PROGRAMM 2025
September 4th - 19.00 - Pre-opening / ACUD-Theater
CONTEXTOS - Première
Performances 5 + 6.09 | 19:00
Artist talk 4.09
©Memorias Danza Teatro
CONTEXTOS emerges from the collective statement “I am because we are,” connecting young dancers from Cartagena (Colombia) and Berlin (Germany). Guided by choreographers Alex May and Gabriel Galíndez Cruz, the performers explore the body as a site of memory and transformation. The piece questions how environment and personal history shape our embodiment, weaving individual stories and understandings of dance. Rooted in the Afro-Colombian Bailes Cantados, traditional sounds engage in dialogue with contemporary movement. On stage, new forms of expression arise, dissolving imposed structures and presenting dance as a space for healing and self-discovery. CONTEXTOS is a space of encounter that bridges differences and opens paths for collective creation.
September 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, 12th & 13th - 19.00 / Dock11 Berlin (Lobby) SIWIZA, to dance so the Earth keep spinning / Wiwa First Nation.
Short film. Free entrance.
Photo: Still from video
Wiwa First Nation short film - "Siziwa, to dance so the Earth keep spinning", directed by Rafael Mojica from the Wiwa community, created in collaboration with the Wiwa community from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia.
September 5th & 6th- 19.30 - double bill (Age limit 18+) / Dock 11 Berlin
BLACK RESISTANCE PRACTICE 1 | Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald |Première
FERAL | Josefina Cerda | German première
Artist talk 6.09
©Giovannina Sequeira
Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald, Naledi Majola and Sointu Pere share an exploration of Black resistance practices mapped across time and territories.
They invite the audience into an improvised landscape that draws from several histories from Africa and her diaspora; histories of the endless way we have resisted oppression. From spontaneous armed rebellions to highly organized military battles to generation-long struggles to maintain one's identity and dignity, all of these forms of resistance have much to teach us in the present day should we plant our feet firmly in the soil and open ourselves to hear them. The project originated in the context of the residency program 'New Techniques' at Sophiensæle, where the trio used methods of Afro-diasporic sharing and improvising to create a collective practice together, which lead to them building a collective body that simultaneously performs/moves/builds/resists together.
Project initiated by Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald
Co-created and performed by Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald, Naledi Majola and Sointu Pere
Dramaturgical support from Dr. Joy Kalu & Julien Enzanza
Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald is a multidisciplinary performance artist, activist, and cultural worker of Kpelle (Liberian) and Irish-American descent. Her movement-based practice is rooted in Afro-diasporic, West African, and contemporary dance techniques, centering her feminist, antiracist, and anticolonial politics. She received her BA in Dance and Anthropology from Bates College (USA) and her MA with distinction in Performance at the University of the Arts Berlin – HZT (Germany). She has performed and taught across the Americas, West Africa, and Europe. From 2014 to 2019, she lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she was artistically and politically active with Afro-diasporic communities. There, she co-founded Kukily, an Afro-feminist arts collective working across borders in performance, audiovisual media, installation, and community-centered projects. In 2024, Kukily was invited to the Lagos Biennial.
September 7th - 19.30 - door opens 20.00 (Age limit 18+) / Dock11 Berlin
FERAL | Josefina Cerda | German première
*Sensitive Content: explicit sexual content, strong smells, nudity, loud sound or music.
©Pablo Salvador Valenzuela
FERAL is a vocal-sound performance that delves into the processes of sexualization, objectification, and the empowerment of personal pleasure. Over the course of 30 minutes, the performer weaves a narrative of her journey—from a hypersexualized childhood to an adulthood where pleasure finds new avenues of exploration through domination, sex work, and BDSM. The performance unfolds in an intimate setting, featuring a live sound recording and playback setup alongside other sex technologies that accompany the storytelling.
