Step into a transformative evening at Ballhaus Ost, where personal histories and musical innovation meet in a night of bold, boundary-pushing performances by artists with deep ties to the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region.

Anthony Hüseyin, curator of the event, leads the night with a captivating blend of Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic influences. A non-binary artist who intertwines classical, jazz, and traditional forms, Hüseyin’s work explores themes of memory, collective consciousness, and the fluidity of identity. With a voice that shifts between vulnerability and defiance, Hüseyin’s performance invites audiences into a world where the personal becomes political, queer narratives are celebrated, and the body itself becomes an instrument of resistance.

MADANII, a genre-defying talent rooted in Persian heritage, brings a visceral fusion of avant-pop, alternative R&B, and trap, exploring the tensions of belonging, queer love, and generational dreams. Each of her songs is an immersive experience, weaving Persian cultural motifs with a raw, contemporary edge.

Zuher Jazmati (aka xanax_attax) completes the lineup, channeling his Syrian-German identity into sets that merge tacky Arab-pop with femme Hip Hop beats. As a co-founder of ADIRA Party, his DJ sets confront issues of anti-Muslim racism and queer visibility, creating a powerful space for self-expression and community.
With »Echoes of the Edge: Queer Sounds and Stories from West Asia & North Africa« these artists redefine SWANA soundscapes, creating a mosaic of resistance, resilience, and reverence for their roots.

Mit »Echoes of the Edge: Queer Sounds and Stories from West Asia & North Africa« definieren diese Künstler die SWANA-Soundscapes neu und schaffen ein Mosaik aus Widerstand, Resilienz und Ehrfurcht vor ihren Wurzeln.

The measures planned by the Berlin Senate to consolidate the state budget announce drastic budget cuts for the coming years. The cultural sector, but also related areas such as education, social affairs and science, are particularly affected.

We still do not know at this stage to what extent the budget cuts will affect our specific work at Ballhaus Ost. However, we are very concerned about the Senate’s priorities and the policy of social coldness that they reflect. Concerned about the future of Ballhaus Ost and the many people with their diverse life stories with whom we work. Concerned about the future of Berlin.

There are many people involved in the fight against the Berlin Senate’s short-sighted and socially unjust cost-cutting agenda. We have collected particularly important initiatives and statements whose concerns we support and share in the following (constantly updated) link list:

https://unkuerzbar.de

http://berlinistkultur.de

https://www.bbk-berlin.de/news/16122024-pressemitteilung-von-berlinistkultur-zu-den-dezentralen-aktionstagen-vom-16-181224

https://diversity-arts-culture.berlin

https://stiftung-kulturelle-weiterbildung-kulturberatung.berlin.de

The musical lecture performance “Left Hands” is dedicated to female artists of the GDR, follows their footsteps and delves into their work, is a documentary, declaration of love, punk concert – with Rosa Beton – and essay all in one.
 

The music theater collective Hauen und Stechen developed its works in cellars and on opera stages. It stands for a poetic, multifaceted and wild theatrical language that marks a political and idiosyncratic position in music theater.

N O T E :
The performance includes the depiction of nudity and loud pop music.

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.

There is always a dispute in the forest of mythical creatures. No two of them ever agree. But it’s not the arguments that are the problem, it’s how we deal with them. Tricky situations call for mouse courage, squirrel humour and peace techniques. Together with the animals, the audience tries out the conflict management toolbox.

Sebastian Mauksch develops theatre productions, primarily for children and young people, as a shared space for experience and discovery. The productions are created in a collective departmental working method with various artists, who this time also perform themselves.

