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.
Content Note
On stage, a white couple presents itself as “normal” and distinguishes itself from the socially devalued. In doing so, they use, among other things, classist and racist argumentation patterns.
One scene explicitly deals with fatphobia.
There are representations of sex.
Suicidal thoughts and eating people are mentioned but not depicted.
Feel free to contact us with questions about these scenes via info @ ballhausost . de
Bulimia literally means “bull hunger”, so Cy 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 Cy 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.
Content Note: Addressing eating disorders* and sexualized violence
In the piece, Cy Linke uses the terms “eating disorders” and “sick” to take an intermediate step, as an ex-sufferer of bulimia and other eating disorders, in the self-appropriation of these foreign terms, towards softening the binary of “healthy” and “sick” in the long term.
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.
Content Note
The play addresses anti-Asian racism. Restraint techniques are used on stage.
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.
