Even if some of the theatres are on break, Berlin’s spectacles don’t pause. When you’re sick of the lake, modern dance, circus performances, and musical theatre will be here for you!
Que puede un cuerpo?
The Mexican dance group Cuatro x Cuatro opens Dock 11’s Plataforma festival, which takes the body as the starting point in its investigation of the effects of colonialism.
- Dock 11, Kastanienallee 79, Prenzlauer Berg, August 1-2, no language, details.
Berlin Circus Festival
The Berlin Circus Festival is celebrating 10 years of performances—acrobatics, clowning, cabaret, stuntwork. Find out just why the biggest circus festival in Germany keeps returning to Berlin—and the crowds come out for its shows!
- Tempelhofer Feld (directly at the entrance on Tempelhofer Damm), Tempelhofer Damm 101, Tempelhof, August 7-18, no language, details.
umuko
Dorothée Munyaneza’s umuko is named after a tree with red blossoms, known to be both a healer and storykeeper. This headliner of Tanz im August is staged with a group of young Rwandan artists emerging after the genocide, offering glimpse of a future still budding despite the threat of annihilation.
- HAU 1, Stresemannst. 29, Kreuzberg, August 15-17, no language, details.
AUSLAND
This first-time cooperation between Tanz im August and Berlin Atonal has Jefta van Dinther presenting his immersive AUSLAND in the enormous industrial space of Kraftwerk, which will serve as the setting for his labyrinthine contemplation of alternate realities. Audiences can enter and leave at any time during the three-and-a-half hour work.
- Kraftwerk, Köpenicker Str. 70, Friedrichshain, August 16-19, in English, details.
The Disappearing Act
The London-born Yinka Esi Graves recovers the effaced influence of Black performers on flamenco in a deeply researched performance that includes freewheeling guitarist Raúl Cantizano and drummer-poet Remi Graves.
- HAU 2, Hallesches Ufer 34, Kreuzberg, August 24-25, in English and French with German and English surtitles, details.
DREAM
Italian dancemaker Alessandro Sciarroni presents the German premiere of a durational work that the audience can slip in and out of. In this offering from Tanz im August, audiences are invited to fall into the “soft” world of living sculptures that Sciarroni creates according to the classical music that fills the chapel at St. Elisabeth Kirche.
- Villa Elisabeth, St. Elisabeth Kirche, Invalidenstr. 3, Mitte, August 24-25, no language, details.
Der Untertan
Christian Weise’s excellent musical adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s 1914 novel about Diederich Hessling—a would-be authoritarian without character but that of Wilhelmine society—is, with Via Jekili as the titular “Loyal Subject” an enjoyable exploration of a concerning subject.
- Maxim Gorki Theatre, Am Festungsgraben 2, Mitte, August 27, in German with English surtitles, details.
Spiegelneuronen
Taking its name from the hypothetical neurons that enable social mirroring, Sasha Waltz & Guests team up with Stefan Kaegi of Rimini Protokoll in an experimental dance piece that seeks to engage its audience in a kind of democratic, distributed neural system.
- Radialsystem, Holzmarktstr. 33, Friedrichshain, August 29-31, no language, details.
Mont Ventoux
KOR’SIA, an exciting young group of dancers out of Madrid, who have made performances inspired by literature their calling card—they recently celebrated the centennial of Kafka’s death with Kafka at the Hessische Staastsballett—bring an interpretation of Petrarch’s Ascent of Mont Ventoux to the Volksbühne as part of Tanz im August.
- Volksbühne, Linienstr. 227, Mitte, August 30-31, no language details.
