»Softer Hards« build on functional training with artistic research inquiries into bodybuilding. For this purpose, varying bodyweight exercises from calisthenics and resistance training are combined with theorizing impulses and experimental creative reflexions.

The intention of these full body workouts is the strengthening of bodily power, control and image within their political context – and a cultivation of emancipatory bodily sensations in the process.

Sporting practice, critical engagement, and poetic sensitization intertwine to examine the dialectic links between the sociological, psychological, and physiological dimensions of functional training. The resulting boundary crossings serve as a pragmatic strategy for enacting social change, shaping new forms of knowing about one’s own body and spelling out queer perspectives on fitness cultures.

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.

As part of the performance development, the artists will also conduct a self-defense workshop with a professional self-defense trainer:
Do. 5.6. 17:00-19:00FLINTA+ Selbstverteidigung (Workshop & Recherche)
please register to participate via email sport@ballhausost.de

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. Armin Luschin is a web developer and designer. He is passionate about betting on the Philippine Basketball League.

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.

The Berlin Bruisers are Germany’s first gay rugby team – and the worst team in terms of play far and wide!
»Tackling Life« is a rousing portrait of a team that sweats and celebrates, laughs and cries, wins and loses together. A movie against stereotypes and about the happiness of having finally found a community after a long search in which you can be who you really want to be.

Watch the trailer here.

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.

What do pro wrestling, bodybuilding and artistic swimming have in common? Glittering spandex, overtrained bodies and the accusation that they are »not real« sports. Yet these disciplines are extreme physical feats. The lecture asks: What makes show sports so special? What performativities emerge between kitsch, control, sport and theater? And what body politics flex in the ring, on the stage or in the pool?

Marie Simons works as a director and dramaturge in the independent scene. Simons researches, works and writes from a queer-feminist perspective on gender and body productions in popular culture, especially in show sport.

The workshop will work with role plays and historical references to school sport and we will actively engage with it through sport. What political and pedagogical orientations in sports education have there been in Germany in the last 50 years? How have we experienced our own school sports lessons? How would we like physical education to be?

Please bring your gym bag (joke) and training clothes (serious). Note: In contrast to some sports education concepts, no one is forced to do anything and everyone decides for themselves what they want to do.

Tom Weller is a lecturer in sports education, trainer in queer fitness groups, author and filmmaker and studied sport, history and film directing in Cologne. In his projects, he works primarily on queer history and body politics.

tom-weller.de

Fascist sport ideals are omnipresent on TikTok in the form of white slim bodies and narratives between discipline and self-surveillance. In this live podcast, we analyze the implications of aesthetics between Lululemon leggings and pro-ana lifestyle as part of a currently observable Rise of Fascism.

In »Fashion The Gaze«, Freya Herrmann and Vera Klocke talk once a month about the political implications of contemporary pop cultural phenomena. From neo-fascist tiktok trends to body politics and staging in current films and series: just trying to make sense of the culture and where the world is headed.