Unfortunately audio description for “Tanzende Idioten” is only available in German. We are working on changing that in the future.

Berliner Festspiele

Audio description tickets for the event with audio description “Tanzende Idioten” (Dancing Idiots) on 17 January 2026 can be purchased for 20 euros by phone at +493025489100, daily from 11:00 to 17:00, and by email at <a href="mailto:inklusion@berlinerfestspiele.de" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">inklusion@berlinerfestspiele.de</a>. Unfortunately, this offer is only available in German. Find more information at <a href="${link:{uuid:{626043f1-7fd1-4b24-9097-dad7b176219c},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/performing-arts-season/programm/2025/spielplan/tanzende-idioten/audiodeskription-tanzende-idioten}}}">audio description “Tanzende Idioten”</a>.

Audio Description in German

Goldie baut ihr Haus um. Ihre Freude dabei ist ebenso ansteckend wie verst&ouml;rend, denn sie ist sterbenskrank. Der Kater Apollo genie&szlig;t ihre Schw&auml;che: Endlich kann er stundenlang auf ihr herumliegen. Bis pl&ouml;tzlich Goldies frisch verliebter Vater mit seiner Geliebten vor der T&uuml;r steht. In „Tanzende Idioten“ spielen Ursina Lardi, Karin Neuh&auml;user, Sebastian Blomberg, André Jung und der Schlagzeuger Willi Kellers &Uuml;berlebende auf dem Weg zur n&auml;chsten Katastrophe. Was sie ausmacht, ist eine aberwitzige Mischung aus Daseinsschmerz und Lebenslust.<a href="${link:{uuid:{26576ab6-cb34-45b1-9799-bb6a2bf4fc1e},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/performing-arts-season/programm/2025/spielplan/tanzende-idioten}}}">Zur Webseite des St&uuml;cks</a>

Zum St&uuml;ck

<a href="${link:{uuid:{ce082aba-681c-4dd6-a446-eb3741048438},repository:{dam},path:{/bfs-de/Audiodateien/Berliner-Festspiele/2025/bfs25_perfex_audiodeskription_goodbye_lindita.mp3}}}">Audiodeskriptive Einf&uuml;hrung herunterladen</a>

Audiodeskriptive Einf&uuml;hrung

Die Performing Arts Season findet vom 16ten Oktober 2025 bis 25ten Januar 2026 im Haus der Berliner Festspiele und im Gropius Bau statt. F&uuml;r die Veranstaltung mit Audiodeskription k&ouml;nnen Sie ab dem 2ten Juli 2025 um 14 Uhr Audiodeskriptionstickets f&uuml;r 20 Euro telefonisch unter +493025489100, t&auml;glich von 11:00 bis 17:00 Uhr, sowie per E-Mail unter <a href="mailto:inklusion@berlinerfestspiele.de">inklusion@berlinerfestspiele.de</a> erwerben. Wenn Sie als Person mit einer Schwerbehinderung auf eine Begleitperson angewiesen sind, erh&auml;lt diese freien Eintritt. Bitte f&uuml;hren Sie Ihren B-Ausweis als Nachweis mit sich.

Tickets und Preise

Bei Fragen zum Programm oder technischen Problemen wenden Sie sich gerne an den Support: Telefon: +493025489100, t&auml;glich von 11:00 bis 17:00 Uhr E-​Mail: <a href="mailto:inklusion@berlinerfestspiele.de" title="">inklusion@berlinerfestspiele.de</a>Viel Freude beim Theater-H&ouml;ren!

Support und Kontakt

Wegbeschreibungen vom U-Bahnhof Spichernstra&szlig;e (U9, U3) zum Haus der Berliner Festspiele (Haupteingang, Parkettfoyer, Seitenb&uuml;hne) finden Sie auf der Webseite unter <a href="/besuch/barrierefreiheit/barrierefreiheit-haus-der-berliner-festspiele#audio-wegbeschreibungen">Barrierefreiheit Haus der Berliner Festspiele</a>.Die Empf&auml;ngerger&auml;te f&uuml;r den Vorstellungsbesuch k&ouml;nnen Sie ab 18:30&nbsp;Uhr im ersten Abschnitt der Garderobe im linken unteren Foyer abholen.Wir begleiten Sie von dort in den Saal.

Ablauf vor Ort im Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Audiodeskription Tanzende Idioten

Audio Description “Tanzende Idioten”

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Every autumn and winter, the Berliner Festspiele present a Performing Arts Season that brings a panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions to the stage of the Festspielhaus and the Gropius Bau.

