Performances

Susanne Grau presents Xenia // is it urgent?. A play, a choral reading, a dance performance in which the boundaries between observation and performance blur. At its heart is a script, a text that can be read and performed by those in attendance. This collective reading creates a space in which dance, imagination, sensations, and small stories can unfold. Here, performative action becomes a practice of hosting and ghosting, of exploring closeness and distance, alienation and connection—through heightened awareness of the body and its shifting relationships. Xenia asks: If you had met someone before but no longer recognized them, would you still call them a stranger?
Choreography, performance, text: Susanne Grau; sound design/composition: Ismail Yakout.

Alexander Norton (Annita Sleep) (she / her) will participate in and run a football show where she plays all the parts of The Breakdown, from the footballers, managers, pundits, crowd and theme songs. It aims to be an absurd and informative review of a famous match between two teams that changed her life forever. It is an absurd recreation of an impossible task to convince the audience that the match is not only interesting, but culturally important for a trans girl growing up in the United Kingdom. Wish her luck!

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Susanne Grau (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and Rolfing® practitioner based in Berlin. In her projects, she explores the relationships between language, physicality, imagination, and rhythm. She views performative practice as a means of facilitating encounters, a kind of séance, and a psychomagical field of experimentation. Her choreographic work aims to create a space for collective experiences by playing with the emotions of control and change. She studied Contemporary Dance (BA) in Cologne, completed a master’s degree in Performing Arts Practice and Visual Culture in Madrid, and a master’s degree in New Performative Practices in Stockholm. As a performer, she has collaborated with artists such as Fabrice Mazliah, Alexandra Pirici, Davis Freeman, Juana del Mar, Choy Ka Fai, Prue Lang, May Zarhy, Rocio Marano, and Reut Shemesh. With support from Seitenwechsel e.V., she teaches weekly dance classes for children living in refugee shelters. Susanne is a member of considering network—a network of artists and bodyworkers interested in the intersection of choreography, bodywork, and the politics/poetics of touch. Her teaching, bodywork, and artistic practice as a dancer, performer, and choreographer influence and inspire one another.

Alexander Norton (she / her) is a transgender interdisciplinary artist and film maker working in absurdism. She doesn’t understand why things exist the way they do. Through comedy, performance, drag, sculpture, photography, character creation, film making, poetry, music / sound work and illustration she takes on each subject of existing through the relevant medium to the action. She mocks institutions and importance through absurdism and jarring performances rooted in comedic intention. She has performed in such spaces as: Volksbuhne, Hamburger Bahnhof and Gropius Bau. She studied Documentary Photography BA (hons) in the prestigious Newport University, graduating in 2012. She also has a PGCE to teach photography at college level. She has founded and ran (along side various teams) Künstler, Künstlerin, a performance / art platform for artists to make work without fear of failure. The project has been running for 9 years and continues to develop. She hopes to leave an impact, however small or large, however important or unimportant. Annita Sleep is Germany’s first accidental Margaret Thatcher impersonator. She is often placed in moments of nostalgia and memory, but plays with the absurdism of existence and expected behaviours. She has just discovered her own attractive nature and is deeply confused by it. See her in many places she finds herself in.