Creation and performance: Josefina Cerda
Mask: Pedro Gramegna, John Alvarez
Prosthetics: O'Ryan Lab
Administration, production and distribution: Ébana Garín and Roni Isola - Fundación Cuerpo Sur
Josefina Cerda is an associated artist of the “Fundación Cuerpo Sur”
Josefina Cerda is a performer, sound designer, and erotic content creator. She holds a degree in Acting, a Master's degree in Art Theory and History, and a diploma in Sound Art and Archival Science. Her interdisciplinary work explores the relationship between body, sexuality, archives, sound, and fantasy, addressing pleasure, love, and power dynamics from a critical and sensorial perspective. Her personal and professional practice includes virtual sex work, and the exploration of domination and BDSM practices in intimate, work, and performative contexts.
September 9th & 10th - 19.30 / Dock11 Berlin
FIGUEIREDO | Pedro Vilela / TREMA! | German première
Artist talk 10.09
© Pedro Sardinha
A document hidden for over 40 years serves as the starting point for this performative lecture that seeks to navigate between history and memory, weaving connections around a policy of destruction that has spread since 1500: the Indigenous genocide in Brazil.
Dramaturgy and performance: Pedro Vilela
Video and Technical Direction: Thiago Liberdade
Dissemination Support: PROJECT SUPPORT PROGRAM – Internationalization, DGARTES – Directorate-General for the Arts.
Pedro Vilela is a Brazilian artist based in Porto, Portugal. Founder of TREMA!, he has been active in the fields of curatorship, theatrical creation, and academic research, with a focus on counter-colonial thought and on political, identity, and racial issues related to his continent of origin. His work seeks to establish connections between Europe and Latin America. In addition to his creative projects, he curates the TREMA! Festival and Quilombo_Trema!
September 12th & 13th - 19.30 / double bill / Dock11 Berlin
INSTANTE GRADUAL (GRADUAL INSTANT)/ Kirenia Martínez Acosta | German première
SAMBA/ Reinaldo Ribeiiro | German première
Artist talk 12.09
Relaxed performance 13.09
©Gwyn Emberton.
Each moment is two moments. But when does wood change to stone, peat to coal, limestone to marble? History and memory share data, time and space. Everything is inside this historical fraction of a second, the gradual instant.
Direction, choreography and interpretation: Kirenia Martínez Acosta
Music: Bruno Baw
Kirenia Martínez Acosta is a Cuban-born dancer, choreographer, actress and cultural curator based in Galicia, Spain. She began her dance training at the age of 13 in Cienfuegos and later studied acting at the National School of Art in Havana (1997–2000). Her formative years were spent with the renowned company Danza Teatro Retazos, where she earned the title of First-Level Contemporary Dancer and toured internationally as part of its repertory until 2003.
Since relocating to Galicia, she has become a key figure in the contemporary dance scene. She co-founded the company Entremáns (2005–present) and has performed with the Galician Choreographic Centre. Over the past two decades, she has directed, co-directed and collaborated with numerous projects, companies and festivals, always guided by an interdisciplinary and socially engaged artistic vision.
She is currently the director of Kirenia Danza (since 2019), a company that merges dance with spoken word, visual arts and poetic inquiry. Since 2023, she also serves as the Artistic Director of Escenas do Cambio, a leading performing arts festival in Galicia that focuses on contemporary and experimental practices. Her curatorial work emphasizes inclusion, memory, and the body as a site of resistance and transformation.
Kirenia has co-directed various other festivals including Festival Quincegotas (A Coruña, 2015–present), Festival Os Eidos (2019–present), and Festival Empape (2008–2011). Her work—both as an artist and curator—has been presented in Cuba, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Brazil, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Greece, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Mexico, and Ecuador.
Her choreographic work unfolds through the “Trilogy of the Vulnerable,” a long-term artistic investigation that explores themes such as migration, care, affect, ageism, gender perspectives, and social intervention rooted in memory and poetry. Across her creations, Kirenia places the body at the center of a sensitive, political and lyrical dialogue—where fragility becomes a force and art a space of resistance.
