Berlin has become the home of many performance artists from around the world that find a space, opportunities, and connections here to create their own work. I often sit in the audience of these performances, and for me it feels like a privilege to be in contact with their creators. Listening and experiencing their stories from a foreign world is a unique way of traveling – more than anything else (of course with a little help of your imagination).
The dancer and choreographer Jair Luna takes you on journey to his homeland Colombia with his new solo piece Memory of Dislocation – Exactly the same in the opposite direction. In an abstract autobiographic narrative the young performer travels with his audience through light, space and time, from a Berlin dance floor to a forest of neon lights that seems like a beautiful yet dangerous cage, just to fall back in movements and stories from his hometown and childhood. You immediately feel like you are part of his storyline. You have to give up the passiveness, walk around the stage and just follow the path of a young man into his future.
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by Claudio | Art, Theater
photo: Javier Blanco Chiocchio
So many things happening in Berlin and yet you’re scrolling through your event app with nothing that quite strikes up for fancy? You can escape the same old scenarios of the usual entertainment like I did a few weeks ago. I left my house with no idea as to what would await me – I ended up blindfolded in a candlelit basement with a bunch of strangers and loved every minute of it. Crossmodalism is a relatively fresh movement redefining our ideas of concepts like classical music, theatre, cooking, or even science – with their sensory-stimulating events. Read on to find out more!
The group originated in London in 2013, bringing together a concert pianist who studied at one of the ‘best’ schools of music in the world, a cook with some of the world’s most ‘prestigious’ restaurants on their resume; an Experience Designer, a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, and a perfumer trained in chemistry. Their name stems from a term popularised by Professor Charles Spence at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford.
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by Michalina | Events
photo: Anna Agliardi
Being a woman is a constant performance. I know that from my mother, sister, friends and coworkers. Some men enjoy this performance from the distance, others think that this performance is an invitation. Some overstep the boundaries and take advantage of their power. No shock in that, unfortunately.
But what if women would take a position of power all over different pillars of our society? What if women would become the queens they deserve to be? How would our world change then? The new theater dance piece Highness talks about these and some other questions around the role of the woman in our society. The Australian performer Melanie Jame Wolf takes the stage as her kingdom and creates a world of her own. With a powerful solo performance she captures her struggles and intimate feelings all in one intense hour. Her beauty is intimidating and here power seducing. Still, you kind of wish that all these different roles of women, the queen, the whore, the hag – all created by men would stop existing. Check out some beautiful pictures by Anna Agliardi and the dates of the upcoming shows at Sophiensaele after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
How can I describe something like GIANT? After dropping by Studio 44 today, an endless list of adjectives came to mind; though they all sounded so equivocal the self-proclaimed “performative installation” began to lose meaning. It’s a piece spanning 33 hours between March 26-29th, featuring 5 main artists (including the always-radiant, outspoken and hilarious Tatiana Saphir aka The Fruit Salad) and many guests. The work explores spatiotemporal ideas, immersing the audience in such a formless way the line between performer and spectator quickly disappear. In many ways, the artists don’t seem to be performing at all but rather using theatrical situations to speculate discourse, which they process through engagement with each other, as well as material objects. Over the course of 33 hours, there are scheduled guest appearances, which turned out to be the only way I had any concept of time in there. I walked in expecting to take some photos and stay an hour or two to chat about the concept behind their work, but instead walked out 5 hours later, extremely content with what I had just experienced, and time was the last thing on my mind. You can find out more about GIANT and see the photos from yesterday’s run after the jump.
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by Skylar | Art, Theater
Fifteen minutes into the performance, I finally came to understand the relevance of its name, The Cloud. A smoke machine puffed out a billowing mass, which slowly engulfed the audience as the piece progressed. I watched, swayed by the condensed water vapor that was swirling and gliding through the atmosphere of the Sophiensaele theatre. A few audible sounds soon amalgamated with the clouds and brought the audience to places seldom travelled. Drone-like music preluded the cinematic soundscapes, which were followed by indecipherable dialogue. The cloud engulfs you until you feel alone in the theatre, but the rustling and chirping assure you of close company. Soon I began to realize that with every breath I took, I was holding in the cloud, causing a disturbance in the atmosphere. But that’s exactly what this is about—everything disturbs, influences and creates something else. Catch a glimpse of this immersive performance piece with our photos after the jump. Also we are raffling 2×2 tickets to our readers. Find out how to participate after the jump.
