Kompanie Benjamin Richter „RAPT“ (Work-In-Progress Showing)

by BARNES CROSSING | Oct 6, 2025 | current events, English

Company Benjamin Richter

“RAPT” (Work-In-Progress Showing)

Sunday 02.11.2025, 17:00 hrs

RAPT begins with our problematic relationship to the word “more”, which has brought humanity both knowledge and self-destruction, where it now teeters between ecstatic pleasure and absolute catastrophe. In a world made of paper, performer Benjamin Richter develops a choreographic journey of juggling, dance and clowning that subtly expresses the restless desire for “more”. The paper comes into its own in all its materiality: it flies, falls, piles up again, is draped and juggled. Accompanied by a live sound collage, “RAPT” is not a linear narrative, but a web of encounters: Human and object, abundance and care, fragility and perseverance.

A work-in-progress excerpt will be shown in BARNES CROSSING, the premiere of the entire piece will follow in January 2025 at the Orangerie Theater Cologne.

RAPT is funded by: Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW, NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste and Cultural Office of the City of Cologne.

Concept, choreography & performance: Benjamin Richter

Concept & dramaturgy: Jenny Patschovsky

Lighting design: Garlef Keßler

Sound design: Maxi Estudies

Graphics: Dominikus Moos

Benjamin Richter

The juggler and dancer Benjamin Richter has been exploring the interfaces between circus, dance and objects for 35 years. With his unmistakable playful language, he has shown his work worldwide and collaborated with Gandini Juggling and Cirkus Cirkör, among others.

Jenny Patschovsky

Jenny Patschovsky has been shaping contemporary circus in Germany for over 20 years – as a producer, dramaturge, networker and aerial artist, including on the board of the Bundesverband Zeitgenössischer Zirkus, at the Cologne-based association Atemzug, Labor Cirque and at the Bauhaus Dessau.

Garlef Keßler

Garlef Keßler works as a lighting designer and technical director for mouvoir, Overhead Project and Un-Label, among others. He has been the technical director of LATIBUL Cologne since 2011 and accompanies numerous independent dance and theater productions.

Maxi Estudies

Maximiliano Estudies is a sound designer between music and technology. Based in Cologne since 2010, he works for contemporary music festivals such as Acht Brücken, for WDR, the Cologne University of Music and Dance and is a member of the electronicID ensemble.

Dominikus Moss

Dominikus Moss is an artist, designer & editor of tadaa magazine and project & process manager of CCCC e.V. Cologne.

Sculpture made of crumpled paper depicting a stooped human figure surrounded by shredded pieces of paper on a dark floor.

DOUBLE BILL SONDER:SAMMLUNG:5 “TO THOSE WHO DON‘T” & SÄCHSISCHE SCHWEIZ kollektiv “LÄRM”

by BARNES CROSSING | Oct 6, 2025 | current events, English

DOUBLE BILL

SÄCHSISCHE SCHWEIZ kollektiv – LÄRM &

SONDER:SAMMLUNG:5 – TO THOSE WHO DON’T

Friday 07.11.2025, 19:30 h

Saturday 08.11.2025, 19:30 h

LÄRM
a tragic comedy about the stress of everyday life
or
the loudest romance in the world

Sascha and Ivonne have more than just [bleep]ing feelings for each other. They try to [bleep bleep bleep] their love for each other, but they just don’t get along. [klonk] [beep beep]

Be it cardiovascular disorders, headaches, fatigue, anxiety disorders or burnout. The health consequences of too much stress are well known. According to relationship coach and author Jilian Turecki, the inability to deal with one’s own stress is the main reason why relationships fail and feelings of belonging, connection and ‘being together’ are lost.

The SÄCHSISCHE SCHWEIZ kollektiv explores the connections between the concepts of stress, NOISE and communication in relationships. In the production, NOISE becomes an artistic translation of everyday stressors that massively disrupt communication between the protagonists in a tragic-comic way.

The audience observes Yvonne and Sascha in a kitchen. The two are connected by a deep and long-standing, but so far ‘only’ friendly love. They seem to be in conflict and want to find each other, but they are constantly drowned out by the noises of the world. The NOISE of the washing machine, the kettle, the wooden spoon on the edge of the saucepan, the coffee grinder, the highway in front of the house overlay their words. It seems impossible for Yvonne and Sascha to understand each other, and also impossible for the audience to understand Yvonne and Sascha; at least on a verbal level. After the noises in the apartment have taken on a life of their own in a psychedelic moment of overload, silence finally returns and we hear the (loud) thoughts of the protagonists. They have been secretly in love with each other all these years and are full of doubts. The audience joins in the excitement to see if the two can get together despite all the NOISE.

