What do Berlin, John Irving and gay men have in common? Right! The love for bears. No other author has so many great bizarre books with bears either as protagonist or as great sidekicks like the American novelist. As if it would be yesterday I remember how I got the novel Hotel New Hampshire as a present for my 17th birthday. Just a few days later I finished the entire 500 pages book and could not wait to read it again.
Based on the short story “The Pension Grillparzer” by John Irving the creative Team Lisa Buchholz, Rob Kraatz and Konstantin Bucholz created a dark twisted theater performance piece called Die Pension that premiered last week at Ballhaus Ost. Between Musik, monologues and dramatic chaos you will enjoy a world that tries to escape the corset of society. The final performance for now is today, so go and see it. Check out the trailer after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
photo: Berlin Scrapbook / CC
What kind of relationship can you have to this city when your own family had to flee from Berlin?
A really difficult question to answer from my perspective. Even though we all have dealt extensively with the Holocaust and its consequences, having a real encounter with descendents of parents or grandparents who had to leave Germany can become an emotional tour de force.
The author Andrea Stolowitz is such a descendant. Her great-grandfather, Dr. Max Cohnreich, had to escape from Berlin in 1936 and started a new life in New York. For his children and grandchildren, he wrote a diary about his life in Berlin.
In 2015 Andrea visits Berlin to explore the life of her great-grandfather through his diary. An exciting and true story that has now premiered as a theatrical play on the stage of the English Theater Berlin. We talked to all the people participating in the creation of the piece. Each one has given us a piece of their personal Berlin Diary…
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by Claudio | People, Stories, Theater
photos: Anna Agliardi
Last night I was honored to be part of an evening of celebration, surprises, glamor and a bit of nostalgia. My favorite off-theater in town, the Sophiensaele, celebrated their 20th anniversary. I can’t believe so many years have passed already since the theater located in a former ballroom near Hackerscher Markt was founded by contemporary dance choreographer Sasha Waltz and the theater makers Jochen Sandig, Jo Fabian and Dirk Cieslak.
The festivities were accompanied by the Berlin premiere of The Greatest Show on Earth by Anna Wagner and Eike Wittrock. This particular show is a celebration of dance and performance art in a circus-like setting. 14 artists show in different ways the challenges facing humans in the 21st century and combine the risks of body art with the spectacle of physical performance.
I was absolutely stunned and surprised by a freaky show between Zombie Apocalypse, Cat Content and Shit-Musical. Every performer had a unique style to communicate with the audience. Some were engaging and entertaining others were disturbing and obscene like the zombie artistics by Vincent Riebeek and Florentine Holzinger. What all had in common was authentic passion for their showpiece. The whole show was supported by the amazing music of the Neo-Dadaist 2-person “thing”-orchestra Les Trucs which certainly ranked as the evening’s favorite between the audience, right after the cat.
Photographer Anna Agliardi took some great impressions of the show, which you can discover with the dates right after the jump.
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by Claudio | Mitte
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
What the fuck is this thing called capitalism? And why it is actually messing up all our lives instead of making them better? As simple as these questions seem at first, as complex are their answers. To take a look at one aspect that is going completely wrong with capitalism let’s reflect one moment about the Berlin start-up bubble.
Our beloved Berlin is a fertile ground for start-ups of all kinds. Low rents and many smart international people as potential employees are great resources to start your company. With the right investors, you can literally create any kind of business in this town. But as genius some start-up concepts can be, as stupid and absolutely useless to humanity the others are.
With their new theater game Monypolo the collective Prinzip Gonzo is reflecting about all the absurd aspects of hyper-capitalism and über-entrepreneurialism. With 60 other players you create a fictional career and play for success inside an abandoned supermarket at Kudamm. Between luxury boutiques and high street brands you enter a desolate mall to find a giant playground for adults waiting for you to be explored. More about our experience, the dates and some photos of the exciting game after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
photo: Jule Müller
Every big master piece that goes on stage at one of the three opera houses in Berlin should not only be credited to the director, choreographer or main dancers and singers. Behind the scenes of these huge productions numerous people work day and night to create the temporary and therefore precious magic that only performative art on stage can bring to life. Before falling in love with contemporary dance, I was passionate about classical ballet. So being able to experience the process up close behind the creation of a ballet piece by a big company like Staatsballett is something really special on a personal level. Gladly, I can now share this experience with you readers in form of a little photographic journey inside the costume workshops of the Staatsballett and into the rehearsals of the production Jewels which premiered a couple of weeks ago.
