Tanz im August is always a high point in the city’s cultural calendar. The dance festival showcases contemporary performances from innovative companies and choreographers from around the world. Our stage editor, Sanders Isaac Bernstein, has picked seven performances you shouldn’t miss.
C A R C A Ç A
One of the headliners this year comes from the mind of Marco de Silva Ferreira. The show explores how traditions change in the context of colonialism, and asks what modern folklore might look like today. The ten-person ensemble is accompanied by live percussion and electronic music.
- HAU1, Stresemannstr. 29, Mitte, August 9-11, details.
MAL – Embriaguez Divina
The stark contrasts of light and shade, noise and silence, characterise Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s dance spectacle. Worry and fear are juxtaposed against a backdrop of marches, physics experiments, sporting competitions and surveillance rituals.
- Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstr. 227, Mitte, August 25-26, details.
STRONG-BORN
Our third headline choice is Kat Válastur’s STRONG-BORN, which takes its inspiration from an ancient sacrificial ritual of Northern Greece. It channels the idea into a dance which transforms the demand for sacrifice into a powerful resistance against it.
- HAU1, Stresemannstr. 29, Mitte, August 16-19, details.
Interconnecting Dance & Ecology
There will be three opportunities to catch a free outdoor show at the festival this year – 22 Berlin choreographers have been invited to present works on the theme of dance and ecology, to answer the question of how artists can respond to the urgency of the climate crisis.
- Park am Gleisdreieck, August 12, 14:00-16:00
- Stadtpark Lichtenberg, August 19, 14:00-16:00
- Volkspark Rehberge, August 26, 14:00-16:00
- Details.
Sottobosco
Chiara Bersani’s work Sottobosco, explores nature’s relationship with bodies with motor disabilities. Travel into an imaginary forest, the mysterious environment of which gradually evolves into a language of sound and gesture.
- HAU2, Hallesches Ufer 34, Mitte, August 18-20, details.
Hmadcha
The Berlin premier of Taoufiq Izeddiou’s performance Hmadcha, inspired by the tradition of Sufi mysticism, will be an extremely hot ticket. The performance combines tradition with the present, with trance and breathing techniques becoming a vehicle for collectively re-emerging from a crisis.
- Radialsystem, Holzmarktstr. 33, Friedrichshain, August 22-23, details.
Toi, moi, Tituba
Dorothée Munyaneza’s powerful performance tells the story of a Guyanese woman persecuted during the Salem witch trials. She sings and dances on behalf of all those whose existence was denied by the colonial system, accompanied by oud player and producer Khyam Allami.
- Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstr. 3, Mitte, August 10-12, details.
