Tanztage Berlin 2015 – How queer can you be?
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.