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Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

Æffective Choreography

How does your body feel today?

In this time of velocity and violence, choreographer and performer André Uerba explores intimacy as a practice of being together, along with seven performers and a musician. This work plays with the boundaries between sharing and withdrawing, movement and stillness, vulnerability and exposure.

The performers structure their encounter through a slow pace, propelling their bodies to attune, sink and merge together, refining their present moment. The desire to make hidden things visible is unfolded by their intimate gestures. Collectively they turn their gaze to inner landscapes where slowness and touch become a main practice.

In English

Please note that this production contains nudity.

Innervoice-Dot-RU

This participatory documentary performance is about the boundaries of personality in terms of dictatorship and repressive state politics.

It is based on the statements of citizens who have remained in Russia, who are against the regime and the war and who continue their resistance from the inside. The audience plays an active role in the performance: using the instructions, they affect the dramaturgy of action to a certain extent. Together with the performer, they create the space for co-existing and togetherness in a collective reflection of how it is to live inside a dictatorship with aggressive internal and external policies.

Girevik

In Girevik, a man embarks on a physical exchange with iron weights.

Responding to the objects’ proposals requires him to push his body to the edge of its physical abilities. The artist travels through a territory defined by obstacles, constantly at the risk of reaching a dead end. Confronted with his vulnerability, he labors to keep the cast-iron bodies moving. Precisely, gently, sincerely, he rearranges the heavy piles again and again. His fragile play interlaces stillness with collapse and order with chaos. The result is a slowly unfolding composition, full of noise, sweat, and tangible tension built through the artist’s physical and emotional effort.

Girevik muscles in on the domain of the traditional “strongman “archetype, and wrestles it to submission. Deconstructed, strength is unburdened of stereotypes. This work explores what is strong, and what strong is, in our nature, and explores the subtleties, revealing emotional, intellectual, and psychological dimensions.

The piece challenges the historically hyper-masculine aura around the kettlebell and seeks an alternative poetics of labor.

Without language

Retina Maneuver

“She′s living in a world and it’s on fire
Filled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away”

Retina Maneuver is a solo lecture-performance that theater maker Ping-Hsiang Wang is currently developing. The performance originates from his unexplainable obsession with Alicia Keys’s pop song “Girl On Fire.” Frustration over not remembering where he was when the song was released in 2012 drives him to delve into his digital archives. Ultimately, Wang stumbles upon a photo accidentally uploaded to his Facebook page and finds himself in a military setting, passionately engaged in bayonet drills and shouting the command “kill.”

When “Girl on Fire” is no longer just a chart-topper but a marching tune for soldiers going into battle, he wonders, will these fragile memories be annihilated by the fire of war?

 

In English

TRICKS FOR GOLD (T4$)

Tricks For Gold is a fable set in late capitalism in which the protagonist, a magician, discovers that she can become the object of her desires – money – and tries to transform herself into it.

The performance studies the concept of trick and its ability to manipulate our experience of space and time through layers of virtuosity, exposure, contortion, concealment, self-assurance and vulnerability. The wish is to unravel the empathic potential of what is typically seen as an act of “service” and highlight the melancholia of tricks as not simply a mode of deceiving the audience – but also of the survival of the performer.

With very little spoken language (English)

Cynthia

Cynthia was a model, an influencer, a socialite, a celebrity and a household name in the USA in 1933.

But unlike other celebrities of her day, she got dismantled into pieces at the end of her day and stowed away in a body bag. Cynthia was a mannequin. Her creator, Lester Gaba, a window display designer in New York City, became her manager, puppeteer, and chaperone, taking her to dinner clubs, theater premieres and fashion shows, and performing for her and answering for her to her adoring fans.

Let this duet between Berlin drag king Alexander Cameltoe as Lester Gaba and a puppet version of himself as Cynthia, take you down the slippery slope from entertaining spectacle into the uncanny valley.

The play will be then performed at House of Yes in New York City in April.

In English

Pleasure Incorporated

What if sex workers could get drunk at the office Christmas party?

Had colleagues they could gossip with? Went to performance reviews with their managers? Pleasure Incorporated asks what it would be like if the oldest profession in the world was just a regular office job.

Drawn from Jemima’s experience of escorting in Berlin, this lyrical one-woman play fuses live performance with video art to explore Jemima’s personal motivations for selling sex; what it means for her to do the work, and how that spools out into friendships, relationships and society.

Welcome to Pleasure Incorporated. We’re happy to have you here with us on another fine work day.

In English

Bypass Portal

Bypass Portal explores the complex interplay of human behavior, the sensation of being observed, censorship and disruptions across various settings.

While examining the nuances of existence within space and crafting strategies for survival, the performance scrutinizes the ongoing influence and potential threats posed by powerful political forces on our lives, regardless of our location. Simultaneously, it invites the possibility of envisioning alternative ways of being—whether alone, together, or somewhere in between.

In English, Farsi and Spanish

Play Bow

Play Bow utilizes a blend of street and contemporary dance, an original electronics and strings composition, voice and costumes informed by Jung’s theory of the animal self to build a moving metaphor of canine play behavior.

We draw parallels between human and canine social roles and explore how they are revealed in human relationships – especially during courting rituals. At times, the piece is set in an electronic music club, where we celebrate, search for a lover and express social dominance / submission.

Ken Christianson (composer) and Sami Giron (choreographer) have been collaborating since 2005, when they met at California Institute
of the Arts while earning their Master’s degrees.

With very little spoken language (English)

No Home

This is a mockumentary performance and a film. A diary and a fable.

Yael is an artist who has immigrated to Berlin. She’s broke, tired of babysitting, and afraid her big dreams won’t be fulfilled. She gets an opportunity for a week’s residency, but the night before it starts a sinister character appears in her nightmare, planting a seed of self-doubt that gets bigger and bigger, making her residency a living hell while she is losing grip on reality.

No Home encapsulates the perpetual sense of liminality experienced by an immigrant in a foreign land. With unwavering hope, she strives to create her haven within the enigmatic backdrop of Berlin. Her daily existence is a relentless battle against the challenges of communication, financial constraints, bureaucracy, and waning motivation.

In this piece, elements of humor, horror and homesickness have been blended to depict a new reality of an immigrant, grappling with the pursuit of her dreams.

In English, German and Hebrew