Étoile Allergique

Duet (2025)

Duration: 40 minutes 

 

Étoile Allergique is dedicated to the experience of illness and the accompanying processes that take place inside the body as part of an invisible geography. In a duet with dancer Alice Heyward, forms and modes of expression are sought that explore the transitional areas of health, illness, and possible healing, and negotiate invisible aspects such as injury, pain, and fragility. The performance is guided by an understanding of the body as a ruin, a living and decaying structure in which memories and traumas can be stored and recalled. Processuality, collapse, and permanence thus become perceptible as shared characteristics of the body and architecture.

 

Concept, choreography, performance: Shade Théret
Performance: Alice Hayward
Music: I See You
Stage: Amadeus Vogelsang
Costumes: Good&Bad
Curation: Susanne Mierzwiak and Feben Amara

 

A project by the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (nbk) in cooperation with Uferstudios. Funded by the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin.

Daybreak

Solo for stage (2025)

Duration: 40 minutes

 

Daybreak addresses the tension between tracelessness and surveillance through the figure of the vagabond. The vagabond represents the freedom to exist in anonymity and can foster liberty from the commodification of the social – our connections, relationships and friendships – and turning it into valuable data.

In this work, which takes place in a live soundscape composed and performed by Lynn Suemitsu, the vagabond (Shade Théret) does not accept her place in the world’s power structure. She chooses to live outside of anything that might follow her and make her traceable. Therefore she lives literally outside – on a cold beach, within an empty construction site, in a wintered-over garden. Upon meeting someone new, she never asks for anything, never apologizes, and never says thank you. She demands, she takes what she wants, and she walks away.

 

Concept, choreography, performance: Shade Théret
Music: Rin Suemitsu
Stage: MRZB
Costume: Clever Disguises
Light: Shaly López
Dramaturgical support: Polina Fenko

 

A production by Shade Théret in co-production with Sophiensæle. The 34th Tanztage Berlin is a production of Sophiensæle. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. With the kind support of Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V., Theaterhaus Berlin and Uferstudios GmbH. 

 

Press:

Spike Art Magazine

PW Magazine

Gaia's Corner

Situated performance (2024) 

Duration: 40 minutes

 

Following the invitation of the Julia Stoschek Foundation as part of the exhibition “Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets?” and “Digital Diaries”, Shade Théret and Magdalena Mitterhofer created Gaia’s Corner, a performance designed for the water feature in front of the main entrance of K20 on Düsseldorf’s Grabbeplatz.

 

Gaia’s Corner is a performance piece that takes its title from the myth of the Greek goddess Gaia, mother of all life. The title carries a certain irony, as the setting and narrative of the performance is  in contrast to notions of naturalness and purity.

The audience becomes silent witnesses to the aftermath of a daring shoplifting spree as two figures seek refuge by the fountain in Grabbelplatz. Slowly over time their stolen goods are revealed. The performance revolves around a complex choreography of diversion and misdirection, becoming its central theme. The characters change their behavior, their languages, and ultimately their appearance to the point of complete unrecognizability. Meanwhile, the surveillance of the square becomes increasingly conspicuous.

 

Concept, direction, performance Shade Théret & Magdalena Mitterhofer
Music: Antonia Alessia Virginia Beeskow
Costume: Rudolfs A. Packevics
Photo: Ferry Mohr
Video: Arnold Trautwein
Sculptures by: Rochelle Goldberg (Wand, 2024, aluminum, dimensions variable) 

Organized by Tabea Marschall

 

EXCERPT

Playback; 11 Angels

Solo for stage (2024)

Duration: 34 minutes 

 

PLAYBACK; 11 ANGELS is the third part of a triptych on melodrama within prescribed spaces. The work itself explores the banality of tragedy and distortions between appearance and truth by adapting Jean Cocteau's play "La Voix Humaine". Cocteau's text is built like a monologue, yet written in disjointed phrases, moving from tender longing to outbursts of despair embodied by a woman who, on stage, plays out her last moments as a left lover. PLAYBACK; 11 ANGELS disconnects the staging and visualization from the story of the play and anchors itself in motifs of amorous deception and the incommunicability between beings.

 

Concept, choreography, performance: Shade Théret

Costume: Shayna Arnold

Music Mix: MK Velsorf and Shade Théret

Co-production: PAGEANT 

 

EXCERPT

Confessional

Situated performance (2024)

Duration: 35 minutes

 

In 2024 Shade Théret and Magdalena Mitterhofer were commissioned to create a performance by Museion Bozen within the context of Bolzano Danza Festival.

Confessional engages with the legacies of avant-garde theater in 1960s and 70s Italy, channeling the energies of figures like Giuliano Vasilicò and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This exploration is not a mere homage but a critical inquiry into the structures of power, ritual, and subjectivity that these figures interrogated. Confessional is steeped in existential questions: What is the function of confession in a society that claims to have moved beyond the moral absolutism of religious doctrine? What new forms of confession emerge in the context of contemporary power structures? And how do these forms relate to our understanding of guilt, responsibility, and complicity?  Confessional evolves through improvisation, reflecting the unpredictability and fluidity of both the creative process and the social rituals it seeks to deconstruct. Drawing from the gestures, movements, and symbolic resonances of Catholic rituals, the work recontextualizes these elements, exposing the ways in which they continue to exert influence within secular frameworks.