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Performing Arts Season 2025/26

Today’s Events

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Key Visual Performing Arts Season 2025

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The programme is published; advance ticket sale is on.

A Panorama of International Dance, Theatre and Performance Productions

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The second season, presented between October 2024 and January 2025, concentrated on memory and heritage in contemporary performing arts, with a focus on New York’s dance and performance scene.

Performing Arts Season 2024/25

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Performing Arts Season 2024: Überblick

Performing Arts Season: Overview

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Gallery 2024/25

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Since the 1950s Yoko Ono has been ahead of her time, leaving her mark on visual arts, music and activism. To honour her groundbreaking work, Gropius Bau presents a comprehensive solo exhibition.

YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

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Tanz im August, presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, is a festival of contemporary dance in Berlin. With three productions, it will once again be a guest at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year. The pre-sale of some programme highlights has already started.

Tanz im August

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Eight selected concert highlights of Musikfest Berlin 2025 have already been published and are on sale. These include guest performances by the world’s best symphony orchestras and choirs from the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy, which are rarely heard in Berlin.

Musikfest Berlin

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This year, 53&nbsp;ensembles from all over Germany applied for the Tanztreffen der Jugend. 8&nbsp;young ensembles between contemporary and urban dance were chosen by the jury for the final selection. They will show their work at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele in autumn.

Tanztreffen der Jugend

More Berliner Festspiele

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Performing Exiles is an international and interdisciplinary festival produced by the Berliner Festspiele, that seeks to make diasporic lives in the city of Berlin visible and explore the contemporary meaning of exile. A preview of the programme has already been published. &nbsp;

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Trisha Brown Dance Company &amp; Noé&nbsp;Soulier

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Upcoming Events

We would like to thank all artists, everyone involved and you, our audience, for a great Performing Arts Season 2024/25 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 2025 to January 2026. Initial information on the programme will be available at the end of February.

Thanks for 2024/25 and Look Out for 2025/26

From October 2023, the Berliner Festspiele is to launch an annual Performing Arts Season that will present a panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions on the stage of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau through the autumn and winter months. Some of the works on display will be co-produced by the Berliner Festspiele or produced in Berlin. The Curator and Programme Director of the Berliner Festspiele’s Performing Arts Season is the dramaturg Yusuke Hashimoto.

Trailer Performing Arts Season 2023/2024, Design: 3pc

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Teaser Performing Arts Season

Trailer Performing Arts Season 2023/2024

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Texts and videos on artists and events of the Performing Arts Season, for example the recording of the lecture by choreographer and dancer Lucinda Childs, can be found in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library.

In the Media Library

Cultural pluralism is not a new phenomenon; it has long existed within peoples, nations and communities. Even in prehistoric times, humans moved in search of food, water and shelter. Their migration patterns were influenced by climate, resource availability and interactions, later driven by imperialism and economic ambitions. The resulting cohabitation and collective behaviours, along with the languages, gestures and cultural heritage shared and exchanged, have continually shaped people’s identities as well as nations and communities, not seldom at a devastating cost. While this multidimensional diversity and plurality of identities has always been a part of human history, contemporary global homogenisation now poses significant challenges to traditions, local languages and cultural heritage. This, in turn, leads many regions and countries to witness the resurgence of rigid, stereotypical and essentialist concepts of identity. Against the backdrop of these developments, the Performing Arts Season 2025/26 will bring together works that interrogate binaries and singular, unrelated identities, reflecting the interconnectedness of the world and the self in its totality – what Édouard Glissant termed the “Whole-World” (Tout-monde).Paraphrasing these conceptions of identity through the lens of the performing arts as an ephemeral phenomenon rooted in negotiation and relationships, this third Performing Arts Season edition presents a selection of dance, theatre and performance works that discard the idea of a majority-minority-society which often ascribes non-European artists to a certain minority status. The pieces created by Eun-Me Ahn, Gisèle Vienne and Étienne Bideau-Rey, William Kentridge, Akram Khan Company, Nina Laisné, François Chaignaud and Nadia Larcher, Thorsten Lensing and Ligia Lewis delve into themes such as the precarity of identity, displacement, creolisation and transnationality, highlighting the power of performance to navigate and articulate our shared yet diverse experiences.

“Who am I?” is a question as old as humanity itself, and one that has been repeated – sometimes philosophically, sometimes corporeally – across the world. Despite our complex, constantly changing realities and pluralistic societies, the belief in a consistent self nevertheless still holds a certain credibility and triggers political and social debates. This intangible and often troubling notion of “identity” serves as the starting point for the Performing Arts Season 2025/26.

