Marie Vogler
THROUGH MAR 7
Super Superficial
DANCE For those who missed its premiere at last year’s Tanztage, Kysy Fischer and the collective ABA NAIA bring Super Superficial to HAU as an independent production in Berlin. The trio of performers poke at superficial beauty standards and mock preconceived notions of female nudity using skewed, grotesque and comedic choreography. Featuring an improvised score by artist Kriton Beyer, the performance is a riot of sound that traverses tragedy and triumph.
Luca Quaia
THROUGH MAR 31
BELLO!
DANCE The Italian circus collective Fabbrica C hits the stage, fresh from sell-out seasons at Berlin Circus Festival with a new, expanded version of BELLO!. Expect a poetic, raucous show exploring beauty, from both inside and out.
Anna Lisa Grebe
THROUGH MAR 10
F Festival (*uck the Patriarchy)
THEATRE Get yourself in the mood for International Women’s Day by saying, “F the Patriarchy” at this celebration of feminist performance. Now in its fourth edition, the F Festival lets viewers enjoy theatre that tackles topics like misogyny, menopause and fairytales with equal doses of rage and humour.
Leila Hekmat & Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi
MAR 6-7
Roses Rising
DANCE In her work, visual artist, performer, and director Leila Hekmat explores the normative aspects of social structures. Her mode of expression is often grotesque and this is carried through in her two-part cycle, which begins with The Movement at the Gropius Bau and, in a performative collage, examines the tipping point between uprising and the manipulation of revolution. The second piece will be a stage production of The Dinner, premiering mid-April at HAU.
Mar 6-7, Gropius Bau; April 15-18, HAU, details
MAR 8-APR 2
L’Italiana in Algeri
OPERA Large-scale productions are always a spectacle, and this premiere, under the direction of Rolando Villazón with Alessandro De Marchi conducting, promises to be one for the history books. First staged at Venice’s Teatro San Benedetto on May 22, 1813, Rossini’s two-part operatic masterpiece, written when the composer was just 21, returns in a fantastic, fully realised, three-hour staging.
Mar 8-Apr 2, Deutsche Oper, Italian with German and English surtitles, details
MAR 12-14
Cordones Industriales
THEATRE The Chilean collective Tarea Urgente works at the intersection between theater, history and political practice. Their first productions in Berlin began at the Volksbühne and are now running at the Ringtheater. In Cordones Industriales, five precariously employed cleaners want to unionize and are threatened with dismissal. They explore the history of labor struggles and, in their research, come across the cordones industriales movement, which began in the early 1970s, when thousands of workers in Chile occupied factories and experimented with forms of collective resistance.
Ringtheater, Spanish with German and English surtitles, details
Photo by Makar Artemev of Dee Mulrooney
MAR 13
Growler’s Grotto
THEATRE Growler – a fictitious 78-year-old vulva from inner-city Dublin – is an activist, an abuse survivor and a feminist. It was conceived by Dee Mulrooney, the multi-disciplinary Irish artist whose work transverses mediums, reclaiming the divine feminine and reframing the savage underbelly of Ireland’s religious doctrine. Part theatre performance, part portal, with a shamanic vulva at its centre, Growler’s Grotto will weave together songs, spoken word and comedy.
English Theater Berlin, details
MAR 13-14
SHADE 22
DANCE This double bill by DART Dance Company invites audiences to consider the limits of intimacy and the vast arc of human existence. In Kompt, choreographer Kinga Varga focuses on the body as a container, questioning what remains when we are no longer living, breathing beings. While the premise is undeniably existential, the work gently reframes death not as an abstract endpoint, but as something that could be integrated into everyday life.
Zé de Paiva
MAR 20-23
STRICKEN
DANCE What emerges when intimacy, generational memory and racial difference collide within a single family history? Visual artist and choreographer Magda Korsinsky addresses these questions through a deeply researched performance that centres on a first encounter between a young Black girl and her white grandmother. Rooted in extensive interviews with six Black women, the work incorporates documentary video material to foreground lived experiences and to situate the personal within the broader context of Black German history.
Ballhaus Naunynstraße, German with English surtitles, details
MAR 20
Die Tüten aus der Verwaltung
MUSICAL THEATRE German bureaucracy: we all know it, and most of us try to avoid it as much as possible, but musical theatre groups glanz&krawall and Theater Thikwa are going all in and bringing bureaucracy to the stage. Through minimalist set design and stand-out costumes, Berlin’s administration are initially satirised. After numerous plot twists, the tone changes and the necessity of a functioning system becomes apparent, adding complexity and nuance to the question of authority and bureaucracy.
Eva Meyer-Keller
MAR 21
Turn the P/Age
THEATRE Eva Meyer-Keller’s latest work, Turn The P/Age speaks to the experience of womanhood and femininity through four cast members, all cis and trans women, and draws on their lived biographies, engaging directly with the subjects of growing older, hormonal changes and menopause. It also challenges medical biases and the inherited myths of aging women, specifically the iconography of becoming the crone, the witch and the wise old woman.
Sophiensaele, German and English, details
MAR 23
Nureyev
DANCE Yuri Possokhov (choreography) and Kirill Serebrennikov (direction) originally developed this ballet in 2017 at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, however, the premiere had to be postponed due to strong protests from the Russian Orthodox Church. Now, Serebrennikov has reworked the piece as a plea for artistic freedom and individual self-determination together with the Staatsballett Berlin.
Michiel-Devijver
MAR 26-28
One Song
THEATRE Miet Warlop’s One Song is an experience to behold. Commissioned by NTGent as part of their Histoire(s) du Théâtre series, Warlop is the fourth artist to explore the question: what is the history of theatre? Her answer is as exuberant as it is rigorous: a striking, sensory-rich performance that examines how humans connect through life, grief and mortality.