Performing Arts Season: Programme Preview and Start of Ticket Sales

During the autumn and winter months, Berliner Festspiele’s Performing Arts Season will present a panorama of international productions from the fields of dance, theatre and performance. In its second edition from October 2024 to January 2025, the programme series (artistic director: YusukeHashimoto) takes a close look at issues of memory and heritage in contemporary performing art. A special focus lies on New York’s dance and performance scene.
The complete programme has been published online; ticket sales start today.
Furthermore, there will be a press conference with Taylor Mac and others on 7 October.

At the launch of this year’s Performing Arts Season, Taylor Mac, Matt Ray and their artistic community return to Haus der Berliner Festspiele with their opulent concert show “Bark of Millions”. Moreover, the series pays homage to two avant-garde icons of New York’s Judson Dance Theater: Lucinda Childs will present her legendary 1979 choreography “Dance” as well as “Four New Works”, which celebrated their world premiere at Kampnagel Hamburg this August. The Trisha Brown Dance Company will perform two key works by their founder, who passed away in 2017, – “Glacial Decoy” (1979) and “Working Title” (1985) – as well as the commissioned work “The Fall” by choreographer Noé Soulier. Two other dance highlights will be presented in Germany for the first time: “MOMO” by Ohad Naharin with the Batsheva Dance Company and “Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione” by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas in co-operation with Radouan Mriziga.

Two theatre productions complete the programme: At the launch of a long-term co-operation between Berliner Festspiele and Thorsten Lensing, the first theatre play written by the director himself, “Verrückt nach Trost” will once more be shown in Berlin. Philippe Quesne and Vivarium Studio present his latest theatre creation, “The Garden of Delights”, inspired by the triptych of the same name by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch.

PROGRAMME PREVIEW

October 2024

After their celebrated performance of the pop odyssey “24-Decade History of Popular Music” in 2019, Taylor Mac, Matt Ray and their artistic community will return to launch the Performing Arts Series 2024/25 on 9, 10 and 11 October with the European premiere of their concert performance “Bark of Millions” at Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Dressed in opulent fantasy costumes created by Machine Dazzle, an ensemble of 20 artists sing, play and dance a total of 55 songs – one for every year since the first Pride Parade in New York in 1970. The inspiration for Taylor Mac’s lyrics and Matt Ray’s compositions lies in queer personages from world history, from ancient times to the present day. “Bark of Millions” was co-produced by Berliner Festspiele.  
To set the mood, the documentary film “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” by Oscar-winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, which recalls Mac’s 24-hour marathon experience, will be screened at Gropius Bau Kino on 6 October.

The German Premiere of “Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione”, a joint creation of Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Moroccan choreographer Radouan Mriziga, will be presented at Festspielhaus on 19 and 20 October – also a co-production with Berliner Festspiele. In an analysis of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”, the two choreographers are joined by four dancers to explore unsettling developments in the relationship between mankind and nature but also find opportunity for contemplation in familiar sounds.  

November 2024

At the launch of a long-term co-operation of Berliner Festspiele and Thorsten Lensing, the Berlin-based author and director returns to the city with his latest production “Verrückt nach Trost” from 13 to 16 November. He is joined by his brilliant cast of long-time artistic companions: Sebastian Blomberg, André Jung, Ursina Lardi and Devid Striesow. In the first play that Lensing has written himself, the audience follows two siblings through surreal, moving and humorous episodes from childhood to old age. It is about nothing less than the great longing for the feeling of truly being alive.

With the production “The Garden of Delights” – inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s famous eponymous triptych – French director and set designer Philippe Quesne and his company Vivarium Studio celebrate their 20th anniversary. The large-scale, retro-futuristic epic gives us an inkling of the future of the world somewhere between medieval animal worlds, eco-science-fiction and modern Western. The production was premiered at the 2023 Festival d’Avignon, co-produced by Berliner Festspiele, and will be staged at Haus der Berliner Festspiele on 26 and 27 November.