In addition to »Warum der Hund das Fleisch durch den Fluss trägt« (2023, HKF funding, longlist Augenblick mal! 2025) realized Sebastian Mauksch &Team in cooperation with Ballhaus Ost, »Normans Norm« (2024, Senate funding), »Junge Leute« (2022, HKF funding, longlist Wildwechsel 2023), »Fennymore oder wie man Dackel im Salzmantel macht« (2019, HKF funding, invitations to the festivals Augenblick mal! and Wildwechsel 2021), »Karl & Knäcke lernen Räubern« (2020, Senate funding). The focus of his artistic research is »The Art of Adolescence« and its principles of self-empowering theater work. He is a juror at the »Theatertreffen der Jugend« and develops various artistic projects at Berlin schools. http://sebastianmauksch.de/

Times are tough! But did you know that tragedy + time = comedy? If not, you’re probably not a comedian. These troubled fools know how to walk from their pain to your pleasure. If you’ve ever wondered what it sounds like when life-shattered comedians process their selves – join us at JOKEHAUS OST! From freezing your eggs, growing up in war, or just their daddy’s leaving them – trauma dumping is our love language! You’ll be glad that times are rough when these international comedians have you laugh your pain away! 

With Anna Beros, Gözde Güngör, Palma Palacios and Mila Panić

Curated by EXPERT BY IDENTITY

ACCESS NOTE
The event room is only accessible via stairs.

Witness the full majesty of the musical muses : Shirley Knott and Madame Eve. An evening of iconic pop covers, comedic sketches, sensual performances, moments of catharsis, piano karaoke, and raw energy to set your loins on fire. A drag show like no other, the pair invite some of Berlin’s finest drag entertainers to shine in this multisensory showcase. Daniela Candela, Kaleidolicious, & Lawunda Richardson. Join the Dames around their big pink furry piano for this once in a lifetime spectacle.

Amour, humour & glamour.
The Dames is a musical duo created in 2022. Starting as a camp piano-karaoke evening in queer bars and private events, it evolved into an immersive, almost ritualistic performance in theaters and art galleries. It is between these two extremes that they create magic.

Gathered under the title »Souls Out«, the final semester projects of Prof. Janina Audick’s stage design class at the Berlin University of the Arts deal with the socio-political and aesthetic urgencies of our present day and create multimedia-based spatial productions that allow contemporary issues to be explored using artistic means. The presentations can be seen on February 14 and 15 between 3 and 10 pm.

http://buehnenbild-udk.xyz/
Instagram: @audick_udk_buehnenbildklasse

Welcome to a living room that turns into a smouldering scene of remembering and forgetting. Here, between a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s and her daughter, worlds collide: an interplay of anger, sadness, despair and disorientation.

The performance is part of a cycle of work by theater and filmmaker Tobias Yves Zintel, in which he deals with various facets of his own family history: in »Mental Radio« (2012) and »Autistische Spiele« (2020/2021) he explores aspects of neurodiversity and social exclusion; In »das ist dunkel, das ist hell« (2017) he sheds light on the fragility of memory and the construction of spaces of remembrance in the context of the Nazi era, family and the narratives that emerge from it, interlocking them with contemporary perspectives; in »Damage Done« (2025) he deals with dementia, ruptures in memory and family dynamics. His works combine personal biography with socio-critical reflection and question established narratives through a multi-layered, cross-media artistic practice.

The performance on 22.02. will be followed by an artist talk with Theaterscoutings Berlin.

دختران خیابان انقل داستان خیابانی به درازای ۵ کیلومتر در قلب شهر تهران است که از اسفند ۱۳۵۷ تا کنون صحنه‌ی ایستادگی زنان در برابر نظام اسلامی حاکم بر ایران بوده است. جایی که در ویرانه‌ها و خانه‌های متروک آن طرح‌های نو و تئاتر شوریدن پدیدار می‌شود.  

The play is about people who refuse to submit. Of women who challenge generations of oppression and find their identity, their voices and their expression. It connects the story of the protagonist and her mother with the collective struggle for freedom – a struggle that finds its most visible expression on the revolutionary street.

در پاییز ۱۴۰۱ همزمان با خیزش زنان، آیت نجفی در تهران مجموعه‌ای از کارگاههای زیرزمینی تئاتر را هدایت می‌کرد. این پروژه از سال ۱۴۰۲ با پیوستن جمعی از هنرمندانِ سایر کشورها به گروه در برلین ادامه یافته است.

In fall of 2022, Ayat Najafi led a series of underground theater workshops in Tehran during the women’s uprising. From this work, an ensemble emerged, which he has continued to develop in Berlin with international artists since 2023.

