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Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Blog Archive

Islands

“Paradise is an island. So is hell.”

 (Judith Schalansky, The Atlas of Remote Islands)

Sail away, sail away, sail away…is there anyone who hasn’t been dreaming of that for the last year and a half? Landing on a tropical island far from everyday cares, the news and possibly the pandemic? Inspired by several islands far away and close by, known and unknown, real and metaphorical, a crew of international artists invite the audience to join them on a journey to islands all over the world, from the middle of the deep blue sea to the four walls of our own homes.

Islands have always and continued to serve as the focus of deeply contradictory imaginations fueling both utopian fantasies as well as colonial and imperial greed. The multimedia performance Islands invites audiences to walk the fine line between them.

In Islands, a diverse ensemble of artists come together to share their biographies, marked by migration and exploration and thus full of island stories, with each other as well as the audience.

After the successful coproduction of Stuck in Orbit (2019), Islands is the second cooperation of Post Theater with English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center. Post Theater is a media-theater company that fuses research with the biographic background of their changing casts. Post Theater has worked in more than 20 countries around the world, also including a number of island nations.

Following the world premiere of Islands in July of 2021, we are very pleased to be able to offer an additional six performances!

 

Coffee With Sugar?

Coffee with Sugar? is a production between material performance, biographical and documentary theater.

The two materials coffee and sugar determine the stage in their most different states. Beginning from them, German immigration stories in Central America and their colonial continuities are negotiated. The performer Laia RiCa grew up in El Salvador and Germany. She brings this biographical experience to the piece: the struggle between two worlds, the constant suspicion of betraying her “roots” and the questioning of feelings of inferiority and superiority. From coffee beans and cotton candy, biographical material and historical sources, video fragments and live music, a visually powerful and dense production emerges.

Hidden Path

In the days of old, the Sámi people would say that we had to follow hidden paths to avoid those who want to harm us.

There is a parallel to how the Sámi identity went on a hidden path during the hard Norwegian assimilation process. Now, generations of Sámi live with shame and deny their heritage, the painful story of many indigenous people in this world.

In the interdisciplinary production Hidden Path, the cliché of indigenous heritage is questioned along with the problem of not being “Sámi enough”. How can this be fixed? How do we “unshame”? Using a combination of Sámi joik music, poetry, contemporary dance, contemporary circus, music and projections, this production tells a story about assimilation, shame, identity and belonging.

 

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Transatlantica

Through an autobiographical reappraisal of choreographer Caroline Alves’ family history, the solo performance Transatlantica delves into the voids between Brazil and Europe, between past and present.

It is one among many family histories that are marked by settler colonialism in Brazil: histories based on the erasure of indigenous ancestors, carrying colonial continuities into the present. Following the traces of Senhorinha, the indigenous great-great-grandmother of whom only the colonial name remains, Caroline Alves explores the violent nexus of patriarchy and colonialism.

Transatlantica interweaves dance and storytelling, atmospherically oscillating between the elements of the stage set: the crystalline cold of a block of ice and the spreading, reflecting water that connects the continents. With tenderness and rage, Caroline Alves confronts her ancestral history and present, searching in the voids of the “official narrative” for the place from which to speak with her own words and movements that may break with the vast silence.

History Has Failed Us, But…

If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.

These words, attributed to the anarchist author Emma Goldman, serve as a starting point for the performance and accompany the choreographic investigation of protest and resistance. In what ways does a dancing body become an empowered body and what contradictions may arise from this empowerment? How can individual and collective bodies become resistant through movement? Which narratives and images of resistance linger in our memories and how can they be spoken about and shared?

Inspired by past and present revolts against injustices such as the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, the viral feminist performances of Las Tesis and the anger over the Sewol tragedy in South Korea, History has failed us, but… recounts protest movements from the perspective of queers and people of color – people whose bodies are still read as “Other” and “foreign.” The choreography combines visions of future demonstrations with existing traditional dances, such as the Korean ganggangsullae, which has been danced for centuries by women’s groups during the full moon for catharsis, into an exchange of playful lightness and political urgency.

Throughout the evening, the dancers draw strength from physically activating specific moments, citing powerful poses and creating togetherness in solidarity together with the audience. The dancing bodies thus become a form of non-violent opposition against discrimination and racism and enrich the imagery and ideas of political movements.

Present Body 2

In the moment of improvisation, a special, almost magical presence of the body emerges. Anything seems possible, even identity breaks free of its fixed structures and bonds and allows itself to be reinvented every moment.

Using music and dance, all of the artists weave their own experiences and memories into a common whole that remains in constant motion. Thoughts and ideas flash up, are taken up by the group and develop into something else. In this way, new connections and possibilities are always created, the power of change is revealed.

Present Body 2 is a live improvisation with dance and music dedicated to the decolonization of bodies. It builds up the performance of Present Body, which was recorded in November 2020 as part of the MIMIMI Space project and presented digitally at HAU4. The new version now links the Black and white perspectives: dancers from Grupo Oito and MIMIMI Space enter into dialogue with each other. They bring in their experiences and the physical repertoire of the last productions, in which they worked on a new form of physicality and being from different perspectives, thus looking for what they have in common and what connects them. Understand the past, dance the present and dream the future in your own way!

ERUPTIVA EXTRAVAGANZA – A Volcanic Disruption

This vaudevillian solo performance evokes a collective eruption that illuminates the Zeitgeist of the catastrophic anew from a neo-surrealist and volcanological perspective echoing the Dance on the Volcano of the 1920s.

The volcano is an archaic monster and mystery. It catalyzes a collective sentiment of pent-up anger, encrusted hardenings, seething chasms and dissolves them all in a flaming spectacle. It unites decay and resurrection, filth and brilliance, unpredictable depths and catapulting heights – a striking and sparkling paradox.

With the solo performance ERUPTIVA EXTRAVAGANZA – A Volcanic Disruption, the performer Nolundi Tschudi impersonates the volcano as a drag-persona of the catastrophic. She dances on the edge of the abyss – dissecting the seductive power and bizarre poetry of the moment when everything threatens to vanish in destruction. In her lava glowing illuminations a neo-surrealistic scenario emerges, that dares to tread the fine line between vaudevillian lightness and performative, brute immediacy – unleashing an ecstasy that underlies the Zeitgeist of the 1920s and today.

 

Fauna Futura

Fauna Futura takes us into a space that is engulfed by nature. It is a ritual of transformation, a journey of five into their own bodies as into the body of the land.

A landscape in constant motion asks them to forget, to submit, to become. They travel together like roots and branches, expanding, climbing in different directions, to pass by osmosis into a new being, the animal of the future.

Yotam Peled & The Free Radicals deconstruct mythology and explore the evolution of humanity into a new species. They create an archive of extinct organisms and lost techniques that contrast with our role as destroyers of the planet. The performance integrates forms of the new circus into dance, hyper(sur)realistic images, objects and costumes to create a unique universe.

All The Heroes Are Cancelled

Action Heroes, Badasses, Rockstars, Bad Cops, Punks, Freaks and Tough Guys.

What happens when all your adolescent heroes are cancelled? All the Heroes Are Cancelled is a show about gender performance, authenticity and the way we navigate building our public and private personas.