Trailer, Performing Arts Season 2025/26, Design: 3pc

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Performing Arts Season 2025: The Great Yes, The Great No

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Performing Arts Season 2025: Previously on PAS

Impressions From the Previous Years

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.

About Performing Arts Season

The works presented in the Performing Arts Season 2025/26 go beyond simple portrayals of identity, embracing its precarity and fluid, multifaceted and often contradictory nature. Through an exploration of connections and differences, they underscore not what divides us, but what unites us, both individually and collectively – strengthening once more the shared threads of our communal experience as well as the validity of the performing arts.

The Programme

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The Performing Arts Season presents a panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions on the stage of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau through the autumn and winter months.

Festivals & Programme Series

The Berliner Festspiele organise a range of festivals and art exhibitions, concerts, dance and theatre performances, readings, lectures, debates and much more throughout the year. These events are presented at a range of locations across Berlin but are concentrated primarily at their own two venues: the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

The works presented in the Performing Arts Season 2025/26 go beyond simple portrayals of identity, embracing its precarity and fluid, multifaceted and often contradictory nature. Through an exploration of connections and differences, they underscore not what divides us, but what unites us, both individually and collectively &ndash; strengthening once more the shared threads of our communal experience as well as the validity of the performing arts.

Programm 2025/26

2025/26

The Performing Arts Season 2025/26 takes place from 16 October 2025 to 25 January 2026. Advance ticket sale is on.

Tickets may occasionally become available even when events are marked as sold out. It is therefore worth checking in the webshop at regular intervals. Any remaining tickets will also be available at the evening box office.

Spielplan

Programme Schedule

Unfortunately audio description for &ldquo;Tanzende Idioten&rdquo; is only available in German. We are working on changing that in the future.

<a href="${link:{uuid:{acc994ba-8101-434b-96c0-28e015f89e51},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/L/thorsten-lensing}}}">Thorsten Lensing</a>&nbsp;&ndash; Director 
<a href="${link:{uuid:{c41a1330-0400-4c88-9091-c0252a051731},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/E/benjamin-eggers-domsky}}}">Benjamin Eggers-Domsky</a> &ndash; Co-director 
<a href="${link:{uuid:{d9ce35c8-2585-4671-bf7d-c99b8bc092b6},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/B/Gordian-Blumenthal}}}">Gordian Blumenthal</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{27554299-d0e6-4cb7-9b34-4ada7b50970a},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/C/Ramun-Capaul}}}">Ramun Capaul</a> &ndash; Stage 
<a href="${link:{uuid:{2981016a-21ef-42cb-a8f1-b7111581e5f5},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/G/anette-guther}}}">Anette Guther</a> &ndash; Costumes 
<a href="${link:{uuid:{b9f52b38-1adb-406c-af84-a8b138afd926},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/K/dan-kolber}}}">Dan Kolber</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{d5d2ee24-691f-4dc5-b919-9a2b0d570595},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/M/thierry-mousset}}}">Thierry Mousset</a> &ndash; Dramaturgs

Eva-Karen Tittmann, Philip Decker &ndash; Production Manager 
Michael Klatt &ndash; Technical Director 
Anne Inken Bickert &ndash; Assistant Director

<h4>With</h4>

<a href="${link:{uuid:{391608e6-5b76-457a-99b2-f31cc8a685ea},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/B/sebastian-blomberg}}}">Sebastian Blomberg</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{eaa94392-c399-4e88-88bd-508c99640230},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/J/andr-jung}}}">Andr&eacute; Jung</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{f42b9023-fce9-4467-9bff-a1d99eba2dc3},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/L/ursina-lardi}}}">Ursina Lardi</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{fb0ac0bf-0bc6-4f71-a3c4-e65dc34ea587},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/N/Karin-Neuh-user}}}">Karin Neuh&auml;user</a>&nbsp;&ndash; Actors 
<a href="${link:{uuid:{1b1c8619-f62e-4550-8f81-36dc42cf5cd0},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/K/Willi-Kellers}}}">Willi Kellers</a>&nbsp;&ndash; Music

In Thorsten Lensing&rsquo;s play &ldquo;Tanzende Idioten&rdquo;, Ursina Lardi, Karin Neuh&auml;user, Sebastian Blomberg, Andr&eacute; Jung and drummer Willi Kellers play characters careening their way from one disaster to the next. What defines them is an absurd blend of brutality and tenderness, anarchy and metaphysical curiosity, existential pain and zest for life.