December 2024

From 3 to 5 December, the programme series presents “Dance”, a central work by Lucinda Childs in which postmodern dance merges with the minimalist, driving music of Philip Glass and projections by Sol LeWitt to create a meditative rapture. In 2009, the choreographer reconstructed the work, which had premiered as early as 1979, with her current ensemble. Since then, “Dance” has become an exciting, performative dialogue between the original ensemble around the choreographer herself – seen in Sol LeWitt’s projections – and the current dancers of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company on stage. With a deliberately reduced movement vocabulary of rapid runs, jumps and turns, Childs explores dance in its physical essence in “Dance”.
In her lecture “Lecture by Lucinda Childs” on 4 December, the choreographer describes her career and explains her unique choreographic approach as well as some pioneering collaborations.

On 7 and 8 December, Lucinda Childs and her company present her most recent pieces, “Four New Works”, for the first time in Berlin, in collaboration with artist Anri Sala, pianist Anton Bagatov and composers Philip Glass and Hildur Guðnadóttir. Apart from new short pieces for the dancers of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company, there is also a solo by the choreographer herself. “Four New Works” was co-produced by Berliner Festspiele and celebrated its world premiere at the International Summer Festival at Kampnagel Hamburg in August 2024. These are the first among the most recent works that Lucinda Childs has developed with her creative team for almost a decade.

January 2025

The last visit of the Batsheva Dance Company at Haus der Berliner Festspiele was 16 years ago – now they are back to present Ohad Naharin’s latest choreography from 16 to 18 January for the first time in Germany: “MOMO”, premiered in Tel Aviv in December 2022, addresses the constant conflict between an archaic connection to the earth and the striving of the modern individual for self-realisation and social connection. To the music of composers including Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass, a joint passion of grief and beauty unfolds on stage.

From 23 to 25 January, the second edition of the Performing Arts Season celebrates its conclusion, dedicated to three selected works by American choreographer and dancer Trisha Brown, who passed away in 2017. The featured choreographies were created over a period of more than 40 years and display both the range of her artistic heritage as well as its continuing relevance beyond her death. Thus, the programme includes her key works “Glacial Decoy” (1979) and “Working Title” (1985) as well as “In the Fall”, which was premiered in France in 2023 and is the first collaboration of the Trisha Brown Dance Company with French choreographer Noé Soulier. “In the Fall” is presented in Berlin as a German Premiere. It follows the traces of Brown’s movement vocabulary while combining it with Soulier’s own choreographic principles to create a powerful and moving contemporary piece. 

In the context of the Berlin performances, the Trisha Brown Dance Company offers two workshops for dance enthusiasts: On 20 January, there will be “Trisha Brown Technique and Repertory: Working Title” for beginners, led by Jennifer Payán, and on 21 January, Cecily Campbell will give a workshop for advanced learners entitled “Trisha Brown Technique and Repertory: Glacial Decoy”. Both workshops give an insight into Trisha Brown’s creative work and will take place at Tanzfabrik Berlin.

 

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Save the Date:

Press Conference Performing Arts Season with Taylor Mac & Matt Ray and other guests
on 7 October at 10:00
at Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Box Office Foyer

Press Contact and Accreditation “Bark of Millions”:
ARTEFAKT Kulturkonzepte
Damaris Schmitz and Elisabeth Friedrich
+49 30 440 10 721, mail@artefakt-berlin.de

The ARTEFAKT Kulturkonzepte team is now accepting accreditation requests for “Bark of Millions” at:
https://www.artefakt-berlin.de/aktuelle-projekte/taylor-mac-matt-ray-bark-of-millions/#pro-press-accreditation

Press Accreditaton Performing Arts Season:
We will now gladly accept your accreditation requests for the performances in October and November (except for “Bark of Millions”) on: pas.akkreditierung@berlinerfestspiele.de
 
Pressphotos are available for download in the website’s Press Area.