artwork: Haegue Yang, photo Marco Funke
We’re always keeping you up to date on the coolest contemporary art exhibitions in town – highlighting every art week and pointing you right to the hottest galleries whenever we suggest a route for a particular hood. The Berlin crowd is famous for channeling their creativity in the most unusual ways so no wonder you always enjoy these tips! That’s why we thought we might just go ahead and present you a guide of the 10 most important contemporary art places in the city.
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by Michalina | Art, Galleries, Kreuzberg, Mitte, Museums, Neukölln, Schöneberg, Tiergarten, Top Guides
photo: Paulio Sovari
Every form of artistic expression is capable of doing good in the world. Even ballet dance that was once created to entertain the kings and queens of this world with the movements that seemed almost superhuman at the time can become a tool of change. A change of society that needs to start through the arts from the stages of theaters, operas, and ballet houses. Because there it starts a conversation that is not motivated by politics but by an emotional perspective on our human life and society.
I’m quite excited that Nacho Duato, the current artistic director of Staatsballett Berlin, is creating another piece that is dedicated to a social topic. In his upcoming premiere called Erde he is creating a vision of our world under the current ecological circumstances of climate change. For this unique premiere he collaborated with locals from the Berlin electronic music scene like Pedro Alcalde, Sergio Caballero and Richie Hawtin just to name a few.
On the same night, there will be another premiere of this double bill evening. The British-Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter has now given one of his works to the repertoire of the Staatsballett Berlin called “The Art of Not Looking Back”. Shechter is internationally acclaimed and well known for his controversial pieces.
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by Claudio | Theater
photos: Carrie Schneider
Nudity is nothing a Berliner is particularly shocked about. In contrary, I think that Berlin is the city with the most public nakedness in the world if you consider all the nude beaches and public sex parties. It is also a different nakedness than in a tropical or Mediterranean city because the weather is not actually inviting to take off your close. The Berlin nudity is a public statement to the liberation of the human body from all the social, political and gender oppressions. At least that is what I like to read into it, even though I doubt that all of the half naked 19year old kids at the Pornceptual parties would agree.
But I am losing track here. Let’s discuss Berlin’s political intentions on nudity another time… I actually just wanted to recommend a damn sexy contemporary dance festival starting today: Tanz im August. Scrolling through the pics I saw some naked flesh popping up in the press folder and I was wondering if a conservative audience would claim that the dance world needs sex to get more attention from the younger audience. This could not be more wrong. Dance is not automatically sexy when the bodies on stage are naked.
But there is an element of contemporary dance that I find extremely sexy (which is why I also used this alluring headline). It is the intensity and the ability to control, perform and present yourself and your body that intrigues the spectator. A contemporary performer is always in a constant dialogue between his own body and the audience and is within this dialogue able to create tension and persuasion. From my point of view, most of the times the nakedness of a performer is actually not erotic but rather a narration of intimacy and disclosure.
We selected several dance pieces from the festival taking places in some of our favorite theaters including Sophiensaele, Hau and Volksbühne, that we think are promising and worth visiting. Our recommendations after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
photo: Vincent Riebeek
For the Berlin contemporary dance world January is one of the most important months of the year due to the festival Tanztage at the Sophiensaele. This year’s edition has a new artistic director, Anna Müller, and the focus is the interdisciplinary nature of many young artists whose playing field is not just restricted to dance. They set out to discover new worlds or genres and address choreographic issues in pop culture such as: striptease and breakdance, club culture, talk shows and pop music. All things we actually like and want to see on stage more often.
(Side note: Of course I just want to see male strippers on stage because of their effect on my social perception. Male stripping is seen as a social deviance and through its performances creates a sort of equality in relation to the predominantly normative female stripping, giving the women in the audience the feeling of empowerment. And of course I have to take in consideration the visual pleasure I receive as a side-effect from such an important cultural step into gender equality. Therefore I see it as my personal duty to go to any show were hot male stripping is promised on the flyer.)
The eleven day long performance marathon with nine premieres and five revivals invites the audience to discover new choreographic talents and to enjoy contemporary dance in this beautiful theater. Of course we should not forget to mention the fabulous party that will take place there tonight. If you have just a quick look into the program of the 24th edition of the festival you get the feeling as if almost any show has some queer topic. Actually not very surprising since the contemporary dance world consists to 80% of gay men and 20% of feminist women (of course just a superficial assumption based on my subjective experience and not on real statistics) Some recommendations after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
photo: Bernhard Musil
Contemporary dance is a lot of things: beautiful, inspiring, energetic, traumatic and sometimes boring. But it is almost never funny. Unless you are watching a piece of Nir de Volff collective Total Brutal. The performances of the Israeli choreographer who started his Berlin career by making crazy pieces in Dock 11 at Kastanienallee never lost their black and outrageous humor. So maybe it is not a cliché after all that Jews have a good sense of humor. Anyway, his new pieces premiering this week at Sophiensaele does not only have some sexy dancers to show off, but also a very intense topic. Two cities – Berlin and Tel Aviv – struggling with financial issues and political troubles have a hard time to work on their future. Its young inhabitants dance their pain away instead of worrying about the problems. Inside a vibrant nightclub 5 dancers meet and talk about their fears of the future. Reminiscent of the Golden 20s the nightclub transforms into a cabaret of anxiety. Photos and dates after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
LEAP
Last week I told you an anekdote from my composition class. This week my composition teacher – who read the article – was really angry and started the lesson shouting at me (he is mostly a quiet and chilled guy). His main issue was the “hard to digest” part about new music. He told me that I was thinking in obvious clichés and that there was nothing original in my article. Not even the recommendation. Because this Rebecca Saunders seems to be the commercial girl from the scene. It is somehow true that “hard to digest” is the typical comment from the naïve perspective and that every art form has pieces that are not appreciated by everyone. I have to give the new music credit for being differentiated and edgy. So here I am with another try. We will see if I’ll be able to digest this music more easily by drinking a vodka punch. Check out Wrong – the music for drunk audience, string trio and acoustical handicaps – taking place at LEAP tonight. Details after the break.
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by Claudio | Entertainment, Music