September 12th & 13th - 19.30 / Dock11 Berlin
SAMBA / Reinaldo Ribeiro I German première
Artist talk 12.09
Relaxed performance 13.09
©Tristan Perez-Martin
The piece uses Carnival — one of the world's largest open-air spectacles as its backdrop to expose a body divided and immersed in contradiction.
This divided body constantly negotiates between physical archives and memory archives, in perpetual tension between tradition and the transatlantic.
SAMBA is a fractured work full of sharp edges. A springboard that destabilizes both inherited beliefs and our acceptance of what constitutes us.
Creation / direction / performance :REINALDO RIBEIRO
Music : MARCELO LASTRA
Light designer : HORNE HORNERMAN
Light technician: ALFREDO DÍEZ
Outside eye: MILAGROS GARCÍA
costumes and props: PILAR RODRÍGUEZ CATÓN & REINALDO RIBEIRO
video and photography: TRISTÁN PÉREZ MARTÍN
coproduction: SALA HIROSHIMA
September 14th - 20.00 / Forest Cinema, Hotel Michelberger, Berlin & Online Streaming
REMINISCENCIA / Malicho Vaca Valenzuela Online Performance / cinema Live Screening - Spanish with English subtitles
Tickets for Online performance or live at the Cinema: 8€
©Fran Razeto-GAM
Confined to his home during lockdown, Malicho Vaca sat down in front of his computer and began collecting memories from the residents of Santiago. His goal was to tell the story of his neighbourhood, located in the heart of the Chilean capital, a vibrant area where all gatherings and political demonstrations start. But as he collected those testimonies, what was meant only as a personal research project transformed into an unidentified scenic object. Reminiscencia is an immobile journey. In this country “where there are immense blue skies in which one can read but where one doesn’t know what is hidden in the ground,” the director digs into the earth: a simple click on a digital map and he uncovers mysterious loves and repressed revolutions, so many fragments of an intimate and collective memory.
Malicho Vaca
Chilean artist Malicho Vaca Valenzuela has been working in the theatrical field for fifteen years as an author, director and actor. He has written six plays to date, and is currently in the creative process for a new project. His work tackles a variety of themes including sexual diversity, gender and human rights. His projects are also nourished by the study of Latin American narratives and memory, as well as a reflection on biographical writing. A delicate and sensitive approach to different technological formats enables Malicho to expose his creative process to the audience as well as to write, from a position of vulnerability, an autobiography that is interwoven with the history of a territory marked by multiple revolutionary failures.
With: Rosa Alfaro, Malicho Vaca Valenzuela, Lindor Valenzuela
Text, creation, direction, dramaturgy and video: Malicho Vaca Valenzuela
Lighting: Nicolás Zapata
Assistant director: Ébana Garín Coronel
Stage management and video: Malicho Vaca Valenzuela
Stage manager: Ébana Garín Coronel
Administration, production, distribution: Ébana Garín, Luis Guenel, Roni Isola, Fundación Cuerpo Sur Production
Production: Ébana Garín, Luis Guenel, Roni Isola
Acknowledgements To my grandparents
Malicho Vaca Valenzuela is an artist associated with Fundación Cuerpo Sur.
SEPTEMBER 6th, 10th & 13th / Dock 11 Berlin
SurReal/Communities Networking gatherings
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Saturday, September 6th. 16.30 / Dock 11 Berlin
LAB Plataforma / United Networks in a picnic format for BIPoC and allies
©Unite Networks
United Networks empower and connect marginalized Racialised and Marginalized (RaM) artists and cultural workers, making their work, voices and perspectives more visible. Additionally, the UN wants to establish more equitable working conditions in the arts and culture sector.
Together with Plataforma Berlin UN will open a dialogue space to reflect on the current situation of independent RaM artists in Berlin and the possibilities of future alliances and collective strategies.
In a picnic format, exchange and mutuality will unfold.