 

Concept, direction, performance: Shade Théret & Magdalena Mitterhofer
Developed in collaboration with actor Arthur Chruszcz

Sound: Arnold Trautwein
Stage Design: Magdalena Mitterhofer
Costumes: Keisuke Yoshida
Cat Costume: Good and Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen)
Photos: Andrea Macchia

Co-produced by Bolzano Danza & Museion Bozen

 

EXCERPT

Rapport 

Duet for stage (2023)

Duration: 40 minutes

 

Rapport draws inspiration from Richard Wagner’s opera "The Flying Dutchman," offering a contemporary reinterpretation. The central figure, Senta, departs from her traditional portrayal as a romantic figure obedient to her father. Instead, she emerges as a choreographer rehearsing onstage. Her intimate dreams and inner thoughts are live-projected, while her movements on stage reflect her pursuit of self-perfection and introspection. Fragmented excerpts from Shulamith Firestone’s "The Dialectic of Sex," alongside compositions by Schubert and Ravel, serve as performative tools. They provoke reflections on the fictionalization of history and challenge the notion that history is fixed.

 

Concept, direction, stage design, costume, performance: Shade Théret & Magdalena Mitterhofer

 

Commissioned by Deutsche Oper Berlin. Presented as part of the Festival Extended Version: The Flying Dutchman. Curated by Jan Koslowski

 

Hellcat 

Duet for stage (2023)

Duration: 40 minutes

 

Warped and forced inward, rage implodes into expressions of frustration, obsession, or psychosis. In their collaboration entitled "Hellcat," Shade Théret and Magdalena Mitterhofer delve into the implosions of female rage, exploring moments of uncontrolled expression and potential outbursts. The script draws from literary sources that address mental illness and mother-daughter relationships, as well as perspectives on love and sexuality across various social strata. Initially positioned as antitheses on stage—the domestic versus the public—Mitterhofer appears relaxed within a house-like structure, laughing manically. Meanwhile, Théret, adorned in a red silky dress with glitter accents, moves deliberately on an elevated platform, audibly controlling her breath. As the choreography unfolds, a dialectical interplay ensues for ambiguous reasons, exploring origins of destruction, hysteria, violence, and intimate resistance. Théret and Mitterhofer ultimately navigate the shifting dynamics among female subjects within broader societal frameworks.

 

Concept, direction, costume, performance: Shade Théret & Magdalena Mitterhofer
Sound: Alexander Iezzi
Stage Design: Joseph Bourgois
Video (Vienna): Jonathan Hörnig
Photos (Vienna): Joseph Bourgois
Hair & Make-Up: Sophia Mittherhofer, Hannah Brugger
Photo & Video (Berlin): Emma Dudlyke
Poster Design: Rob Kulisek

 

Co-produced by Tanzquartier Wien as part of Rakete Festival 2023.

Curated by Lewon Heublein

 

Premiere: Tanzquartier Wien, Rakete Festival

Other Iterations:

Pogo Bar, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Curatorial: Léon Kruijswijk
Curatorial Assistance: Nikolas Brummer
13.07.2023

Rude no.1

Situated performance (2023)

Duration: 35 minutes

 
Closed on one side, open on the other, the Hofgarten arcades become a shelter, but not quite. While existing in open view, the moving body can always be looked at from the center of the garden. The protection and intimacy suggested by the architecture conflicts with its actual publicity: since the Hofgarten was initially conceived as a private and representative site, todays attempt to use it collectively does not go without friction.The original purpose of entertaining the 1% still seems to be the agenda of the park’s management. Who constitutes the public within such a predefined space and which forms of use serve whom? The new piece, rude no.1 by Shade Théret and Magdalena Mitterhofer tests the passageway of the arcades as a threshold for various figures that have inhabited the space throughout different moments in time. The performance aims to invent an archive of past narratives through the enacting of historical archetypes, such as the garden hermit and the dancer Lola Montez. In that vein, rudeness and lamenting are proposed as a liberating and transgressive act by which means the park’s function as a socially resistant site is overstrained. In the 18th century, ornamental hermits were held in purpose-build grottos, obligated to live alone and only present themselves in daylight, whenever their employers wished for amusement. The hermit was used as yet another object to embellish the garden. Not only in the case of this figure the differentiation of decoration and vandalism seems to be a subjective one: for some, Lola Montez was a transfixed muse, for others the embodiment of obscenity.The dancer was denied membership at Kunstverein München in 1846. Théret and Mitterhofer study the rejected movements of Lola Montez through their own. Rude no.1 thus examines performance as ornament, as entertainment, and as objectification.
 
Concept, direction, performance: Shade Théret & Magdalena Mitterhofer
Pianist: Ben Cruchley
Video and Photo: CNP Studio
 
Performance commissioned by Kunstverein München 
Curated by Gina Merz

Press:
Passe-Avant

I’M GOING TO SLASH IT / JE VAIS LE DÉCHIRER

Situated performance (2023)

Duration: 35 minutes

 

As part of Circuit City Showroom group show with - 

Chiritiane Blattmann, Kira Scerbin,
MRZB, Shade Théret, Temra Pavlovic


The opening was marked by a performance by Shade Théret

Concept, choreography, costume, music mix, performance: Shade Théret



Curated by Filippo Tocchi, Rin Suemitsu, MRZB