We went and saw Mission Impossible: Fallout and laughed for 2½ hours at the brilliant kinetic absurdity: Tom Cruise, part of the Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton lineage of getting audiences to pay stacks to watch them do mad stunts. We ate chocolate and ice cream and nachos – cinema nachos! – and drunk Sekt. In the Kino. This is Germany and everywhere is drinking erlaubt. Ten years today, ago Dasniya and I met in her Fabrik studio in Uferstraße.
10 years with Dasniya in Berlin, Dusk over Reichstag and Spree
As Onyx said, “Oh panda repping the colours! 🖤💛❤️”. Currently reading The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia by Bill Gammage, picked up along with [-o-] t-shirt at Bunjilaka on that last day in Naarm, and Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?, which was waiting for me when I got back.
Showcase Beat Le Mot — Super Collider
HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (HAU2)
Sun 10.12.2017, 19:00
Mon 11.12.2017, 19:00
Tue 12.12.2017, 19:00
Wed 13.12.2017, 19:00
Laser pointers write “Game Over” in the sky. The performers of Showcase Beat Le Mot do not want to waste any electricity on apocalyptic resignation but instead to expand the frame of discourse to include outer space. That’s why in their new performance they’re sending danced messages and mumbled formulas into the outskirts of the universe. “True, beautiful and good were sought, skewed, quirky and helpful were found.” The antennas for the extra-terrestrial messages are switched from receiving to sending. This is not documentary theatre about the powerlessness to act in a surging reality but an experiment that works like a utopian slingshot. The stage setting is the message, the audience the amplifier. Space acts instead of fake facts. Always alongside trouble. Welcome to the half-truth about everything.
Concept, Space, Text, Realisation: Showcase Beat Le Mot
Shibari: Dasniya Sommer
Sound/Music: Sebastian Meissner
Costumes: Clemens Leander
Video: Alexej Tschernij
Light: Klaus Dust
Movements: Nina Kronjäger
Stage construction: Jörg Fischer
Production: Olaf Nachtwey & Johanna J. Thomas
Thanks to: Alexander Djuric and Etel Adnan
Heaps of queer asterisks there. Sophiensæle is in the middle of their THE FUTURE IS F*E*M*A*L*E* right now, and Peter Frost (who I mostly know from Das Helmi) has a première. Dasniya Sommer (most recently in Sophiensæle with her brilliant Bondage Duell) and a bunch of others whose names I know from the Helmi orbit are within.
Tired of patriarchy and the emptiness it has brought about, virile but open-minded Peter Frost ventured out into the world. Armed only with charm and passion, he risked everything to learn about new ways of life! Now he is back to tell us about the matriarchies of Berlin and the world.
BY AND WITH Le Frau (Vera Buhß, Bukart Ellinghaus, Peter Frost, Dasniya Sommer, Anna Wille, u.a.)
1930, September 19th and 20th
Hochzeitssaal — Sophiensæle
Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
The Helmis on tour. Two weeks in South Korea running around festivals performing a solo of Hamlet. A solo with two people. And puppets. And bondage.
Das Helmi in South Korea
After 10 Years we are back…
In 2007 Das Helmi toured the show Arsenic and Old Lace in South Korea and also made puppets for another group, it was all strange and beautiful…
..Now its going to happen again!!
5 Years ago Florian bumped into Master Lee in Pappelallee and he invited him to do a Hamlet solo… Five years later the plan is coming into reality, that’s how theatre can work!
So, Florian is going to perform Hamlet, a Ghoststory in South Korea this summer! With one Helmi (Florian) and a ballerina (Dasniya Sommer) playing all the Hamlet characters. The whole story is condensed into 45 Minutes full to the brim with Emotions, Surprises, Attitudes, Plot Twists and Musical Treats…
It’s like a game of chess in a head of a maniac!
It will be performed on ( sometimes 2 shows a day):
31st of July-1st of Aug. Gijang Festival
3rd and the 4th of Aug. Miryang Festival
6th and the 7th of Aug. Geochang Festival
And from the 8th to the 13th of August there is a Puppet Workshop in Gijang. The workshop will be used to make puppets for a production of Animal Farm from Master Lee.
Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings, I had the great pleasure of seeing Dasniya Sommer’s new performance, Bondage Duell, with Silke Schönfleisch at Sophiensæle. I was there to photograph and film, so saw the performance as a series of movement between the real world, camera screen and intercut with frozen images and instances of blackness. It’s always a weird way to see a performance and detaches me from the actual duration and progression of a work.
Bondage Duell is in Sophiensæle’s Kantine, a medium-sized rectangular chamber on the ground floor, in which Dasniya has set the audience in a shallow arc, like theatre half-in-the-round, on the long axis. Everything is compressed, as audience we’re much closer to Dasniya and Silke than we would be if the space was arranged more conventionally, using the depth. Their movement then, is side to side, long, flattened ellipses.
It’s brutal, touching, sexy, intimate; there’s a whiteout of fog, an audio landscape going from cars (courtesy our annual visits to the shrine of Fast & Furious) to cicadas, light moving from ’90s techno to blinding footlights to the softest, haziest, dreamlike seduction. Yes, there’s rope and shibari and suspension, these are after all what Dasniya has made her art for over a decade. Silke also, first coming to her workshop in Vienna at ImPulsTanz in 2014, and since then gradually working together and towards this performance, fitting it around her career as a Regierungsdirektorin in Berlin and formerly Staatsanwältin with the Bundesjustizministerium (that’d be currently a senior government official, and previously public prosecutor at the German Federal Ministry of Justice), basically deeply scary person when at work.
Dasniya’s last performance in Sophiensæle was MA — let’s give it it’s full and proper title, eh? — MA√ 15 { idiosyncrasy } || sin x = ly – fx²¯ in 2009, all turquoise everything, one of the most significant works bringing shibari into theatre and dance, certainly a huge influence on shibari and performance in Berlin, and particularly for trans and queer artists (especially on the women and feminine sides of those things). That was eight years ago, and the rest of the world has made inroads into catching up to what she was doing then — there’s a lot of brilliant art and performance being made with shibari these days. Dasniya’s also moved on, in addition to her own work, working with the likes of Roméo Castellucci, and being a long-time regular with Berlin theatre group, Das Helmi, which in turn has led to semi-regular collaboration with Zürich’s Theater HORA, as well as slowly and very determinedly taking and forming her ideas around rope, shibari, bondage, ballet, also queerness, feminism, femininity, representation, selfhood, her own history as both German and Thai. Anyone who’s seen what she’s been up to in recent years (like smaller performances in festivals like Männer in Garagen) will recognise what’s going on here.
It’s tough, and I don’t mean just the physical brutality of Dasniya and Silke tormenting each other. Obviously I’m biased as I’ve known her for as long as I’ve lived in Berlin, and I like the work of my friends, nonetheless Bondage Duell is doing what interests me in performance. It’s not passing off superficial, trashy, glib, cool, disposable politicising; it skates dangerously along the kerb with imagery that causes discomfort not just on the stage (like the nude paint orgy scene did in the Helmi/HORA collaboration, Mars Attacks!), and at the end I’m like, “Fuck yeah, that was brilliant.” It’s a little like Melanie Lane’s Wonderwomen, or Iain M. Banks’ Culture civilisation, it’s something to aspire to, a future we are making now.
In the end I saw the generale, première, and closing nights, so I saw the performance evolve over this short season, and some of this evolution was considerable. I know Silke and Dasniya talked through various things and were much more willing to take mutually tormenting each other to places where it became disturbing for the audience to watch, which in turn allowed them to revel in causing that unpleasantness. Whether to laugh or be outraged, they’d already moved on by the time we’d formulated a response. It was the gentleness I noticed as well, how they moved together, how completely confident and knowing each other as they mirrored each other’s movement while dressed only in pink and black lingerie, spontaneously growing in beautiful, tender ways. I loved also how the audience was both shocked and in love, how they were battered back and forth by the continual flipping of these states; by the end it was like they stunned.
So, photos. This is a mix from the generale and première, a mix which conveniently turned out to cover each other’s missed spots, so forms a patchwork of the whole (well, most of, there’s a few surprises yet). It is a patchwork though. As usual, I took hundreds of photos, kind of brute-forcing the limits of my camera in low light and fog to capture something. I ended up with about a hundred I really liked, which together convey the work more faithfully than these do, these which in the end are a somewhat arbitrary choice.
Everything Dasniya Sommer in May, in Berlin, Lyon, Bremen, performances, and workshops, and the première of her new performance, next Friday May 18th at Sophiensæale.
Dear Friends, Bondagisti, Theateristi and Dancers,
a bunch of performances in Berlin, Bremen, and Lyon this month, plus Tuesday mornings Shibari Technique in Haus Sommer.
As always, you can read all about this on my blog. In the meantime:
Bondage Duell, with Silke Schönfleisch at Sophiensæle, May 18, 19, 21
Nun on the Moon, at European Lab, Lyon, May 25
Der besuch der verknallten Dame, with Das Helmi, at Theater Bremen, May 28
Tuesday mornings Shibari Technique, in Uferhallen, Berlin-Wedding May 9, 23, 30
Private & Group Lessons
Blog!
Enjoy the arrival of spring’s sun!
Dasniya
1. Bondage Duell, with Silke Schönfleisch, at Sophiensæle
A 178cm tall ballerina and a 114cm small female government official on a tricycle appear on the scene. An uneven fight. The weapons: rope, muscular bodies and a thirst for adrenaline. Using classical dance means and Japanese bondage techniques, Bondage Duell examines physical and social patterns of bonding, empowerment and constraint. A place where cruelty and freedom, fun and curiosity lie closely together.
Featuring the interactive contributions of a selection of unique and pioneering artists, the Nuit Immersive will be a night like no other. No seats or popcorn-holders, no stages or “fourth walls”, the Nuit Immersive will instead plunge you the public into the heart of the creative process and invite you to move around and explore this interactive performance as best you see fit. Advanced warning: here, the sign clearly states “PLEASE DO TOUCH”!
Date: Thursday, 25th May, starts at 21:30
Location: Les Subsistances • Le Hangar
Tickets: 8€ (Online tickets)
More info: European Lab
3. Der besuch der verknallten Dame, Das Helmi & Theater HORA at Theater Bremen
The workshop focusses on traditional Shibari technique, basic and intermediate level. Inspired by my teachers Osada Steve, Kamijoo Saki, Arisue Go, Tamandua Ropë. We start with the basics and security principles. Learning initial knots and floor work patterns with a partner. When these principles are set, we approach complex figures and suspension technique step by step.
Dates: Tuesdays, May 9th, 23rd, 30th, 2017 (No class on the 16th!)
Time: 10am-12pm
Level: Intermediate
Costs: 20 Euro per person
10 class card 160 €
@ Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt – Wedding. Uferstrasse 8, 13357 Berlin. Entrance B
More info: Shibari Technique Morning Classes
Please call when you are in the court yard, in case you don’t find it, or the door is locked: + 49 174 393 70 49.
5. Private & Group Lessons
Of course it’s always possible to arrange another time for private and group workshops, sessions, choreographing ropes for performances, and other long-planned or spontaneous ideas. Drop me a line!
6. Blog!
Recent adventures make their way to my blog, perfect for a spring weekend afternoon of reading and pictures.
Dasniya Sommer, Silke Schönfleisch: Bondage Duell. At Sophiensæle