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by Skylar | Art, Theater
photos: Wolfgang Hilse
Constanza Macras is doing theater in the forrest, Prinzip Gonzo is playing a theatrical Game of Life in an abandoned industrial hall and KiezOper is bringing their piece into the Wilde Renate night club. And these are only a few of the examples where theater in Berlin bends the rules and brings their concepts outside of the actual theater houses into the urban wildlife of the city to create new, interdisciplinary experiences.
With the piece Berlin Bound the Thin Skin Theater and Sisyphos, der Flugelefant have created yet another off-stage theater experience. They collaborated with the night clubs Griesmühle and Brunnen70 to stage what they describe as a party performance. Previously performed at Kater Holzig in 2012 it has already earned some praise and therefore was reactivated for new shows in 2014 in new night clubs. The performance is a colorful and crazy recreation of a plane trip to a place called home and the guests are invited to come along. What does it truly feel like to be home? What’s required for one to feel at home? Is it possible to preserve one’s identity or must one leave it behind? In Berlin, many people share the experience of leaving one’s own cultural system behind in a search for something new, ultimately to establish oneself as a member of a foreign culture and society. The arrival lies in your own hands.
The double premiere of the performance will happen this weekend with additional shows the weekend after. More details and a trailer after the jump.
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by Frank | Theater
One of my favorite places in Wedding are the Uferstudios. They have become an amazing creative factory for dance and performance in the last couple of years and I had the chance to see a bunch of interesting experimental pieces there that I would have missed in more conventional theaters. As often with off-theater spaces the choreographers and directors working there are young and unknown so far and most of the productions just play a few times only. That is why even for us it is sometimes hard to decide which pieces might be worth the trip and which are not.
Fortunately, the Tanznacht happening over the next couple of days might be the right thing for you to discover this beautiful creative space. From the 28th to the 31st of August 2014 several shows of all kinds are going to take place in the different studios. From a variety of choreographers and dancers performing during the 4-day program we can already recommend the piece by Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot which we had the chance to see before. Aside from contemporary dance, this year’s edition has a special focus on video performances screened all over the place. Also the courtyard of the location will get a design intervention by Club Real. Discover the whole program here and also check out their magazine. More photos of the performances after the jump.
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by Claudio | Art, Theater, Wedding
photos: Olga Khristolyubova
After last year’s crazy golden naked Haute Coiffure runway show of Charlie Le Mindu at Badeschiff the guys from the Berlin Fashion Film Festival invited Russian performance artist Andrey Bartenev and his happy bubbles to be the big show act for this year’s BfFF Award Show that took place at the former silent movie theater Delphi along with a live music performance of chart-topping Dutch act Kovacs. The show was absolutely out of control, joyful and crazy and we loved it. Our talented contributing photographer Olga Khristolyubova caught some shots for us backstage and during the performance by Bartenev. Enjoy the madness after the jump on 3 pages!
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by Frank | Art, Fashion, Photos
photo: Dorkypark
On Fire is the current program of performances at Dorkyparks’s Studio44 curated by Constanza Macras and Tamara Saphir. They have invited performers from South Africa on the topic of gender and tradition. If you have a look in the gallery of the performances that have already been shown you will see it’s a very diverse and colorful program.
Today we would like to recommend you the two pieces that will be shown tonight and tomorrow starting at 19:30 and 21h. The first one is a dance duett titled Mandioca by Dorkypark’s amazing Ronnie Maciel and South African dancer Lucky Kele. Right after you will see the piece Wena Mamela with and from South African choreographer Mamela Nyamza. A few more details and photos after the jump.
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by Frank | Theater
Halloween has been an obsession of mine since I was a pre-teen thanks to all the special Halloween episodes of all the TV shows that I was watching back than. Unfortunately at the time it was simply not common to celebrate Halloween here in Germany. So no scary costume, haunted house or trick’o’treatin’ for me, much to my disappointment. It’s only been in the last couple of years here in Berlin with all these international cultures coming together that I could finally participate in this American tradition.
This year I’m making myself a dream come true: The House of Haunted Hearts – our very own Halloween party. Of course us being I HEART BERLIN it’s not simply a party – it’s much more. Find out after the jump!
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by Frank | Art, Party
