YES/NO

Joshua Monten Dance Company

YES/NO

The dance production is a playful, interactive and virtuosic exploration of the theme of consent. It begins as a feast of relentless positivity, expressed through dance. Four exuberant dancers use their whole bodies and every ounce of their energy to enact radical affirmation — enthusiastic, freely given and ongoing, free of ambivalence or uncertainty, virtuosic and spectacular. They perform affirmation towards themselves, each other, and directly towards members of the audience. Their enthusiasm is contagious: there is joyful excitement (and a bit of absurdity) in releasing a chain reaction of positivity, in saying yes, yes and even more yes at every opportunity.

 

And then comes no. Rules and boundaries, self-respect and self-care — all these require the clarity of the occasional (or not-so-occasional) no. Some people (and some cultures) find the word extraordinarily difficult to say out loud. So it’s a helpful exercise to practice saying no, expressing no with one’s body, and indeed staging an entire scene based on negation. No, no, and again no.

 

After that, things get more complicated. Between the black-and-white clarity of yes and no spreads a grey sea of ambiguity, characterized by phrases such as I don’t know, maybe, yes-but, yes-and-no (“jein”) and hmm. When these alternatives are spoken they're often accompanied by an almost squiggly gesture, a three-dimensional attempt to evoke the complexity of a situation that doesn’t fit into a dichotomous choice. In fact, we believe that dance movement is particularly suited to expressing and negotiating many of these intermediate states. 

 

The Joshua Monten Dance Company has a longstanding interest in exploring “how to do things with words”: how movement and text can be imaginatively combined; how even a single word can crystallize the audience’s perceptions and reorganize the universe around it; how “conceptual dance” or linguistic research can result in full-bodied presence, pulsing rhythms, delicious ironies, poetry and puns.

Runtime: Thu, 28/05/2026 to Sun, 31/05/2026

Choreography: Joshua Monten

Dance: Manon Campion, Gianmarco Martini Zani, Hannah Thomas, Jack Wignall

External consultant: Emma Murray

Costumes: Catherine Voeffray

Lighting: Mirjam Berger

Sound: Christine Hasler

Consent/Dance consultancy: Kristin Horrigan

Co-production: Große Halle der Reitschule Bern, Tanzhaus Basel

Production: Verein Tough Love

Supported by: City of Bern Culture Department, SWISSLOS / Canton of Bern Culture Department

Next date: Yes/No

• Date Thursday, 28/May/2026 19:30 (3 more dates)
• Venue Dock 11 - Dock Art Theater
• Address Kastanienallee 79, 10435 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
• Price from €18.02

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