لکچر-پرفورمنس «تاریخ اجرا» از آثاری می‌گوید که توسط هنرمندان در بند در زندان‌های ایران شکل گرفته و اجرا شده‌اند. چگونه می‌توان یک تمرین هنری را در محدوده‌های یک زندان حفظ کرد؟ چه اشکالی از اجرا در چنین شرایطی قابل تصور هستند؟ هنرمندان چه نقشی در فرآیندهای تحول اجتماعی ایفا می‌کنند؟

 در تاریخ هفتم مارچ، پس از اجرا گفتگویی با مریم پالیزبان و آزاده گنجه برگزار می‌شود

The Lecture-Performance »Date of Performance« reports on performances staged by imprisoned artists in Iranian prisons. How can an artistic practice be maintained within the confines of a prison? And what forms of performance are conceivable in such conditions? What role do artists play in social transformation processes?

The performance on 07.03. will be followed by a talk with Maryam Palizban & Azadeh Ganjeh.

»Trouble is an interesting word. It means ‘to stir up,’ ‘to make cloudy,’ ‘to disturb.«
(Donna Haraway: Staying with the trouble)

We have made clouds and expose ourselves to storms. We ask: How do we remain stable in the eye of this tornado of information and unsettling news? We often feel powerless in the face of all this trouble. Sometimes we would just like to hide and pull the covers over our heads. But: We don’t want it to stay that way!

Inspired by stories and figures from the wonderland of Oz, five performers between 11 and 44 years of age look for ways to deal with the gloomy scenarios we encounter daily on all channels.
Can cotton candy, magic tricks or poems by Kae Tempest help? How can we respond together to all the trouble? And how can we become strong without hardening ourselves?

The performance on 28.03. will be followed by an artist talk.

N O T E S:
There are intense light and fog effects as well as dazzling lights and reflections. In some places there is loud and sudden music, loud noises and loud screaming.
In one scene, magic tricks are performed (sawing, sword swallowing) but nothing happens to anyone.
In some dialogues, threatening future scenarios are told that deal with the climate crisis and war.

The work is inspired by the examination of historical and contemporary concepts of control concepts of control, security and cleanliness — individually and socially, as an engine of civilization, as a means of emancipation and oppression.
»REINHEIT« meticulously recontructs a seemingly endless, compulsive loop of hand-washing from the heyday or the Covid pandemic.
 

Oliver Zahn is a theater maker and performer. His work is always based on extensive research – ethnographic, archive-based and embodying self-experimentation.

»The Great Grand Other« examines the transmission of war memories and traumas across generations. Between scenic concert, installation and performance, a poetic-musical search takes place, the starting point of which is a blank space. Making silence resound and asking about the traces of war in our own families and in ourselves.

The performance on April 11 will be followed by an audience discussion.

Note
Sturdy shoes are recommended!

WEOST is a documentary theater machine that deals with the ambivalent perspectives of young people on a time of upheaval and change. It transforms these moving stories about identity and the past into a participatory space for a transgenerational audience.

Dance back and forth, this way and that. A call for motion. A call for movement. An ensemble of professional dancers and a young drop of refugees invites to dance and illuminates the structures of integration: what does it mean to integrate into a society or a situation?

Angela Lamprianidou, born in Greece, studied choreography and new techniques of interpretation at the »Institut del Teatre« in Barcelona, where she lived and worked until recently. She has collaborated with theaters such as the Mercat de les Flors, the National Theater of Catalonia and the Underground & Off scene.

On the second evening of »Mit Wirkung«, experts will engage in dialogue and reflect on the changing discourse in Berlin, the controversial definitions of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism and the possibility of linking the two struggles. The event will conclude with Bedouin food artist Samar Abu-Fraiha, in an evening of hospitality, culture and connection.

The first part of »Mit Wirkung. Eine Relaxed Veranstaltungsreihe über intensiven Themen« will take place on 11 December at 18:00: »Mit Denken«

Mit Sprechen (نتحدث معًا)

في الأمسية الثانية من «مِت ڤيركونغ»، يخوض خبراءٌ في حوار للتأمل في تغيرات الخطاب السائد في برلين، وفي تعريفات معاداة السامية المثيرة للجدل والعنصرية ضد المسلمين، وإمكانية ربط النضالين معًا. تُختتَم الفعالية مع فنانة الطعام البدوية سمر أبو فريحة، في أمسية من الضيافة والثقافة والتواصل. 

هذهالفعاليةجزءمن «مِتڤيركونغ: سلسلةفعالياتريلاكسدحولمواضيعجادة»

Soft Arrival: Between 18:00 and 18:30, visitors can slowly arrive in the room. Breaks are scheduled approximately every 45′. Each break lasts 15′.

Livestream from 18:30 will be linked here.

The first evening of »Mit Wirkung« is dedicated to learning together. In small groups, topics relating to anti-Semitism, racism and repression are made accessible for a differentiated and complex discussion that invites the audience to ask questions, read and exchange ideas with experts and each other.

The second part of »Mit Wirkung. Eine Relaxed Veranstaltungsreihe über intensiven Themen« will take place on 12 December at 18:00: »Mit Sprechen«

Mit Denken (نفكر معًا)

نُكرِّس الأمسية الأولى من «مِت ڤيركونغ» لنتعلم معًا. في مجموعات صغيرة، سنيسر نقاشاتٍ معقدة حول العنصرية ومعاداة السامية وممارسات القمع. ندعو الحضور إلى طرح الأسئلة، والقراءة، وتبادل الأفكار سويًا ومع الخبراء.

هذهالفعاليةجزءمن «مِتڤيركونغ: سلسلةفعالياتريلاكسدحولمواضيعجادة»

Soft Arrival: Between 18:00 and 18:30, visitors can slowly arrive in the room. Breaks are scheduled approximately every 45′. Each break lasts 15′.

The Festival »Dramen der Gegenwart #2« takes a look at the diversity and qualities of contemporary theater texts. A total of around 20 theater texts will be presented in a broad spectrum of forms.

Saturday Program:
10:00 Caffeine Drama – Reading Speed Dating I
12:00 Writing Chamber vs. Writers’ Room
13:00 Pearls & Swine – A Drama Parcours
18:00 Poetics Pulse
19:00 The Playwright Is Present I & II – The Writers’ Ensemble
21:00 The Playwright Is Present III & IV – The Authors’ Ensemble

Sunday Program:
10:00 Caffeine Drama – Reading Speeddating II
12:00 Collision 1: “Couple IV”
12:30 Collisions 2: “visible only when viewed. chance encounters”
13:00 Collisions 3: “HOMOSPHERE”
14:30 Ways and detours to authorship
16:00 Conclusion Dramas of the Present #2

An actress stands on stage in front of a large screen, her thoughts in her past – and simultaneously in virtual worlds with VR glasses. A cascade of intertwined, immersive memory spaces emerges. A reality matroshka that begins with an inner-immersive play of the performer, continues through the virtual reality construction and the peculiar reality of a theater stage into the reality constructions of our world.

Rabea Kiel and Adolfina Fuck (Matthias Meppelink) have a longstanding collaboration, through Applied Theater Studies in Giessen and with the performance group Monster Truck. Since 2021, the duo has been exploring the medium of virtual reality as a performative tool with the aim of a productive misappropriation for theater.

In a mobile performance through four private apartments in Neukölln, director Christiane Mudra provides insight into the lives of mentally ill people and describes the situation in Germany’s psychiatric institutions from the Nazi era to the present day. In the process, »Selfie & Ich« unmasks en passant the systemic deformation of our oh-so-happy meritocracy.

investigative
stands for journalistic long-term research that is based primarily on original sources and also uncovers unknown facts.

theater
plays out the research specifically in different formats. investigative theater experiments with digital tools and seeks interaction with the audience.

The fourth edition of the LABOR SONOR concert series 2023 – back at Ballhaus Ost with concerts and performances by Maikon K, the VanProject and Rabih Beaini. Sonic & aesthetic experiments between dance, music theater and analog techno.

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

Kompositionen von S. Ercklentz, E. Grosskopf, R. Hoyer, S. Roigk, S. Weismann, U. Wassermann. Mit Megaphonen, Mikrofonen, Flüstertüten und Handlautsprechern werden die Stimmen zu sich wandelnden Konstellationen choreografiert.

