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.

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.