Goldie is doing what she loves most: remodeling her house. Her joy in the process is as infectious as it is unsettling, because Goldie is terminally ill. She knows she&rsquo;s dying, but doesn&rsquo;t want to admit it and insists on planning for a future she no longer has. Her cat Apollo relishes her increasing weakness. Finally, he can sit on her lap for hours on end and snore to his heart&rsquo;s content. Goldie takes the opportunity to tell him everything you&rsquo;re not supposed to say to people. Terrible stuff! 
Suddenly the doorbell rings and Goldie&rsquo;s father, newly in love, arrives with his girlfriend. The two of them are on their way to the seaside in their camper van and have decided to pay Goldie a surprise visit. The deliriously happy father finds himself at his daughter&rsquo;s deathbed. He believes that he is at a new beginning, she knows she is at the end. 
Over the course of the performance, the audience joins Goldie in reliving everything that she has a hard time saying goodbye to: kayak trips, dozing cats, visits to the sauna, dancing bodies, the smell of freshly cut wood, skilled construction workers, a baby&rsquo;s early memories and dreams of landing on the moon.

Denis Johnson is one of the most important American authors of his time and is revered by fellow writers like Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth and David Foster Wallace for his &ldquo;goosebump-inducing&rdquo;, &ldquo;unflinchingly direct&rdquo; and &ldquo;brutally funny&rdquo; prose. Of his own work, Johnson once said: &ldquo;I&rsquo;d describe my characters the same way I&rsquo;d describe myself: We are dancing idiots.&rdquo;

Director Thorsten Lensing has been staging independent productions since the mid-1990s, often in co-production with theaters and festivals that include the Schauspielhaus Z&uuml;rich, Sophiens&aelig;le Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, K&uuml;nstler*innenhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, D&uuml;sseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Theater im Pumpenhaus M&uuml;nster, Grand Th&eacute;&acirc;tre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Schauspiel Stuttgart, M&uuml;nchner Kammerspiele, and deSingel Antwerp. He always works with the same core team of outstanding actors. Following his adaptations of Dostoevsky&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Brothers Karamazov&rdquo; (Friedrich Luft Prize 2014) and David Foster Wallace&rsquo;s &ldquo;Infinite Jest&rdquo; (invited to Theatertreffen 2019), the 2024 presentation of Thorsten Lensing&rsquo;s first self-written play &ldquo;Verr&uuml;ckt nach Trost&rdquo; premiered at Salzburger Festspiele in 2022 as part of the 2024/25 Performing Arts Season and launched a long-term co-operation with Berliner Festspiele. This partnership with the Berlin-based director and author, whose work has been successful across Europe, continues with the world premiere of &ldquo;Tanzende Idioten&rdquo;.

In German, on 16. and 17.1. with English surtitles, on 17.1. with German audio description

Tanzende Idioten

Dies ist keine Botschaft (Made in Taiwan)

Programme 2025/26

Programm

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furtherInformation

You can listen to some of our events this year digitally in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library after the live concerts.&nbsp;In addition, On Demand offers from past years are available.

Musikfest Berlin in the Media Library

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The international Jazzfest Research Lab&nbsp;welcomes academics and students to take a critical look at the festival’s archive, its programmes, creators, musicians and – last but not least – its myths. In two seminars during the summer semester of 2024, students from the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Hildesheim have explored the festival’s history from various perspectives. In this film, the participants give a first look at how they dealt with their research subject.

Introducing: Jazzfest Research Lab

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To mark its 60th anniversary, Jazzfest Berlin is celebrating the cultural diversity of the neighbouring district of Moabit in collaboration with around 35 official partners and initiatives and with over 350 participants of all ages.&nbsp;In June 2024, interviews were conducted with 20 partners who presented their perspectives, wishes and ideas for the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit. You can get a first impression with this film.

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Curated by&nbsp;Meron Mendel and Saba-Nur Cheema&nbsp;

From 13 to 16 June 2024, the interdisciplinary themed days “Reflexes &amp; Reflections” on the Israel-Palestine conflict and its consequences for society in Germany took place at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. You can now find video and audio recordings of the discourse events in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library!

Reflexes &amp; Reflections. 7 October, the war in Gaza and the debate in Germany

Key Visual Musikfest Berlin 2025

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Major Orchestras and Vocal Ensembles as Guests in Berlin

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The 10 Remarkable Productions 2024

On 26 January, the Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of 10 remarkable productions for the 2024 Theatertreffen at a press conference. Our congratulations go to the nominated production teams and all participants! The programme will be published on 5 April.

Theatertreffen 2024

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