Die Maulwerker, Kollektiv für stimmliche Experimente, integrieren Elemente aus Performance Art, intermedialer Kunst und Choreografie in ihre Musik.

After a year of searching, we reach the finale of the original opera. After stops in Barbieland, the Spanish Civil War and outer space, the search now finds itself, ending in a story that only seems banal: a soap opera.

The 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.

ما تلاش می کنیم تا شیوه کاری خود را ترجمه کنیم. به زبان های مختلف، به شکل تصاویر و باز به نمایش برگردانیم. به همراه خسرو محمودی، بازیگر، که از اوقات فراغت خود برای ترجمانی رومان به فارسی استفاده می کند و برای او این سوال مطرح است که چگونه می توان “خوک داشتن” را به درستی ترجمه کرد.
به همراه سباستین کوناس، هنرمند صداپرداز، که درگیر این سوال است که از چه زمان، زبان به موسیقی تبدیل می شود و با احمد جمالی، مترجمی که از شغل روزمره خود می گوید. آنها این سوال ها را مطرح می کنند: تماشاچیِ ما واقعا کیست، چه دریافتی از این کار دارد، در تیاتر چه چیزی را تجربه می کند و چگونه می توان این را ترجمه کرد؟

Language is the house we live in and vorschlag:hammer want to open the doors of their house, let others in and rebuild it. They want to try to translate their theater. Into a multi-translated evening about translation, in which content and form are interdependent and which leads from the dominance of a spoken language to multilingualism and the offer of emancipated self-interpretation of images. A space in which many understand something, but no one understands everything.

vorschlag:hammer have been developing theater productions as a collective since 2009. In recent years, their performative narrative theater has opened up to a wide variety of aesthetic strategies, to visual-atmospheric or body-oriented works. They freely adapt existing material or develop research-based productions on ever new topics.

What would happen if Christmas didn’t exist?
Christmas is the most beautiful celebration of the year for most people, and yet everything often happens at the last minute. Many people associate Christmas only with stress and agony: Rushing through the stores to get the necessary, increasingly expensive gifts. But in a time of frantic speed, we need things to give us pause. A wintry world celebrates the breakthrough of love and hope.
God sends his Son to earth as a little helpless child. We experience God’s closeness to humanity. He shares his life with us, knows about joy and sorrow. He gives us hope, shows us how small beginnings can grow into great things. But it came to pass at that time…”, we all know the beginning of this story and also its end, but in the meantime the world has changed.
This year again we want to celebrate a morning of joy and reflection with memories and shining children’s eyes, a classic nativity play.

2023 really for the last time.

»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. At the center of their work stands the question of conscious action, political interaction and global malaise.

N O T E :
Discriminatory stereotypes are reproduced and negotiated. There are offers of participation and interaction that do not have to be accepted. At the end of the play, loud and expansive blowers are suddenly used.

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«.

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”.

Manuel Gerst brings Kafka’s famous story to the stage as a happening from the event industry. References to bachelor parties and the reduction of aggression in groups meet action art and destruction art. Kafka’s parable is read here as a story about disability, in the field of tension between being injured and being intact. The aggression towards the deformed other in the story is turned into aggression against the object on stage. In the end, it doesn’t matter what position the audience takes – the dent remains the same. Let he who is without sin cast the first apple.

In his previous works, Manuel Gerst has repeatedly questioned and subverted existing power relations in theater in various constellations, including under the label Monster Truck. In his works he often deals with the thematic field of “disability” and economies in theater. »Die Verwandlung« is his first work at Ballhaus Ost.

There will be a post-show discussion on 11/17 following the performance (Retrospective Improvisation of Theater Scouting with Alisa Tretau).

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 understand the risk of intimacy, gentleness and pleasure as a subversive practice and cross it with elements 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.

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.

What to do with the old photos of grandfathers in Nazi uniforms that you find in photo albums or framed on the sideboard? In a performative stage comic, Marie Simons and her collective take apart these photographs of soldierly masculinity, paint over them and question their impact on their own queer biography.

