Performance
Leila Hekmat: Roses Rising – The Movement
Leila Hekmat, Roses Rising, 2025, Courtesy of Leila Hekmat and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi
How does the bourgeois longing for revolt take shape, when the faith in progress and reason is unsettled? And how tightly entwined are self-interest and radical dissent? Berlin-based artist and director Leila Hekmat explores these questions in her newly commissioned performance Roses Rising – The Movement, premiering on 6 and 7 March in the Gropius Bau’s atrium. Moving between concert and ballet, the piece transforms the space into a landscape hovering between bunker, rehearsal room and dreamscape and invites the audience to witness a dinner party unravel into a happening.
With meticulously handcrafted costumes and stage designs, Roses Rising unfolds in Leila Hekmat’s distinctive style, traversing comedy, musical tableau vivant and performance. Developed through extensive research and collected materials on 1970s protest cultures, the work emerges as a performative collage that explores the conscious and unconscious strategies through which people respond to a world in crisis.
Roses Rising is presented in two parts in collaboration with HAU Hebbel am Ufer. After The Movement at Gropius Bau, the stage production The Dinner will premiere at HAU1 on 15 April 2026.
Roses Rising – The Movement is curated by Nora-Swantje Almes, Curator Live Programme and Outreach, with Alexandra Philippovskaya, Assistant Curator Live Programme and Outreach, and Edessa Malke, Curatorial Fellow Live Programme and Outreach.