- Dance Performance (Auf meinen Schultern)
- A dance performance by Raphael Hillebrand
- July 31- Public premiere - 6.00 pm - August 1, – school show – 3.00 pm
- At Elphinstone Theatre – Maradana Road, Colombo 10.
About the play:
On my shoulders (Auf meinenSchultern) - A dance performance by Raphael Hillebrand.
The story isn't over; the story goes on. My daughter. Happiness and madness go on. My mother is white. Yours is a black woman. I grew up in the western half, you in a cosmopolitan city. Berlin, you are so big, so free, so provincially violent. Are privileges short-lived?
Who owns the whole city? Who is it made for? Black Berliner. I would like you to be spared a few experiences. But how?
Auf meinenSchultern (on my shoulders) is a solo performance by the dancer and choreographer Raphael Hillebrand, his first at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Based on his experience of growing up in Berlin in the 1980s and 90s, he attempts to give shape to his own lived experience so that the next generation and his own child can connect to it — a danced, break-danced, spoken and performed passing on.
Choreography and performance: Raphael Hillebrand
Raphael Hillebrand is a choreographer and dancer. He is a founding member of the world’s first hip-hop party, Die Urbane. In October 2020, on the occasion of the German Dance Prize, he received a special honour for outstanding development in dance.
About the group
Ballhaus Naunynstraße stands for an artistic space that has changed the German-speaking theatre landscape, the post-migrant theatre. In 2008 it was re- opening as a trans-local theatre by Shermin Langhoff.
Since 2013, under the artistic director Wagner Carvalho, black perspectives, perspectives of colour and queer perspectives have increasingly been the focal point.
Since then, this theatre has acted as a driving force for reflection on post-colonial structures in everyday life as well as in the arts, it intervenes for the social processing of Germany’s colonial history, structural racism and intersectional exclusionary mechanisms.
In a society structured in this way, Ballhaus Naunynstraße creates a unique framework for encounters between artists of colour, black and queer people, for self- determined artistic creation and for development of personal narratives. This makes Ballhaus Naunynstraße unique not only in Germany, but within the whole of Europe.
Culture in challenging times
- a note from the Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka
The Goethe-Institute had planned to present the urban dance performance “Auf meinen Schultern – On my shoulders” by German Dance Prize winning choreographer and dancer Raphael Hillebrand at the Colombo International Theatre Festival 2021.
Due to the pandemic and the travel restrictions in place last August the festival had to be cancelled. In 2022 the festival had to be cancelled again due to the economic crisis in Sri Lanka and the unprecedented hardships that make the planning and conducting of international festivals with guests from many countries nearly impossible.
We asked ourselves. Is it a time for art and culture? Do people want to see a dance production from Germany while dealing with so many hardships? Will people even be able to make their way to the theatre, if they want to?
After consulting partners and observing the few events that is due take place we decided to take the risk as art and culture, is always important, and maybe especially in challenging times.
Art and culture can play an important role in articulating people's dreams and wishes, fears and hopes and sometimes also provide an escape from daily realities.
As such we decided not to cancel the invitation of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and to present Raphael Hillebrands “Auf meinen Schultern – On my shoulders” – an autobiographic dance theatre performance that is tackling issues of discrimination, racism and social imbalance on the dates that normally would have seen the Colombo International Theatre Festival 2022 in partnership with Interact Art.
We hope that our audiences will be able to find transport to make their way to the Elphinstone Theatre and appreciate our dedication towards sustaining vital cultural exchange even during these challenging times.
Stefan Winkler
Director - Goethe-Institute