NO LIMITS, Germany’s biggest and most prominent festival for disability and the performing arts, celebrates its tenth edition this year, taking place once again – next to other partners – in cooperation with HAU Hebbel am Ufer as an 11-day event spanning theatre, performance and dance.
The opening with “Narrenschiff” (“Ship of Fools”) points the way for the entire festival. In the Middle Ages, people with disabilities were taken out of the city onto so-called ships of fools and left to die on the open sea. Some 600 years later, the fools take to the stage and refuse to continue playing the roles assigned to them by society. The production by Monster Truck and Platform-K sets the tone for a programme full of self-empowerment, participation, physicality and fun!
In the dance performance “No Gambling”, however, Simone Aughterlony and Julia Häusermann (2013 winner of the Alfred Kerr Actress Award for the best young actress at the Berlin Theatertreffen) show that life also includes taking risks, putting one’s luck on the line.
Natalija Vladisavljević, choreographer, writer and performer in the theatre and dance collective Per.Art in Novi Sad, Serbia, presents her work “Dance in the 21st Century” together with various collaborators, before Michael Turinsky takes the stage with his brand new choreography “Soiled”, co-produced by HAU. Drawing on personal experiences connected to his physical disability, he outlines a utopia of the human that opposes the upright, civilised, endlessly productive and – precisely because of this – endlessly destructive body with one that is close to the ground, cyclical, pulsating and metabolic. This body, which is claimed to be deeply human, will also be the subject of the talk “Choreo-politics for the crip animal” by Michael Turinsky.
The German premiere of Cia Vero Cendoya’s breathtaking dance performance “Bogumer (or Children of Lunacharski)” is based on Anatoli Lunacharski’s incarnate judgement of God in 1918, a search for personal identity amidst abuse of power, mass manipulation and communist hubris.
The HAU stage programme concludes with Meine Damen und Herren feat. SKART & Masters of the Universe, who dissect the cycle of life in “Welt ohne uns” (“World without Us”) using dazzling imagery and morbid humour.
For the first time, NO LIMITS will also offer online features – HAU4 will present a filmic portrait of the group Shut up and Sign*Speak including an artist talk, as well as the film “Planet Hora – Eine Space Odyssee in die Tiefen des Universums der Arbeit” (“A Space Odyssey into the Depths of the Universe of Work”). There will also be the online dance performance “DIS_move” by Saša Asentić, Alexandre Achour and guests.
