthquake opens the gates to the present for them…

The piece is Anne Welenc’ writing and directing debut. Most recently, she has appeared as an actress in transdisciplinary performance projects such as »All in« and »Traumgirl.« In »Queens« she continues this practice by expanding the classical theater material with impulses from related performing arts.

N O T E:
Part of the performance includes loud noises, flickering lights (strobe effects) and fog. There are depictions and mentions of earthquakes, natural disasters, death, murder and explicit sexuality in it.

How much inequality can a global friendship take? Jorge Antonio Arias Cortez was born in May 1985 in Oruro in the Bolivian Altiplano, Nicola Fritzen in October 1978 in Berlin. For »Dos Vidas«, the two befriended actora subject their biographies to a comparison and stress test – with all the extremes, high points and painful details.

Since 1991 KLARA has been exploring different theatrical languages, new dramaturgies, and the blending of fictional and documentary performance. The two protagonists of »Dos Vidas« already know each other from the long-term research process for the last work »Palmasola«, which was shown at Ballhaus Ost in 2022.

Following the performance on Sunday, there will be a discussion format for German-Spanish language learning tandems. All language levels are welcome and no registration is necessary.

Después de la representación del domingo, hablaremos de lo que hemos visto en alemán y en español (tandems) para practicar nuestros conocimientos lingüísticos. Si es necesario, ¡con manos y pies – todos los niveles de idiomas son bienvenidos! El intercambio lingüístico es gratuito.

Across an unimaginable void lies a world inhabited only by Queer people. The theatre piece tells the story of how cracks arise in this utopia. Written and performed in Damiá, a Queer language, »The Crossing« asks if brand new words could be the place we finally build a home.

Written and performed entirely in Damiá, a Queer art-language developed by Aslan since they were a teenager, The Crossing was originally conceived of as a live stage performance. This film adaptation was created after the premiere and 2022 shows were cancelled due to COVID. The film is available online, free of charge, for two weeks from 28th February to 13th March 2023. The text is translated for the audience with subtitles into English and German.

Since 2012, Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS — Chris Gylee and Aslan — have worked in the fertile ground between disciplines, combining theatre, film, choreography and research. The two performers deploy (auto)biographical narrative as well as meticulous research on Queer life realities for their poetic works.

The theater collective copy & waste places itself at the side of the dying and assembles their feverish narratives, great songs and otherworldly images into a many-voiced monologue for one actor. Hannes Schumacher plays and speaks Dostoyevsky and Kleist, Milow and Weil, Hölderlin and Schulze-Erdel and slips into the costumes of great paintings and film scenes.

The theater and performance collective copy & waste has been realizing plays since 2007. After works about the collapse of cities, the end of work and cancellation of nature, it dedicates its current series »Theater of Death« to dying. »bye, bye, bye« is the second part of this series after the theaterfilm »Besides, it’s always been the others who died«.

Following the performance on 4.3. the third part of »Die Suche nach der Ur-Oper« by Das Helmi will take place at the bar.

Three vocalists cook up a culinary experience from the internet healing phenomena Eating Show (Muk-bang) and ASMR, spiced with a global social problem: racially motivated violence against Asians, from the 20th century to current Asian Hate by COVID-19. With a fusion sound cuisine of internet cult, experimental vocal music and Asian world music, the piece shows the unheard perspectives of  Asians and invites the audience to question their own role in the post-migrant society.

N O T E:
The play addresses anti-Asian violence and is therefore recommended for audiences 16 and older

Hang Su is a composer of new music. He works on performative projects and experiments with new forms of musical theater.

Where can a group drift?
In »FIVE« five dancers investigate different arrangements, dynamics and poses within a group. They move between geometric formations, swarm behavior, band poses and chaos, work with movement motifs of packs and packs and repeatedly question the relationship between individual and group. They rock each other up, and are on the lookout for tipping moments in which the group body goes out of shape and tips over into the destructive.

After many duets by Florian Bücking and Raisa Kröger under the label bücking&kröger in recent years, the ensemble piece »FIVE« is an attempt to extend their dance / choreographic practice by working with several dancers and exploring the sculptural possibilities of a group body.

Come and play! Throw all your heritage into the balance.
A 40-something woman wants to have a baby and invites the audience to play the game of life with her. Based on scientific and social developments, it is about the very personal gut feeling and socially profound decisions…

After the performances »Die Natur der Kinder« (2016), »Unser Erbe« (2018) and »Good Advice« (2021), willems&kiderlen continue their artistic research on physical, social and material heritage and passing on. »Das Erbe – Schon cool, was da alles möglich ist!« is based on interviews with people affected by a heavily burdened heritage as well as with experts and scientists.

