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We see ourselves as a dance company that has been active in the independent scene with various artists and collaborators since 2008.

backsteinhaus produktion is a Stuttgart-based company that has been working in an interdisciplinary way since 2008, starting with contemporary dance. backsteinhaus cooperated with Theater Rampe from 2016 – 2023 under the motto “Rampe tanzt”. This resulted in new collaborations and connections to partners such as Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Theater Lübeck, Eintanzhaus Mannheim, LICHTHOF Theater Hamburg, SID in Seoul/South Korea, Schauspielhaus Vienna. Since 2020, the company has maintained a rehearsal space at the Kunstverein Wagenhallen e.V. The cooperation with Theater Rampe, Stuttgart, will be realigned in the 2023/24 season under new management.

 

 

The core team consists of artistic director Nicki Liszta, project manager Isabelle Gatterburg and composer and musician Heiko Giering. The artistic work at the interface between performance and dance deals with current socio-political and social discourses and negotiates issues from a Eurocentric-critical and feminist perspective. The team is interested in dance as a de-stylised, constantly redefining language. The choreographies often make use of physical extremes full of staging force and their effects. Aesthetically, they like to create grotesque images and shift taboo zones. With each production, a new moving cosmos is created, which gives rise to immersive performances, mediation formats, workshops and discussion groups in black boxes but also in other or public spaces.

Since 2022, Paulina Mandl has been supporting the team in mediation, Kathrin Stärk in public relations, and Mona Louisa-Melinka Hempel as an awareness expert. From June 2023, Franziska Stulle will take over as managing director. As a meanwhile six-member, sociocratically organised team, we are primarily concerned with the topic of “theatre communities in solidarity” as well as the dismantling of barriers, in addition to our artistic work.

 

Inspired by the quote “nothing about us without us” (slogan attributed to Michael Masutha and William Rowland of Disabled People South Africa), the company is increasingly trying to make the productions accessible on different levels.

To do this, they are already collaborating with various people from the urban community in developing participatory formats. This team, called “the companions”, develops participation projects together and thus evaluates and designs multi-perspective participation formats.

 

Through the inclusion of diverse perspectives, we hope to achieve a long-term change in the participation of the ‘majority’ to the participation of the ‘majority’ in our society. In doing so, we follow queerfeminist, anti-discriminatory, anti-racist and antiableist principles. We are convinced that artistic work in and with urban society is made visible and invites co-creation in order to bring forth multi-voiced discourses.