The Berliner Festspiele's Performing Arts Season will be continued: During the autumn and winter months, it has been presenting a panorama of outstanding international productions from dance, theater and performance at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau since 2023. Some of the performances shown will be co-produced by the Berliner Festspiele or specially produced in Berlin.
From October 2024 to January 2025, the second edition of the series will focus on questions of memory and tradition in contemporary performing arts. One focus will be on the New York dance and performance scene. Taylor Mac returns to Berlin for the opening of the Performing Arts Season 2024/25 with the European premiere of "Bark of Millions" in October 2024. Following the great success of "24-Decade History of Popular Music" (European premiere at the Berliner Festspiele in 2019), Mac and a 22-member artistic team will bring a four-hour "Rock Opera Meditation of Queerness" to the stage of the Festspielhaus. The epic concert format presents 55 songs directed and written by Taylor Mac and composed by Matt Ray, one for each year since the 1969 New York Stonewall Riots, inspired by queer figures in world history from antiquity to the present day. The dazzling costumes were designed by Machine Dazzle in the style of "Queer Maximalism"; Faye Driscoll choreographed the show and co-directed with Niegel Smith.
Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione © Anne Van Aerschot
Two avant-garde icons from New York's legendary Judson Dance Theater are also a central part of this Performing Arts Season: Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown. Both were first brought to Berlin in the 1970s by Nele Hertling, who will receive the Berlin Theater Prize from the Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung for her life's work in 2024. In December 2024, the program includes a production by Lucinda Childs, a leading figure in postmodern American dance. In "Dance" (1979), her famous collaboration with Philip Glass and Sol LeWitt, the minimalism of her work is particularly evident.
A guest performance by the Trisha Brown Dance Company can be seen in January 2025. In 2023, for the first time since the death of its founder in 2017, the company commissioned a choreographer who is not a member of the group to develop new works. This evening consists of three parts: two of the most important choreographies by Trisha Brown herself - "Glacial Decoy" (1979) and "Working Title" (1985) - and the commissioned work "In the Fall" (2023) by the celebrated choreographer Noé Soulier. The inclusion of new choreographers gives an impression of how the memories of a body preserved in a dance company are renewed. "In the Fall" can be seen for the first time in Germany.
October 9, 2024 to January 25, 2025