Picnic: People are welcome to bring finger food, from each own culture, to share.
https://unitednetworks.eu/en/home-15/
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September 10th, 12.00 / Dock 11 Berlin
B>Talk / BIDE - Barcelona International Exchange
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The B>Talks are an opportunity for BIDE to present its work, methodology and different relationships with various dance performing arts and institutions; who offer mobility and varied models and examples of collaboration through theoretical and practical approaches.B>Talk is an interactive and informative session that invites participants to experience and learn about the key ethos and values of the BIDEprogrammes through a series of brief interactions. During the B>Talk we will move through a range of content that introduces the body and mind to the BIDE practices and methodologies. September 13th. 16.30 / Dock 11 Berlin
September 13th, 16.30 / Dock11 Berlin
Panel: Curatorial Perspectives on the Abya Yala–Europe Relationship
A discussion panel bringing together curators and artists to reflect on decolonial curatorial practices.
With Areli Moran - Espacio Expectante (Mexico/Berlin), Luce Lambertz Kampnagel (Hamburg , Germany), Kirenia Martinez Acosta - Escenas do Cambio Festival (Cuba/Spain), Moderation: Martha Hincapié Charry - Plataforma Berlin Festival (Colombia/Berlin)
*AbyaYala is an Indigenous name for the body of land that European cartographers re-mapped as “America.”
The term translates as Tierra de Sangre Vital or Land of Vital Blood, and originates from the Guna Yala people, an autonomous Indigenous community on the borders of Panama and Colombia. Abya Yala retains political symbolism in some parts of the region. It signifies nation-making, ownership, definitions, historical timelines, and relationships with “land” that oppose European conceptions of the same.
October, 2025 / Michoacán, MEXICO
PLATAFORMA EXPANDIDA
En la guarida de un cuerpo que recuerda / LA SERPIENTE
©WENDY RUFINO
EN LA GUARIDA DE UN CUERPO QUE RECUERDA is a dance solo with an autobiographical approach that honors memory and resignifies spaces. In the performance the body is a landscape that invites contemplation and remembrance, it is territory and constellation, a meeting place that provokes dance.
The performance takes place in a house in the town of Acuitzio in the province of Mexico, a house with earthen walls and mud roofs, nearly one hundred years old. It is the house where the father of the dancer of the performance was born, a physical space that protects the personal history, a condition that gives a deep meaning to the ritual dance that takes place in situ.
Laura Martínez Ayala’s choreographic creation is a validation of dance as a space for the configuration of the human and Abdiel Villaseñor Talavera’s scenic creation is the materialization of common imaginaries, the mirror of possible reflections with the spectators.
COMPANY: La Serpiente
DIRECTION AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Laura Martínez Ayala
PERFORMER: Abdiel Villaseñor Talavera
LIGHTING: Laura Martínez Ayala
ORIGINAL SOUND DESIGN: Pedro Antonio Vargas Madrigal
STAGE MANAGER: Liliana Rosales Merlos
COMMUNICATION: Oscar Mosqueda
DESIGN: Gethsemaní Alcántar
PRODUCTION: Proyecto Serpiente A.C.
LAURA MARTÍNEZ AYALA
Mexican. Contemporary dance creator and co-director of La Serpiente Company and RED SERPIENTE International Dance Festival. She has created more than fifty dance works in different formats and her work has been presented in Europe, Asia and America. She is a professor at the Theater Academy of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Michoacan University and has taught choreographic composition workshops in Colombia, Chile and South Korea.
She has a Master’s Degree in Arts Didactics and a PhD in Education.
ABDIEL VILLASEÑOR TALAVERA
He is an artistic director and scenic creator of contemporary dance, originally from Morelia, Mexico. He has a degree in Communication, a Master in Philosophy of Culture and a PhD in Critical Theory. He is co-director of the contemporary dance company La Serpiente, with which he has toured Europe, Asia and America. He has been invited as International Jury of Choreographic contests and he has been curator and jury of selection of Programs for the artistic development in Mexico. He was recently recognized as a Scenic Creator with trajectory in dance by the SACPC in his country.