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.

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

Event location changed!

https://www.lost-paradise.eu

Kristóf Szabó F.A.C.E. Visual Performing Arts & Guests

“LOST PARADISE”

 August 2nd, 2025 – 8:00 p.m.
LOST PARADISE 1 + 2 EVA (BE)WERTWN + ADAM
St. Gertrud Kirche Köln

August 3rd, 2025 – 8:00 p.m.:
LOST PARADISE 1+2 – EVA (BE)WERTEN + ADAM
St. Gertrud Kirche Köln

LOST PARADISE is a haunting dance performance directed by Kristóf Szabó and produced by club68köln – the association for disabled and non-disabled people.

Through a combination of dance, theater, radio play, photography, and video art, a multi-layered production unfolds, transforming the space into a vibrant playground of human experience. An impressive stage design and moving video projections lend the performance visual depth and transform the venue into a resonance chamber for memory, resistance, and empathy.

At the center is one of the most fundamental questions of our time:

When is a person a person—and what happens when categories determine value and dignity?

Article 1 of the German Basic Law states: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.”

But what remains of this promise when it cracks in everyday life?

LOST PARADISE is a poetic, haunting appeal against exclusion and pressure to conform. The performance explores the fault lines of our society—between ideal and reality, between inclusion and economic utility. It creates a space for encounter and transformation—an artistic plea for a humanity beyond norms and performance metrics.

The project is complemented by an interactive digital chat platform, Paradise Regained, where visitors can share their experiences of exclusion, judgment, and inclusion—live on site.

Note Performances will be broadcast live on YouTube by the organizer. By purchasing a ticket, you agree to be filmed live and made public on YouTube.

TICKETS:

via rausgegangen.de and at the box office

A physical theater research that examines bodies and voices for their extremes, their capacity for contact, for joy, for excess, for listening and trust. An exploration of how impulses flow together in the body and voice and how what concerns us makes its way through them. A poetic-physical treatise on what happens in the world, who we are in it and what we want. Two animals that are human.

Admission: free