THIS IS (NOT) THE END - Premiere at Sophiensæle

THIS IS (NOT) THE END - Premiere takes place on Thursday 12.11.2026 at 21:00 at Sophiensæle (Hochzeitssaal), Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin. Tickets start at 25,00 €, with a reduced price available. The event is a dance and performance piece in the Hochzeitssaal, presented in English.

The work asks how embodied practices transmit cultural memory, and what forms of belonging and togetherness become possible when bodies and dances do not have to belong to only one tradition or nation. It brings together forms of dancing that have travelled across places, borders, communities and generations, unsettling familiar ideas of virtuosity, beauty, gender and social propriety. Within Krzysztof Bagiński's musical landscape and to live piano by Saemi Jeong, the dancers Elvan Tekin and Samuel Francis Perreira combine, layer and shift these forms into a hybrid movement vocabulary in which no dance remains quite what it was before.

Choreography, concept and performance are by Elvan Tekin. Performance is by Samuel Francis Pereira. Sound is by Krzysztof Bagiński and Saemi Jeong.

Costume and set design are by Evan Loxton, light design by Robert Prideaux, production by Tammo Walter, and dramaturgy by Boglárka Börcsök and Jette Bühsenschutz. Outside eye is by Irem Aydin and Enad Marouf, and the dialogue partner is Simge Burhanoglu. The production is by Elvan Tekin in co-production with Sophiensæle.

It is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF), and supported by the residencies in PerformIstanbul, Schloss Bröllin, HAUT Copenhagen and MDT Moderna Dansteatern with kind support of Life Long Burning. The Sophiensæle is a house for artists and audiences in which the encounter between the two groups is central. The building's changing history and its original purpose as a place of assembly, further education and celebration remain perceptible in its architecture, walls and ceilings.