Kunstfest Weimar 2025 invites you to experience art as an expression of change, freedom and daring. From August 20 to September 7, Weimar will once again become a center for contemporary art, theater, dance, music, film and performance.
One of the highlights are various new interpretations of both parts of Goethe's "Faust" to mark the 250th anniversary of Goethe's arrival in Weimar. Celebrated Cape Town director Brett Bailey offers a new, post-colonial interpretation with "FaustX" (August 20-23), an adaptation of "Faust II" that is being created as an international co-production for Weimar: Faust, doomed by his pact with Mephisto to lose his soul if he ever finds inner peace, meddles in the economy of the global South and plays war games on the fringes of the EU. He implements grand plans for technological expansion in order to dominate nature, society and - like a tech oligarch - distant planets.
As a counterpart to this, the festival will close on September 7 with William Kentridge's reinterpretation of his own legendary stage production "Faustus in Africa". To mark the 70th anniversary of his birth, the groundbreaking production will be revived in an international co-production more than 30 years after it was created. Using puppetry and animation, the Handspring Puppet Company depicts Faust's downfall and reformulates the classic story to address colonialism and climate change.
Other highlights include a new circus from Taiwan, South African dance and the open-air concert by local hero Martin Kohlstedt in Weimarhallenpark on August 22 - the artist's only concert in Thuringia in 2025!
"Faustus in Africa!" William Kentridge and Atandwa Kani © Fiona MacPherson
Dance fans will look forward to seeing Gregory Maqoma and his dance ensemble again. The sensational festival hit "CION" (2022) is still fondly remembered by many viewers. Now the major follow-up project is coming to Weimar as a European premiere: in "Genesis - The Beginning And End Of Time" (30 and 31 August), the star choreographer is once again working with composer Nhlanhla Mahlangu to dance rhythms and melodies that are imbued with the vibrancy and virtuosity of South African cultures - with eight dancers and polyphonic live a cappella by an eight-member choir.
The first highlight of another Taiwan focus in the Kunstfest program is the family production by FOCASA Circus - the oldest and most renowned new circus company from Taiwan. The European premiere "Moss" is a collaboration with the binational German-Taiwanese choreography duo Peculiar Man Jan Möllmer and Tsai-Wei Tien, both closely associated with the Tanztheater Pina Bausch (August 23 and 24). They are inspired by the shared history of five of the FOCASA artists, who grew up together as childhood friends, "played" street circus in the backyards of Taipei, went to circus school together and now form the heart of the company. "Moss" is a fascinating and poetic fairy tale about the precarious lives of kids in the big city. With their brilliant physicality, the performers seem to be able to do almost anything with their bodies: Juggling, equilibristics, rope art to stage stunts from the martial arts tradition.
The traditional memorial Buchenwald concert features Johannes Brahms' "Ein deutsches Requiem", masterfully performed by the Capella Cracoviensis with a large choir under Jan Tomasz Adamus.
August 20 to September 7, 2025
www.kunstfest-weimar.de