Horwitz|Shapiro|Wagner investigate, rewrite and transform Jewish and queer rituals and create a sound space for the drag of religion between dance music and contemporary sounds. They situate traditions and histories as artistic practice and write a herstory of their own history with the political responsibility of marginalization as queer, Jewish artists.

Theater maker Heinrich Horwitz and drummer Jonathan Shapiro have been experimenting together since 2018 in changing constellations and genres at the intersections of music, performance, dance and language. After »DREAMS*« (Nürnberg 2022), »Drag & Drum« at Ballhaus Ost is their second collaborative work with performer, opera singer, songwriter and drag queen Shlomi Moto Wagner aka. Mazy Mazeltov.

A post-apocalyptic chamber play about the social center and the brutality of the normal. While everything is falling apart outside, a small piece of the good life still remains in Sector 75B. “Why,” WOMAN and MAN ask each other, “should you give things up in such hard times – especially when you’re trying so hard to be a good person in the process?”

FEELINGS comprises the stage, sound and online works, artistic research, games and feelings that Jil Dreyer and Josef Mehling have been developing with and for each other since 2017. They have previously shown work at the Staatstheater Mainz, FELD Theater Berlin and Gessnerallee Zurich, among others. »Society Intact« is their first work at Ballhaus Ost.

N O T E:
Part of the performance includes loud noises and flickering lights.
Prior to the performance, there is the option of “early boarding.” This means that those who wish can be given more time and, if necessary, assistance in entering the auditorium, finding a seat and sitting down.

Bulimia literally means “bull hunger”, so Anna Kirstine Linke throws themself and their inner bulls into the arena. Between the Pope and Madonna, as bullfighter and bull, Linke asks whether eating disorders* are protests against binary or sexist structures or how these structures produce eating disorders*?

Author, director, performer and bodyworker Anna Kirstine Linke studied Philosophie-Künste-Medien in Hildesheim, directing at the HfMT and the ZHdK & believes in the power of vulnerability. Parallel to »Stierhunger«, Linke asks in »Sex und Kartoffeln« at the Theater Magdeburg how sexualities can be decolonized.

Acoustic installative processes in holey darkness. Enigmatic figures write themselves with an archaic script through dreams whose personnel they once were. A reduced web following lush dream logic.

The Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop sees itself as co-authors of the collaborative productions. In years of collaboration with Georg Nussbaumer, new forms of experimental music theater are explored. A place that has the power to imagine other futures.

N O T E: The performances are not barrier-free, as the audience moves through the different floors of the house on their own initiative after dark. Visitors with visual impairments can register for a guided performance at the box office up to 15 minutes before the performance begins.

Whirlpools of packaging waste circulate in the ocean. Feminine sharks glow. Nimble hands fold oversize origami. Ropes become noodles, intestines, ghost nets. Care-Pas de Deux and Slow-food Porn meet at the wok campfire of a Thai megacity. In a dance performance, the visual cosmos of a glutamate-soaked fast food world is unleashed. From a Eurocentric point of view, hard-to-digest realities of life ritually lead into absurd waters.

Dasniya Sommer seeks connections between digestion, artificiality and culture with Michael Schumacher of the inclusive ensemble Meine Damen und Herren, MMA performer Fungi Fung, eco-feminist dancer Tara Jade Samaya and exception dancer Yui Kawaguchi. Through reflections on hydrofeminism and ‘Bodies of Water’, this creates an oscillating projection surface for a critical engagement with anti-Asian racism.

Haus Sommer is the network label of dancer and choreographer Dasniya Sommer. In changing collaborations with other artists, she explores and expands the formal language of classical ballet under the influence of shibari, body art and contemporary performance art.

Following the performance on 13.5. the fifth part of »Die Suche nach der Ur-Oper« by Das Helmi will take place at the bar.

We die alone. We bury together. A participatory performance that explores the political and theatrical nature of the funeral ritual and deconstructs its settled mechanism. A ritual for which it is impossible to be fully prepared, but during this rehearsal any last wish can be fulfilled.

Natasha Borenko – a Siberian-born fluid theater maker, queer feminist migrant artist, who sees participatory art as a tool to deconstruct the system and rehearse the change. She develops this piece in collaboration with cross-cultural interdisciplinary artists.

In the forest of mythical creatures there is always a fight. No two people ever agree on anything. But it’s not the quarrel that’s the problem, it’s how we deal with it! In tricky situations, mouse courage, squirrel humor and peace techniques are called for. Together with the animals, the audience tries out the toolbox of conflict management.

Sebastian Mauksch & team stage participatory theater for young audiences and explore the art of adolescence. With Ballhaus Ost they created among others »Fennymore oder wie man Dackel im Salzmantel macht« (Invitations to Augenblick Mal! and Wildwechsel 2021) or »Junge Leute« (Nomination Longlist Wildwechsel 2023).