Concept & play: Ivo Schneider, Saskia Rudat

Stage: Dorothea Mines, Ivo Schneider, Saskia Rudat

Costume: Dorothea Mines

Sound: Kolya Wulf

Light: Jan Widmer

Assistance: Pia Heldmann

VK & Outside Eye: Theresa Hupp

SONDER:SAMMLUNG:5
TO THOSE WHO DON’T

A dance theater about the inescapable functioning in the structure on a recomposition of Ravel’s BOLERO.

i call myself a FLOP on a daily basis.

WAIT. [flop]. WINNING. continue. TRYING. [flopflop] keep going. FAILING. just keep going.

WINNING TRYING FAILING. — WAIT [flopflopflopflopflop] … I am a machine.

A performance dedicated to all who never stop, always doing, acting, producing, NO MATTER WHAT. About always being part of the “machine” – the course of things in a society of which we are a part and which determines our function in global turbo-capitalism.

About the impossibility of not being part of the machine. There is no way out, it lives in us, we live in it, we are it. What this machine does to us and how difficult (or utopian?) it is to stop it.

We are so anchored in the gears that stopping, pausing and asking ourselves questions is simply not in the plan. So the questions accompany us unanswered, sit in the back of our heads like dissatisfied rodents and metaphorically chew our ears off while we continue to strive for clean performance.

Skulptur aus zerknittertem Papier, die eine gebückte menschliche Figur darstellt, umgeben von zerfetzten Papierstücken auf dunklem Boden.

Teatro 4Garoupas “BLOOOM”

by BARNES CROSSING | Apr 23, 2025 | current events, English

Teatro 4Garoupas

“BLOOOM”

Dance theater for the whole family (for children aged 5 and up)

29 November 2025, 16:00 h.

30 November 2025, 16:00 h.

BLOOOM – a new production by Teatro 4Garoupas

A poetic fairy tale about growing up and the big questions in life.

Gargardenia can’t take it anymore! The adults are constantly whispering in her ear: “My little plant,
my little flower, my little rose” – animal names that are usually followed by swear words, insults or other unkind remarks. She begins to feel like the potted plants that are scattered everywhere.
How do they do it? They grow – and sometimes they even bloom – even without proper nourishment!

Today she dares to venture out into nature, which until now has meant nothing but dirt, mud and wet feet.
And there… Nature, nature: pure boredom. But in the great outdoors she makes some truly astonishing discoveries. But don’t just take our word for it, see for yourself!

CREATIVE TEAM
Choreography: Andreas Denk & Eugenia Labuhn
Dramaturgy: Arno Kleinofen

GARGADENIA GARAGENIA: Eugênia Labuhn
Creative production: Bebê de Soares
Duration: 40min
Age: 5+
Photos: @sanchesphotography
Videos: Jack Sticka
Production: Teatro 4Garoupas

IPtanz | Love Eat (never) Sleep

by BARNES CROSSING | Aug 4, 2025 | current events, English

IPtanz “Love Eat (never) Sleep”

absence#6 – abstraction of memory
25th anniversary of IPtanz

with audio description and accompanying touch tour at 7:15 p.m. (advance registration required!)

Friday, December 5, 2025 – 8:00 p.m.

A walk-in dance installation by IPtanz

In this walk-in installation, performers and audience share the stage space – a space that is open to anyone who wants to feel memory. An air body pulsates, movement fragments into voices, skin, and stories. What remains when places or rituals disappear, when the body becomes an archive of muscles, breath, and scars in the pulse of the space.

The space – sometimes a tent, sometimes a bubble, sometimes a ruin. See through different eyes, hear forgotten voices, be part of a fictional world that grows, turns, eludes and wants to be not only seen, but felt, heard and experienced.

ACCESSIBILITY:

Touch tour and audio description at 7:15 p.m. (registration required)

Reservations/registration: 0157 – 57 930 117

DIN A13 “MYspace SAFEspace NOspace 2025″ – Part 2

by BARNES CROSSING | Aug 12, 2025 | archive, English

DIN A13

“MYspace SAFEspace NOspace 2025″ – Part 2

26.09.2025, 20:00 Premiere

27.09.2025, 20:00 hrs

28.09.2025, 19:00 hrs

Premiere 2025 – Part 2 of the two-part production

“Safe Space” – a valuable protected space, an intimate bubble, a safe cosmos within the so-called “normative world”. Who shapes this space, who is allowed to use it, who is left out? DIN A 13 tanzcompany explores these questions with the two-part production “MYspace SAFEspace NOspace” – bringing performers with physical disabilities on stage with artists from the ballroom community (LGBTQ+).

