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Performing Arts Season

Key Visual Performing Arts Season 2024

A Panorama of International Dance, Theatre and Performance Productions

Thanks for 2025/26 and Look Out for 2026/27

We would like to thank all artists, everyone involved and you, our audience, for a great Performing Arts Season 2025/26 full of moving moments! We are already in the midst of preparations for the next Season, which will present a new panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions at Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau from October 2026 to January 2027. Initial information on the programme will be available at the end of February.

Preview 2026/2027

Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic

As Berliner Festspiele’s 2026 Artist in Focus, Marina Abramović unfolds Balkan Erotic Epic in two parts: the exhibition by the iconic artist will open at the Gropius Bau in April, and in October her new multi-hour stage production will be shown at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele as part of the Performing Arts Season. The work traces Abramović’s ongoing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death and the body as a site of political resistance.

To the performanceTo the exhibition
Women wearing black headscarves and knee-length skirts massage their bare breasts. As they do so, they gaze up at the sky.

In the Media Library

In interviews Eun-Me Ahn, Akram Khan and Ligia Lewis discuss their artistic practice and the creation of their recent works, which were presented during the Performing Arts Season 2025/26. Essays and a lecture also offer insights into the significance of dolls in Gisèle Vienne’s work, as well as into the rehearsal process for Thorsten Lensing’s Dancing Idiots.

To the Media Library
A person in a yellow jumper sits on a row of chairs and looks at another person lying on the floor.

Impressions

  • In powerful and exaggerated gestures, three performers take a step forward.

    Thikra: A Night of Remembering

    © Camilla Greenwell

  • On stage there is a two-storey rock formation. Musicians are scattered across it and two people in colourful costumes are dancing next to it.

    Último helecho

    © Nina Laisné

  • People wearing masks depicting portraits of historical figures. Behind them is a projection of a ship's deck.

    The Great Yes, The Great No, July 2024

    © Monika Rittershaus

  • Mannequins sit on chairs. A performer in dynamic movement knocks over a chair.

    Showroomdummies #4

    © Yuki Moriya

  • A person of Colour stands in a spotlight in the atrium, surrounded by an audience.

    Wayward Chant, Ligia Lewis

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Frank Sperling

  • Ursina Lardi wears a toga-like beach dress. Willi Keller wears a towel around his hips and carries a drum.

    Dancing Idiots

    © Armin Samilovic

  • Dancers spin around their own axis. They hold long scarves that wave around them.

    Post Orientalist Express, Eun-Me Ahn, 2025

    © Jean-Marie Chabot

  • Dancers in various positions at a barre

    MOMO, Batsheva Dance Company

    © Ascaf

  • Performers on stage with a backdrop in the background during the performance of "This is not a message (Made in Taiwan)"

    Dies ist keine Botschaft (Made in Taiwan), Stefan Kaegi

    © Claudia Ndebele I Dies ist keine Botschaft (Made in Taiwan)

  • Two actors with sad faces sit on the stage leaning against each other.

    Verrückt nach Trost, Thorsten Lensing

    © SF / Armin Smailovic

  • Performer stands with a basket in the audience rows

    Bark of Millions, Taylor Mac

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • Four dancers on a stage criss-crossed by lines and circles. One person is in a one-armed handstand position.

    Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Radouan Mriziga / Rosas, A7LA5

    © Anne Van Aerschot

  • Two dancers in wide dresses and synchronised movement in front of a black and white projection.

    Glacial Decoy (1979), Trisha Brown Dance Company

    © Maria Baranova

  • Actors in a dystopian stage landscape look into an oversized egg.

    Der Garten der Lüste, Philippe Quesne

    © Martin Argyroglo

  • Three dancers in synchronised movement, arms at right angles

    Four New Works, Lucinda Childs

    © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn

  • A projection of Cohen with delicately done make-up; in the front there are orante candelabrums

    Put your heart under your feet…and walk!, Steven Cohen

    © Pierre Planchenault

  • A person of Color with funky glasses and barbecue tongs, next to a vacuum cleaner

    MIKE, Dana Michel

    © Françoise Robert

  • One person in a handstand above another lying on the ground

    INK, Dimitris Papaioannou

    © Julian Mommert

  • In front of a bouldering wall, several performers are in actobatic movements

    Corps extrêmes, Rachid Ouramdane

    © Pascale Cholette

  • In a sweeping movement, one person grabs another around the stomach

    Club Amour, Café Müller, Tanztheater Wuppertal

    © Oliver Look

  • large disco balls and confetti above dancing performers dressed in striking costumes

    Aerocircus – A Play by Thomas Köck, RambaZamba

    © Phillip Zwanzig

About Performing Arts Season

Since 2023, the Berliner Festspiele’s Performing Arts Season has been presenting a range of outstanding international dance, theatre and performance productions at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and Gropius Bau during the autumn and winter months. Some of the works shown are co-produced by the Berliner Festspiele or specially produced in Berlin.

Read more

More Berliner Festspiele

Collage of three individuals perceived as female, whose faces are partially painted with colorful dots and collaged with floral motifs.

Gropius Bau |

Performance

Leila Hekmat: Roses Rising – The Movement  

6 & 7 March 2026

How does the bourgeois longing for revolt take shape, when the faith in progress and reason is unsettled? Berlin-based artist and director Leila Hekmat explores this question in her newly commissioned performance Roses Rising – The Movement. 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.