As part of the Performing Arts Festival 2023

Fernanda Farah »what draws are the eyes« (20‘)

– Pause –

Andrea Neumann »ip6« (20‘) 

– Pause –

Antonia Baehr »Inside the Piano« (20‘) 

Andrea Neumann has been playing the same instrument for 20 years: a self-made piano frame without a keyboard. For »Tossed Sounds« three pieces were written for the composer and musician, by performer Antonia Baehr, dancer Fernanda Farah and Andrea Neumann herself. On one condition: The instrument is absent from the stage. What remains of a musician without her instrument? What traces does it leave behind? What can be heard?

As part of »Introducing…«at Performing Arts Festival 2023

How can an archive come alive? Can an archive become a time hole through which we can climb into new futures? Between a futuristic video world and car tires, Salma Said and Miriam Coretta Schulte explore the subversive video archive “858” of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and the potential of choreographic mnemonic techniques.

N O T E: The show deals with topic of violence.

Salma Said and Miriam Coretta Schulte are partners in crime, friendship and performance. Since 2018, the duo has been developing an artistic practice that combines situational knowledge of their different backgrounds and contexts, a desire to experiment with activism and political issues. »behind your eyeballs« is their first joint project. »Court Fantasies« follows and will premiere in May 2023.

Bacteria live almost everywhere. In »Holobiontinnen« two performers make contact with the bacteria on their bodies and beyond. A network of performers, audience, microorganisms and machines emerges.

Eva Hintermaier / Simon Kalus are a transdisciplinary team at the intersection of performance, literature and installation. They are interested in human-nature relationships and interweavings of biological with aesthetic phenomena.

N O T E: Audio description is an integral part of all performances.

Accompanying the performances are tactile tours aimed at visually impaired people. They are also open to the public. The tactile tours make it possible to get to know the stage space, the equipment and the performers in advance. The tours are led by Sebastian Schulze and Simon Kalus. The meeting point is always 1.5 hours before the performance in the foyer.

The 24-hour happening traces the highly developed emotional system of dolphins. What would happen if we were able to transform our linear experience of time and space into a 5-dimensional vortex?

18:00 Check In / Worldbuilding
20:00 Universe
21:00 Climax / Collapse of the Universe
23:00 Food / Assimilation 
0:00 GHOSTs
3:00 Trance / INK*
5:00 3rd Pill / Revenges of Nymph
7:00 Frequencies of Dreams
DOORS CLOSED
10:00 Promenade / Repeat repeat until its in your Bones
11:00 Futureself / INK*
13:00 Backwards Burning / INK*
14:00 Trance Crying Ritual / INK*
15:00 Wetness Ritual / Creating the Ocean 
17:00 Bleed out
*For more info and booking options please contact @tattoos.by.pauli // tattoos.by.pauli@gmail.com or decide on the spot

Heinrich Horwitz and the fluid collective consists of Rosa Wernecke, Magdalena Emmerig, Annett Hardegen and various performers. The group has been working together in different constellations since 2016 and is concerned with the idea of constantly transforming the theater space as a utopian practice.

»Big Bangs & Black Holes« is a digital double-bill by Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS. »Dogs of Love« and »We Come With Nothing«, created initially as stage works, are shown side-by-side for the first time, reimagined for film and animated with poetic imagery.

»Dogs of Love« (60′) investigates the intimate connection between two people. Starting with a real-life love story, two lovers run in opposite directions through time and space, through pasts and futures populated with real and imagined stories of Queer togetherness. Footsteps echo as we dive deep into togetherness, loneliness, crisis, and intimacy. Can we ever really leave someone we have been in love with?
 

To the Film

»We Come With Nothing« (35′) explores the dark side of entanglement. Inspired by the form of Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘constellation novels’ and ghost stories, it conjures a shadow-world of broken connections. What happens when a relationship ends in estrangement? What is this ‘nothing’ we are left with? What do we discover when we stare into this black hole?

To the Film

The films will be available online from June 19 through June 30, 2023.

Since 2012, Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS — Chris Gylee and Aslan — have worked in the fertile ground between disciplines, combining theatre, film, choreography and research. The two performers deploy (auto)biographical narrative as well as meticulous research on Queer life realities for their poetic works. Most recently at Ballhaus Ost they showed »Karelia. A Queer Forest Fantasy in Two Parts«, and the film adaptation »The Crossing«. The piece »Dogs of Love« was premiered in 2019.

A site-specific AudioDate for one spectator and forest.

Spring Time is Dating Time! But if Parship, Grindr and LoveScout24 are not enough for you: »Dating a Forest« comes to Berlin! In times of climate crisis – just you and the forest, for two in the public space around the Ballhaus Ost. Book your dating slot – now!