Jewels is a three part choreography by one of the biggest Russian masters of choreography who brought neoclassical ballet to the States and made it famous all over the world. According to legend, it must have been a dark winter day in the late 1960s, on which George Balanchine was swept away by sparkling jewelry that he saw in a shop window on New York’s fancy 5th Avenue. And what did the successful choreographer do? Rather than simply buying the beautiful diamonds, rubies, and emeralds he took inspiration from their splendor and created a new ballet piece which he named “Jewels”.
The costumes I could examine up close definitely reflect this very romantic (and a slightly kitschy) story. If you want to see the jewels sparkle under the bright lights of the spotlights check out our raffle for 2×2 tickets and our photo after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
photos: Olga Khristolyubova
Big business is a big game that nobody in Berlin really wants to play. The big players of German economy are only visiting town for a chitchat with their creative agency filled with hot interns all hoping for a spectacular career or at least a spectacular Instagram stream. But true fact is, that the real money business is not happening in Berlin. Or maybe we just don’t see it very well.
Creating visibility and an understanding for the mechanics of the dirty business world is not always easy. Therefore I am looking very much forward to the theater game Monypolo in Summer 2016 from the makers of Game of Life. Until then we can prepare our self to play. In a short theater prequel series at Ballhaus Ost several topics around the strategies of business life will be presented during the year. Tonight is the premiere of the third episode. The topic evolves around consultancy companies. Find out the dates of the play here and check out the photos of this trash glam spectacle after the jump.
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by Claudio | Photos, Theater
Dance is a very important cultural element in the creative landscape of Berlin. Even though I have a stronger intellectual response to contemporary dance and more abstract body performances than to classical ballet, I do appreciate the precision, body control and beauty of ballet dancers in a well-done choreography. For myself going to see a piece of Staatsballett Berlin is somehow a guilty pleasure of visual entertainment, I recommend to everybody in need of some artistic and emotional satisfaction.
Fear, vulnerability, passion – the dark extremes of human emotions are the source of inspiration for a new program from Staatsballett Berlin. In Duato | Kylian | Naharin three international choreography stars created a dancing work of incredible power. While “Castrati” by Nacho Duato revolves around the fear of an aspiring singer before castration, Jiří Kylián’s “Petite Mort” deals with the aggressive as well as the vulnerable sides of sexuality. “Secus” is an abstract work by Ohad Naharin, based on power, extremes and raw meat.
Photographer Yan Revazov had the chance to visit the rehearsals of this intense program and took some beautiful pictures. Take a look over these powerful impressions, check out the making of video and find out how to win tickets for the upcoming shows, after the jump.
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by Claudio | Theater
photos: Skylar Kang
Experimental theater nowadays can hardly shock anybody. I have seen everything happening on stage: Blowjobs, Kiss-Orgys, dancers penetrated by giant dildos and even a whole audience who started to take of their clothes. Sometimes these pieces get scandalized in the press, but similarly to the art world the theater world mostly applauds when a tabu gets broken.
The theater piece Monster Truck: Welcome to Germany is premiering tonight in Sophiensaele and has already a scandal going on. The piece was supposed to premiere in Leipzig a couple of weeks ago but didn’t because the managing director of the theater cancelled the show. The reason: a dead pig gets dissected on stage and turned into sausages. After seeing the show, I really wonder, why something which is actually happening all around Germany every day (pigs turned into sausages) should not be shown on a theater stage. Nowadays, nearly everybody has seen so many disgusting things in the food documentaries, that hardly anybody gets shocked by that.
Apart from the pig the piece is a quite original perfomance. Its inspired by a Bavarian enclave called “Villa Baviera” in Chile. If you would go there you would think that it was a beautiful fake Germany with girls in dirndls and boys in leather shorts. The truth behind the folklore-kitsch is that it was the residence of a horrible sect and a torture camp for children for over 40 years. After it was closed in 2005 and the sect leader who molested several children got finally convicted the place was turned into a vacation resort. This absurd story is the starting point for an evening with shocking pictures and impressive stage design. Check out the photos and the dates after the jump.
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by Claudio | Photos, Theater
Berlin is the city of the unique (and by unique I mean things that happen just once) events, performances, exhibitions and parties. That is why every halfway culturally interested person has a constant feeling of regret because they just missed something. But fortunately to every rule there is an exception. The big interactive performance event Game of Life by Prinzip Gonzo is returning to Berlin with even more complex characters and situation. In this play you have the chance to reboot your life from the beginning. Which career will you choose, what kinds of friends will you make, what about children and marriage? All these questions are ready to be relived again (and with much more time pressure). If you want to support the project, feel free to do so here or order some of the few tickets left here. The dates and some photographic impressions from last year’s edition after the jump. Read on…
by Claudio | Theater