This event is wheelchair accessible.
German, English
A documentary dance evening with an audience (General Rehearsal)
SPIEGELNEURONEN is the first collaboration between Sasha Waltz & Guests and director Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll) – and at the same time a large-scale experiment about the human brain and its relationship to the body. On stage stands a huge mirror in which the audience watches themselves as if in a gigantic selfie. Slowly, the audience begins to move together with the dancers. The result is a collective moving image – a metaphor for the human brain and the relationship between the individual and the community. The documentary research draws on perspectives from brain research, biology, sociology, and artificial intelligence, which the audience hears and experiences in a sound collage.
The soundtrack for the piece was provided by Basel-based musician, performer, and sound designer Tobias Koch.
Content information: There will be bright flashing lights (no strobes), increased volume, and physical proximity to your neighbor(s), see here.
Shows 21. & 22.11., 20:00, Information and Tickets here
Credits
Concept, direction: Stefan Kaegi
Dramaturgy: Silke Bake
Music: Tobias Koch
Scenography: Dominic Huber
Video: Mikko Gaestel
Lighting: Martin Hauk
Costumes: Sandra Tierisch
Dance, choreography:
Melissa Kieffer
Francisco Martínez
Dominique McDougal
László Sandig
Claudia de Serpa Soares
Wibke Storkan
Rehearsal Director: Claudia de Serpa Soares
Assistant Director and Production: Francisco Martínez
Technical Production Assistant: Patrick Heth
Lighting: Martin Hauk
Sound: Giorgio De Santis
Video: Sophie Krause
Guest performance management: Karsten Liske
Artistic direction and management: Sasha Waltz, Jochen Sandig
Operations management & artistic planning: Bärbel Kern
Deputy operations management & technical management: Reinhard Wizisla
Commercial management: Stephan E. Schmidt
With the voices of:
Christina von Braun, professor emeritus, cultural scientist, gender theorist, filmmaker
John-Dylan Haynes, professor of brain research at Charité
Sarah Karim, research assistant at the Institute for Rehabilitation Sciences
Tim Landgraf, professor of artificial and collective intelligence
Nora Schultz, research advisor to the German Ethics Council, freelance science journalist
Tania Singer, professor of psychology and social neuroscience
A production by Sasha Waltz & Guests in collaboration with Rimini Protokoll.
A co-production with the Salzburger Festspiele, Tanz Köln, and Kampnagel – Internationales Zentrum für Schönere Künste
Sasha Waltz & Guests is supported by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt
Sasha Waltz & Guests
The dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests was founded by Sasha Waltz and Jochen Sandig in Berlin in 1993 and in 2023 celebrated its 30th anniversary. To date, numerous artists and ensembles from the fields of architecture, visual arts, choreography, film, design, literature, fashion and music from more than 60 countries have collaborated as »Guests« on over 100 productions, »Dialoge« projects and films.
Sasha Waltz & Guests works in a constantly evolving international and national network of production and guest performance partners, and since its foundation in 1993 has performed at over 300 venues and festivals in more than 50 countries and 180 cities. Today, the company is showing its current repertoire of 12 active pieces in about 80 performances each year.
In Berlin, the company cooperates with a wide range of municipal theatres, opera houses and museums and has contributed to establishing new cultural institutions, such as Sophiensæle (1996), St. Elisabeth-Kirche (2004) and Radialsystem (2006). In 2013, the company was named »European Cultural Ambassador« by the European Union. In 2014, Sasha Waltz & Guests was awarded the »Tabori Ehrenpreis« by the Fonds Darstellende Künste.
Apart from Berlin stagings, national and international guest performances and the continual work on the repertoire, Sasha Waltz & Guests has been increasingly committed to educational and social projects. In 2006, the »Kinder- und Jugendtanzcompany« (Children’s and Youth Dance Company) was founded and since 2016 the interdisciplinary and open exchange platform titled »ZUHÖREN« has served as a »third space for art and politics«. Alongside these initiatives, the company continues to propose diverse offers in the field of knowledge transfer.
With the work »In C«, based on Terry Riley’s open composition of the same name, a system with an internationally growing community has been developing since spring 2021: the choreographic material was recorded in video tutorials to enable the easy transfer of knowledge. As a result, participatory, diverse, international and sustainable »In C« projects, workshop formats and ever-new structures have emerged worldwide.
Sasha Waltz & Guests is funded by the Senate Department for Social Cohesion.
Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)
Stefan Kaegi creates documentary theatre plays, audio-interventions, curated formats and works in the urban environment in a diverse variety of collaborative partnerships. Using research, public auditions and conceptual processes, he often gives voice to ‘experts' who are not trained actors but have something to tell. Most of his works are released under the Rimini Protokoll label which he founded together with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel at the beginning of the millennium.
Kaegi’s early projects include works like “Mnemopark,” a model railway world with 4 passionate bricoleurs in a live film (set in 1:87 scale). Or Cargo Sofia around two Bulgarian lorry drivers and a truck which was converted into a mobile audience room (“Cargo Sofia”). In 2008, he developed “Radio Muezzin” in Cairo – a project about the call to prayer in this age of technical reproduction, and in 2011, “Bodenprobe Kasachstan” about migration and oil in central Asia.
Between 2006 and 2011, Kaegi often worked with Argentinian playwright and director Lola Arias, most recently on “Chácara Paraíso”, which featured Brazilian policemen, and on “Airport Kids”, with global nomads between 7 and 13 years of age. Together they curated “ciudades paralelas / parallel cities”, a portable festival for urban interventions.
Since 2014 Kaegi adapts the immersive Audio Walk “Remote X” into such different urban landscapes and contexts as Santiago de Chile, Shanghai or New York, and he tours the interactive installation “Nachlass” that portrays eight people who have not much time to live. In “Society under Construction” he invites up to 300 spectators to impersonate the conflicts on one of many oversized construction sites. In 2018 he created a humanoid robot to perform as a clone of the german writer Thomas Melle in “Uncanny Valley”. With Caroline Barneaud he staged „This is not an embassy (made in Taiwan)“ with diplomats from Taipei, and together they conceived and curated „Shared Landscapes“, a day in nature with performative Land-Art.
In 2005 Kaegi won the jury-prize of the festival “Politik im Freien Theater” for Mnemopark. 2010 Kaegi was awarded the European Prize for Cultural Diversity. In 2011 the jury prize for “Radio Muezzin” in the Theatre Festival Sarajevo, and he curated the "idiom"-section of "Malta" Festival Póznan. In 2018 he won the Grand Prize of Bitef Festival Belgrade for “Nachlass”. In 2024/25 he was awarded the Rome Prize by the German Academy Villa Massimo.