Janna Pinsker and Wicki Bernhardt combine the lines of post-dramatic theater, choreography and performance for a young and intergenerational audience in their work. With an absurd-fragmentary and playful-confrontational aesthetic, they negotiate themes such as shame, bodily change, climate crisis or the power of couple relationships.

A T T E N T I O N : some slots are not barrier-free! Please contact us if necessary by mail to info @ ballhausost.de

Two peformers encounter the audience in a live experiment with human and technologized modes of perception. In the hybridity of human senses, emotions, projections and spatial fluidity, they make the area between categorizing gazes their world and discover in it the poetics of glitches – disturbances in the system.

Gloria Höckner is a freelance choreographer and performer. Gloria’s artistic works deal with the relationship of the body to technology and power structures as well as the transformational potential of sound experiences.

The improvisational vocal collective from Hamburg resides for a week at Ballhaus Ost. After two music theater projects, artistic practices and authorships have developed out of the versatile group. The TakeHeart residency at Ballhaus Ost serves to gather this multiplicity under one roof. Voices and hierarchies are once again reshuffled. Which narratives, texts and melodies emerge from the choir itself? How can the multiplicity be made audible? On Sunday, the choir opens its doors for a live listening session open to the public, inviting you to listen to new compositions, narratives and improvisations in a relaxed atmosphere over a cup of tea.

Der extrem gemische Chor is a musical theater ensemble founded in 2017. The ensemble’s composition strives for vocal heterogeneity, encompassing a wide range of ages, professionalities and musical imprints.

The interactive radio play »Beton. Wüste. Zukunft.« invites you to trace your own cognitive dissonance between real climate crisis and fatalistic repression. With dripping sounds, diving meditation and thought experiments, big questions are asked and small steps towards utopia are dared.

Alisa Tretau’s multidisciplinary works revolve around shameful facets of current political issues. The 360° short film »Wüste Zukunft« already revolved around climate justice. Previously she published the anthology ‘Nicht nur Mütter waren schwanger’ (edition assemblage).

Melanie Schmidli and team reanimate the lost sounds of historical “hysterical” women*. In an installative sound world they invite to conversations with experts on the female* voice. Finale: a participatory concert by Kreischende Weiber* including dinner.

For some time now, the actress and director Melanie Schmidli has been dealing with the discourse of hysteria as a means of social exclusion and oppression of women* in her work cycle Divina Hysterika. The multi-layered artistic process takes place in changing formats and collaborations. “Kreischende Weiber*” is the second collaboration with dramaturg Almut Wedekind, freelance artist and scenographer Barbara Lenartz, and actress and assistant Saskia Mommertz in this context. For the first time the team collaborates with the sound artist and noise maker Almut Schwacke.

The dancers listen to the space, inwardly and to each other, and move in response. In the four-hour process, they learn from what they hear to find other ways of moving. A highly sensitive mode of slow attention.

Labor Sonor – the series for experimental music, film and performance – presents the spectrum of current experimental formsbeyond genre-specific determinability – from real-time music to electronics, performance, audiovisual formats, conceptual music, new composed music and experimental pop.

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.

Für das Projekt »Re/Locating Amo« haben sich ghanaische und deutsche Theatermacher:innen zusammengetan, um Anton Wilhelm Amos Leben und Denken theatral zu deuten und für einen transkulturellen Dialog um Themen wie Rückkehr und Zugehörigkeit, Tradition, Identität und Philosophie als Anlass zu nehmen.

Gibt es den gerechten Tyrann:innenmord? Einen vertretbar militanten Widerstand? Einen ethischen Terrorismus? Schauspielerin Karin Enzler (Schweiz), Punkmusikerin Stéphanie Morin (Frankreich) und Choreographin Maque Pereyra (Bolivien) kämpfen sich in drei filmisch-performativen Solos durch die Geschichte bis zur Gegenwart.

Gerhart Hauptmann’s Helene shows effects of increased alcohol consumption in her own milieu and her family, from which she cannot break away until the tragic end. Blomen, Moré and Reiniger question Hauptmann’s text “Before Sunrise” and complement it with their own and imagined experiences.

New session with Linda Fisahn, Christian Fleck & Lis Marie Diehl
June 2, 2022, 6.00 pm
After what feels like a hundred years, three members of the theater group I CAN BE YOUR TRANSLATOR meet again on the Reeperbahn and welcome the newborn baby, uncover the secrets of the father-to-be, and process together how things can and will continue with children and career. Head cinema guaranteed!

Felizitas Stilleke aunt, curator, dramaturg, artist and person, gathers in herself and in seven performative podcast sessions voices of international artists for a collective discourse rededication. Searching for words for not-yet/not-more/maybe/motherhood.