Part 1 of the overall concept was realized in 2024 as an artistic intervention in public space: A mobile “Safe Space” container was positioned in various districts of Cologne. Dancers sought a performative exchange with passers-by and local residents. They reacted in very different ways: curious, irritated, hostile and even aggressive. These encounters gave rise to new choreographic impulses, which will now be explored in greater depth in part 2, the stage version.

Part 2 premieres in September 2025 and develops the performative experiences from the public space further – now within a changeable, non-classical stage space that is in constant motion.

Three protagonists personally invite the audience to become part of these spaces – or separate them from the close-up insights they have just gained. The production questions the concepts of closeness and distance, privacy and publicity – and shows how fragile and permeable the boundaries of “safe spaces” can be.

Encounter and demarcation, intimacy and irritation alternate. The dynamic between the performers and the audience creates a dense, immersive experience that is constantly being reconstituted. An interplay of exclusive inclusions and the exclusions that accompany them.

Participants:
Artistic direction & choreography: Gerda König (D)
Co-choreography: Charlotte Virgile (F)
Dramaturgy: Marje Hirvonen (FIN)
Performance: Danjel Sesar (D), David Mendez (D), Sophia Hankings-Evans (D)
Stage design: Lea Dietrich (D)
Costume: Monika Odenthal (D)
Music: Frank Schulte (D)
Film documentation: Gerhard Schick (D)
Lighting design: Marco Wehrspann (D)
Homepage: Andrea Hoﬀmann (D)
Press and public relations: Neurohr & Andrä (D)
Social media and financial management: John Herman (D)
Creative Producer: Anastasia Olfert (D)

Supported by:
Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Kunststiftung NRW, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Kämpgen-Stiftung.
DIN A 13 tanzcompany receives top-level funding from the state of NRW.

About DIN A 13 tanzcompany
DIN A 13 tanzcompany is one of the few dance ensembles internationally whose members are made up of dancers with and without physical disabilities. Since 1995, DIN A 13 tanzcompany and its artistic director and choreographer Gerda König, in artistic collaboration with choreographer Gitta Roser from 1999 to 2020, have been enriching the dance world with new aesthetic categories that continually challenge and question the usual ways of seeing contemporary dance. Presumed boundaries and evaluations between physical characteristics and top dance performance are dissolved in choreographic images that provocatively pose questions and invite artistic dialog.
The focus of the artistic work is on the exploration and visualization of the movement quality of “other bodies”, which is used in its diversity for the choreographic work, expanding it and thereby enriching the spectrum of contemporary dance.
www.din-a13.de/en

IPtanz “lautLOS#6”

by BARNES CROSSING | Jun 4, 2025 | current events, English

IPtanz

“lautLOS#6”

deconstruction of memory

25th anniversary of IPtanz

with audio description and accompanying touch tour at 19:15 (with prior registration!)

Saturday 06.12.2025, 20:00 hrs

A multimedia dance installation by IPtanz with 2 solos by Silvia Ehnis Pérez Duarte and Ilona Pászthy from absence#5 – deconstruction of memory.

In the beginning there is silence. Things that have been lose their clarity, are reinterpreted and become a new reality. What is the significance of the heritage that we carry within us from previous generations – historical, human, genetic, psychological? How are life paths and historical localisation transformed in the blending of cultures and what do blind spots in the past mean in the present?

In their solo works, Silvia Ehnis Pérez Duarte and Ilona Pászthy provide choreographic insights against the backdrop of personal family histories. The result is an atmospheric kaleidoscope in which the audience can determine its own perspective in the space and search for it again and again.

Choreography Ilona Pászthy, Silvia Ehnis Pérez Duarte

Dance Ilona Pászthy, Silvia Ehnis Pérez Duarte

Scenography/graphics miegL

Animation Anna Mahendra

Music Zsolt Varga

Narrator Suzanne Zielenbach

Lighting design Mirko Krejči

Ticket reservations, registration for audio description and touch tour: karten@ip-tanz.com or Tel: 0157-56403320

Further information at www.ip-tanz.com

Dancer in black outfit lying stretched out on the floor of a dark stage

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