Dance

HOLY FreiDAY and the Path of Thorns (2021)

A movie-tv-performance format bringing visibility to the experiences of Transgender people and their lifelong scars received through constant harassment and discrimination. Trans-identity is difficult to understand and imagine, especially while conditioned to believe Duality is the only normal. Hence, we initiate a platform to share stories and experiences, feelings and thoughts about the process of accepting our identities.

Concept/Performance: Amalgam Collective, Sonja Heller & guest artists
Premiere: Heizhaus, Uferstudios Berlin 2021

CUNTethics & SQUATconstellations (2020)

An intermedia dance performance reflecting on different levels diverse perspectives of womens reality and stories, dedicated to experimental art as a medium of personal and collective healing. At the border between East and West, focusing on forgotten and forbidden female stories, a group of Berlin artists and their guests embark on a journey through historical memories of spaces and cultures.

Concept/Performance: Yuko Kaseki, Teo Vlad, Lea Kieffer, Mieko Suzuki, Maco, Lea Marie Uria, Francisca del Bosque Hundido, Evgenia Chetvertkova, Geraldine Mormin, Gabriela Cordovez, Birte Hendriks, Daniel Miranda, Naia Burucoa, Sonja Heller & other guest artists

Premiere: Dock 11, 2020

Error 404 – Page Not Found (2017)

Error 404 is a physical theatre experiment that ventures into the shifting landscapes of uncertainty and ambiguity. Drawing inspiration from trickster mythologies, the piece navigates the thin line between chaos and intention, accident and design. Using movement as its primary language, it embraces chance operations and unpredictable structures, inviting the audience into a world where meaning flickers, fractures, and reforms in unexpected ways.

Choreography/Concept/Performance: Sonja Heller
Premiere: Espaço Estrada, Indaiatuba (BR), 2017

Automatic Message (2015)

Inspired by André Bretons book about the surrealist technique to write or draw without conscious self-censorship, Sonja Heller and TESTCARD explore the possibilities of producing sound through drawing and moving on a big sheet of paper. Several contact microphones are attached with the ground. The noises of the movement are then translated into MIDI signals and transformed into different kind of sounds.

Concept/Performance: Sonja Heller & TESTCARD
Premiere: ’25 Jahre Schokoladen – Hoffest’, Ackerstadtpalast Berlin, 2015

The Discipline of Do Easy (2014)

„How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can’t find your way around your own apartment?“
~ William S. Burroughs

The retired Colonel Sutton-Smith has discovered the discipline of ‚Do Easy’, which implies to perform all daily life activities in the most simple and effective way without making an unnecessary motion – A duo based on the short story by William S. Burroughs, that combines elements of dramatic reading with contemporary dance/movement and experimental music. The dancer triggers through her movement the sound devices that are hidden in the stage setting. Recited text is in german.

Concept/Performance: Leo Solter, Sonja Heller
Premiere: Brotfabrik Berlin, 2014

Russian Roulette (2012)

The piece follows a young writer trapped in creative and personal turmoil. Just as he contemplates ending his life, a devil-like figure lures him into a surreal world of shimmering, deceptive night creatures—beings that may be real or mere projections of his mind. In this shifting dreamscape, the borders between imagination, fear, and reality dissolve.

Choreography/Performance: Poema Theater / Sonja Heller
Premiere: proekt “Otkrytaya Stsena” (Open Stage project), Moscow, 2012

Theory of Relativity (2012)

“The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so.The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after thewarrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

A dance theater solo that deals with our perceptions of reality. Inspired by the books of Carlos Castaneda and Einstein’s legendary theory of relativity it explores the question of what we call real and true. Is this world just a projection from our mind or in fact solid and stable? Or is the truth in the eye of the beholder?

A piece that plays with lightness and darkness, reality and dream and combines pointe work of classical ballet, fine art and shibari techniques.

Choreography/Performance: Sonja Heller
Premiere: Estação Caneca – Espaço Cultural Trilhas da Arte, São Paulo, 2012

Memorial Carnival (2012)

This piece explores the fluid boundary between reality and the dream world. Dancers move through shifting dream images and living shadows, revealing a space where the familiar becomes surreal. As they confront the figures shaped by their own fears, the performers transform uncertainty into strength. The work traces a poetic journey through the realm where dreams and reality intertwine.

Choreography/Performance: Poema Theater / Sonja Heller
Premiere: Black Box Theater, St.Petersburg, 2012

Architects of Change (2012)

To each other, we are only a flat story – unfamiliar images, written at different screens. Our projections are coming In touch, electrifying one another, presuming to continue the touch on the next spatial level. But soon after we realize that, dislocating the surface, breaking up our images with a handshake, we are still bordering of something, and there’s the only mark we can’t beat – the mark inside.

Concept: Sonja Heller, Asya Mukhina, Patrick K.-H.,
Oleg Makarov
Performance: Sonja Heller
Video-Projection: Asya Mukhina
Semi-acoustic guitar, e-bow: Patrick K.-H.
Max/MSP programming live: Oleg Makarov

Premiere: Museum of Modern Art Moscow, 2012

Nightshade Plants (2011)

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.’
(Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland)

A piece about what defines madness and where is the line 
between
madness and a ‘healthy mind’.
A piece soaked with 
bittersweet memories of childhood, fantasy worlds and loneliness.
A dance in honor of the inner landscapes of human mind and 
a cue for daily-life madness.
I am you and you are me.

Dance/Choreography: Sonja Heller
Premiere: Estação Caneca – Espaço Cultural Trilhas da Arte, São Paulo, 2011

Campo de Flores (2011)

Butoh-Duet with Pamela Lagos that explores the horrific experiences women endured in concentration camps in Chile under Pinochet and in Germany during the Third Reich. Through stark, trembling bodies, it evokes both the darkness that sought to silence them and the astonishing resilience that carried them through. The piece becomes a quiet testament to their suffering — and to the fierce, unyielding strength that refused to fade.

Dance/Choreography: Sonja Heller / Pamela Lagos
Premiere: Sala Sergio Aguirre, Universidad Mayor, Santiago de Chile, 2011

Daily Icarus (2009)

The legend of the Icarus is an allegory for a dreamer or an artist, who is revolting against the rules of society and fighting for indecency of his artistic work. In times of technical progress the human being feels likes living in an air bubble.

Communication happens mostly via Internet or short messages on the mobiles, warfare and playing computer games becomes close in the way they are accomplished.
If the “Icarus” risks entering reality, he is not able to connect to it. Sensory overload, overstraining, hectic pace befall him. He tries to build up his dream world again. But it can never be the same.

The illusion is gone.

Dance/Choreography: Sonja Heller
Music: Leo Solter
Premiere: Brotfabrik Berlin, 2009