Ea Torrado: Brown Madonna

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Coincidence or fate? Choreographer Ea Torrado not only shares her birthday with American pop icon Madonna – their biographies also show striking parallels: first steps in classical ballet and modern dance, a strict Catholic upbringing, the constant struggle for self-determination.

In the solo Brown Madonna, she takes this closeness – and difference – to Madonna as the starting point for a living ethnography. Against the backdrop of the intertwined forces of colonialism, Catholic iconography and global pop culture, Torrado interrogates the ways women in Philippine society are conditioned to be spectacular givers: mothers, martyrs, entertainers, saints. Together with visual artist and fashion designer Leeroy New, she creates a playful DIY spectacle as a radical search for liberation through embodiment. She addresses the constant work of upholding an idealized self, the overperformance, the dream of making money with one’s own art – and the fatigue, financial precarity, and loneliness that come with it.

INFORMATION ON ACCESSIBILITY

Concept, performance, direction: Ea TorradoCostume design: Leeroy NewCollaboration Costume Design: Arvie SantosDramaturgy: Eisa JocsonDramaturgical support: Alexandra Hennig, Daniel Darwin, Perky ParongSound design: Joshua GramajeRehearsal mistresses: Julienne Depatillo, Freyja KapangyarihanProduction management: Micah Sofia PintoThanks to: Jodinand Aguilon, Joee Mejias, Tokio, Cordelia Hattori, Irene Antonia Patolot Ta-asan

A production by Ea Torrado. Brown Madonna premiered as part of Sincerely Yours, the Philippines, a project by Künstler*innenhaus Mousontourm in cooperation with the Goethe Institut Philippines. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation through the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. With support from the Japan Foundation Manila, UP Vargas Museum, Daloy Dance Company, We Are Shapeshifters and MUNI Philippines. The guest performance is made possible by the Goethe Institute. Never Work – International Performance Festival is a festival by Sophiensæle, supported by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Sophiensæle is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Media partners: Berlin Art Link, Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.

Next date:

• Date Friday, 19/June/2026 20:30 (1 more date)
• Venue Sophiensaele - Hochzeitssaal
• Address Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte