Elvan Tekin: THIS IS (NOT) THE END

• 

  – Zwei Personen tanzen, die eine in einem schwarzen Kleid, die andere in einem offenen, glänzenden Hemd. Beide halten die Arme erhoben.

• 

  – Zwei Personen tanzen; eine Person trägt ein blaues Hemd, die andere ein ärmelloses schwarzes Kleid. Rücken und Arme leicht gebogen zum Tanzen.

• 

  – Zwei Personen mit nassen Haaren berühren ihren Nacken; eine trägt ein schwarzes Kleid, die andere ein offenes, gestreiftes Hemd.

How do embodied practices transmit cultural memory? What forms of belonging and togetherness become possible when bodies and dances do not have to belong to only one tradition (or nation)?

By bringing different forms of dancing into contact that have travelled across places, borders, communities and generations, THIS IS (NOT) THE END unsettles familiar ideas of virtuosity, beauty, gender and social propriety. Within Krzysztof Bagiński’s musical landscape and to live piano by Saemi Jeong, the two dancers Elvan Tekin and Samuel Francis Perreira combine, layer and shift these forms, creating a hybrid movement vocabulary in which no dance remains quite what it was before. Rather than presenting dances as fixed markers of cultural identity, the work approaches them as living practices: knowledge carried by bodies, gained from others and constantly changing through transmission.

The dancers move between individual display and collective action, between competing, observing, imitating and refusing. Their relationships constantly shift—and the audience, too, becomes part of this dynamic. Watching is not neutral: desire, attraction, judgement and power circulate between performers and spectators. THIS IS (NOT) THE END asks who is allowed to watch, who is being watched, and what happens when a body refuses to be fully readable—particularly within ways of seeing shaped by colonial histories and systems of classification.

INFORMATION ON ACCESSIBILITY

Choreography, concept, performance: Elvan Tekin Performance: Samuel Francis PereiraSound: Krzysztof Bagiński, Saemi JeongCostume, set design: Evan LoxtonLight design: Robert Prideaux
Production: Tammo WalterDramaturgy: Boglárka Börcsök, Jette BühsenschutzOutside eye: Irem Aydin, Enad MaroufDialogue partner: Simge Burhanoglu

A production by Elvan Tekin in co-production with Sophiensæle. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Supported by the residencies in PerformIstanbul, Schloss Bröllin, HAUT Copenhagen, MDT Moderna Dansteatern with kind support of Life Long Burning. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.

Next date: THIS IS (NOT) THE END - Premiere

• Date Thursday, 12/November/2026 21:00 ( 3 more dates )
• Venue Sophiensaele - Hochzeitssaal
• Address Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
• Price from €25.00

Book tickets for this date

Order online