Marie Simons, Dennis Dieter Kopp, Nikolaus Kockel, Nora Schön and Angela Queins work at the interface of visual and performative arts. The group is united by a theoretical and practical examination of critical masculinity research and an intersectional understanding of feminism and queer identities.

»You know the Feeling« is a theater performance and a concert. Five covers of the pop song “People I’ve been sad” by Christine and the Queens, Blomen/Moré/Reiniger deal with identification, appropriation and populism as well as the social conditions of loneliness and coming together.

If you / Disappear, then I’m /Disappearing too
If you / Fall apart, then I’m / Falling behind you

Blomen/Moré/Reiniger are a theater collective and know each other from their studies at the University of Hildesheim. They are interested in the intersection of theater and reality and let autobiographical narratives meet fictional characters in their stage plays; as an intimate and at the same time public negotiation of their present.

On 10.2. after the performance: Karaoke Night with Soroa at the bar!

«Recycling of life» speculates on the eternal cycle of life and things: musically, playfully, between exhibition setting and loving chaos. Auf jeden Fall mehr bless this mess als Marie Kondō. Antje Schupp and her team recycle memories, experiences, knowledge and all our junk!

Antje Schupp is a director, performer, author, lecturer and loves interdisciplinary projects. She has worked with Ayman Nahle, a filmmaker from Beirut, on four projects and with set designer Christoph Rufer on countless others. Yanik Soland is a musician and composer. Antje and Yanik are artists in residence at the Kaserne Basel in 2023/24.

The performance is part of our guest performance series Berlin Basel Smash: from February 23 to March 9, we will be showing three pieces from the city on the Rhine at Ballhaus Ost. »Recycling of Life« by Antje Schupp | Ayman Nahle | Yanik Soland will be followed by »Court Fantasies« and »screening invisibilities« by Zino Wey.

Using imagination as a tool, performers Salma Said und Miriam Coretta Schulte shake rigid, seemingly unchangeable legal systems of asylum. They are inviting the audience to a collective listening experience:

 
 
Here we are, in 2099, and still, every person on Earth enjoys the right to freedom of movement. The gigantic fiction that used to divide people into “deserving visa” and “not deserving visa” we finally left behind us after decades of struggle. Tonight, an assembly takes place, in order to understand the recent insecurities. We want to recall how the activists of the past have been creating the future investing incredible work. We will be expecting you with love for archives and passion for fight – Yours, Salma and Miriam

The performance is part of our guest performance series Berlin Basel Smash: from February 23 to March 9, we will be showing three pieces from the city on the Rhine at Ballhaus Ost. »Recycling of Life« by Antje Schupp | Ayman Nahle | Yanik Soland will be followed by »Court Fantasies« and »screening invisibilities« by Zino Wey.

»screening invisibilities« is an associative examination of invisibility. An encounter with the ambivalence of this political concept and a questioning of how we deal with it. Together with an ensemble of hearing and deaf artists, Basel director Zino Wey initiates a questioning of our perception. When does the body become a language medium? Which forms of language are we used to encountering? And who do we make invisible, even though we can see them? Signs, gestures, movement, dance and music are used to develop our own body languages and create a new (speaking) space that looks for similarities rather than differences.

A poetic-political manifesto for visibility.

A performance in sign language and spoken language.

For »screening invisibilities«, Zino Wey brings together a diverse ensemble from the fields of performance, dance, sign language art and music for a joint discussion and encounter.
Wey has been working as a director, set designer and author in various performative contexts at municipal and state theaters as well as in the independent scene since 2012. He has an ongoing collaboration with Ballhaus Ost, as do many of the artists involved.

The performance is part of our guest performance series Berlin Basel Smash: from February 23 to March 9, we will be showing three pieces from the city on the Rhine at Ballhaus Ost. »Recycling of Life« by Antje Schupp | Ayman Nahle | Yanik Soland will be followed by »Court Fantasies« and »screening invisibilities« by Zino Wey.

Throughout history, female gender identity has often been narrowly defined by the lack of the phallus. In »Falla«, choreographer Julia B. Laperrière and musician Pia Achternkamp address this problematic idea from a queer feminist perspective using the strap-on dildo as a transformative tool. Funny, playful, and rock’n roll!

