Ballett meets Irish Folk meets Punk! Auf elektrisierende Weise verbindet das Ensemble-Werk der nordirischen Choreografin Sheena McGrandles Sehnsucht und Entfremdung, Routine und Rebellion. Im Zentrum von „Toil“ steht der tanzenden Körper bei der Arbeit – hin- und hergerissen zwischen diesen vier gegensätzlichen Zuständen. Getrieben von der eigens komponierten Live-Musik zwischen Elektro, Folk und Punk der zwei Musiker*innen auf der Bühne zeichnen die fünf Tänzer*innen ein physisches Porträt des Tanzes: als Ort der Sehnsucht, an dem Bewegung selbst zur Arbeit wird. Entstanden aus einer tiefen Hingabe an den Tanz mit all seinen Kämpfen und Freuden entsteht eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen Körperlichkeit, mit Rhythmus und Zusammenhalt. Ein andauerndes Bemühen, dem sich ständig verändernden Puls der Zeit zu folgen.
Infos
- No language skills required
- Duration: 60 minutes
- June 13: Artist talk following the performance
Accessibility
Accessibility of Location
Sponsors and Supporters
Concept and Choreography: Sheena McGrandles
Choreography and Performance: Michelle Cheung, Eli Cohen, Developed with Martin Hansen, performed by Emil Ertl, Mickey Mahar, Dasniya Sommer
Music Composition: Steve Heather, Marta Forsberg
Dramaturgy: Jette Büchsenschütz
Set Design, Costumes: Michiel Keuper
Costume Assistant: Julianne Längin
Lighting Design: Elliott Cennetoglu
Light operator and Technical Management: Emese Csornai
Choreographic Outside Eye: Laurie Young and Louise Trueheart
Creative Production: Saskia Schoenmaker
Production Assistant: Cote Jaña
PR/Social Media: Agnė Auželytė
Production: Sheena McGrandles. Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer, PACT Zollverein, Theater im Depot. Funded by: Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
Das Jubiläumsprogramm „100 Jahre Mousonturm“ wird durch das Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am
Main gefördert.
Biography
Sheena McGrandles is choreographer and dancer based in Berlin. Originally from Northern Ireland, she grew up in a working-class family with little access to dance training, learning ballet from books and television before securing a place at the Laban Centre London. She later completed the MA Solo Dance Authorship (SODA) at HZT / UdK Berlin with an excellence scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation and was selected for the eight-month residency at K3, Kampnagel.
Since 2010, she has lived and worked in Berlin. Her practice is hybrid and extends beyond the stage, encompassing choreography, performance, teaching, mentoring, curating, and long-term collaborative and infrastructural work. Alongside her artistic practice, she is active in artist-led collectives such as PSR and neue häute / agora, which develop grassroots, non-hierarchical spaces for body-based practices and local exchange.
Choreographically, her work is driven by a strong commitment to form, precision, and virtuosity, with a long-term focus on radical temporality. She investigates how bodies and movement can be slowed down, suspended, or hyper-edited to draw attention to moments of in-between and to transform the everyday into choreography. This research informs the series Radical Temporalities & Illogical Intimacies, including FIGURED (2019), FLUSH (2020), ANYONETHING (2023), and as long as you want (2024), which premiered at HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
In parallel, Sheena has developed an autobiographical strand of work engaging with large theatrical genres. This includes DAWN: A Musical on Reproduction (2021), MINT: An Opera on Money (2024), and TOIL (2025). TOIL examines the dancing body as labour and longing, drawing on ballet, Irish folk, and punk to explore work as an emotional, physical, and collective condition.
Her work is shown nationally and internationally and has been invited twice to Tanzplattform Deutschland (2020, 2022). Since 2024, Sheena is receiving structural funding (Basisförderung), supporting her sustained artistic research and long-term collaborations.