2025 marks a decade of pole dance for River Roux, so far including two spectacular falls, one spine surgery, too many students to count, three titles at pole dance competitions, countless nights spend dancing for crowds too high to care and one sudden realization that ‚wait, this is my job now?‘.
Roux is a performance artist, writer and dancer on pole and aerial hoop working across theatre, performance and nightlife. Her work centers the connections between labour, gender, care and sex. JUICE, her first solo, is currently on stage at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Roux was part of the Berlin Stripper’s Collective from 2021 to 2023, staging feminist interventions at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, WHOLE Festival, Tag der Clubkultur and others before moving on to create solo. She has since repeatedly collaborated with Lola Arias, performing in her piece Happy Nights at the Theater am Goetheplatz Bremen and the 2024 IBSEN Award Ceremony. Roux co-wrote We’ve Always Been Everywhere, an audio walk to recover the history of sex work in Berlin-Schöneberg for Schwules Museum in 2022. Before turning to performance, she completed a BA in Photography at the University of the Arts Brighton.
SAINT FLESH is a new format remixing, from a queer perspective, sportscast, media jour fixe, arts talk and live tutorial themed on the body as interface of theatre & sports, and on the body as an image forming on stage.
On a bi-monthly basis, Duygu Ağal and Ricarda Hillermann will host a show with guests at the fringes of theatre, performance and sport to investigate particular areas of sport with respect to their theatrical, aesthetic and performative nature.
Duygu Ağal, author and ex-club league member defeated by knee-injuries, is convinced that, as cis-man, s/he would not have to host this programme to back her club commitment, let alone work for money any more. Now he’s turned his back on ball games for good and took up boxing to keep his desire for writing alive.
Ricarda Hillermann would never want to admit that her job as an assistant dramaturge at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz is really a sideline for her to be able to afford a lifestyle as amateur cyclist. If she knew better, she would have left the world of sport behind long ago.