Julia B. Laperrière is a French-Canadian choreographer based in Berlin since 2016. As an artist navigating between Berlin, Montpellier and Montreal, the heterogeneous mix of languages, places, practices, people and genres —both artistic and identity related— constitute an integral part of her practice. Lately, she has been interested in the representations of the female body on stage, new intimacies and dangerous dances. Julia and Pia collaborate since 2020.

On March 15, there will be an Artist talk after the performance.

N O T E :
Loud noises and flickering lights are part of the performance.
There is nudity. The performers tell personal sex stories during the performance.

I dream of a mountain with water on it. Like a cap of snow on a roof in winter, there was a deep blue layer of water on the mountain. A kayaker was traveling in it.

Fascinated by the idea of social dreaming, SEE! Kollektiv invites the audience into a world of light, dance and beats. The stage becomes a fragile but spectacular place where it seems possible to emancipate oneself from the ideologies of our reality. It pulsates. The space changes. It lights up!

The performance collective SEE! (SE Struck, Alexandra Knieps) from Cologne has been developing hybrid performance formats since 2005 and uses a self-sufficient formal language to stage open networks that always address communitization and participation on theater stages and in urban social contexts. They performed at Ballhaus Ost for the first time in 2015 with »Volumenjoker« and most recently showed »Bioswop«. »Das Leuchten / The Glow« is their first premiere in Berlin.

SENSITIVITY ADVICE:

Sine wave tones and deep bass sounds are used in the performance. At times, the audience is exposed to bright backlighting.

Ur-Oper #14 »ICH FRIDA Du DIEGO«

In the art world, the relationship between two artists is often a dance between rivalry and inspiration. There is a spark of competition that drives them to surpass themselves, although their symbiosis is fueled by passion for their work. In the studio, the colors of their canvases mingle in the air, creating a creative atmosphere. Their works differ from day and night: one draws reality in sharp contrasts and hard lines, the other radiates in the colors of dream and fantasy. Despite their differences, they find a common rhythm. Their eyes speak one language. But things are bubbling under the surface. Every success of the other is an incentive to question oneself. Every recognition is a silent call for self-improvement. They are companions and competitors at the same time, caught in an eternal cycle of admiration and jealousy.
Together with the artist Okka-Esther Hungerbühler , whose works deal with dreamlike materials in the microcosm, Helmi embarks on a search for the Uroper.

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) 

In a solo with a Polaroid camera, Rodrigo Zorzanelli stages performative self-portraits based on personal experiences of citizenship acquisition and coming out as non-binary person. The photos mask, shine, disturb the space and the body.

Rodrigo Zorzanelli performs, writes and produces in Berlin’s independent theater and performance scene. Rodrigo’s work deals with non-binarity, feminist autofiction, invisible structures, bureaucracy and belonging. »multiple memberships« is Rodrigo’s first work at Ballhaus Ost.

Tentacular Figurings invite you to an undisciplined, r/evolutionary performance.
Join us to encounter speculative embodiments of our common queer ancestors. Leave your »sapiens« at the checkroom and Meet Your Dancestors!

Tentacular Figurings Tentacular Figurings is an exploratory, multi-disciplinary performance collective. Core team are Mika Bangemann and Eddie N. von Seckendorff. Since 2021, they have been developing ambiguous bodies beyond the human in their performances. »Meet Your Dancestors!« is their first work at Ballhaus Ost.

»Queerokratia – Federal Conference for Self-Determination«. Queer and TIN* politics, activism and self-organization will come together here in Berlin. Beyond the boundaries of political forms of organization and action, we want to ask: What are progressive queer politics today? What roles do different actors play in this?

Program

30.5. / 17:00-18:30 / Kick Off at Ballhaus Ost
1.6.  /from 23:00/ Party at Aeve
2.6. / 12:00-15:00 / Conclusion with presentation of the results at Ballhaus Ost

2.6. / 17:00-21:00 / Exhibition of the event space created by Fadi Aljabour: a political-poetic spatial installation for the Queerocracy Conference in the Vierte Welt