Dance Review: Tanz im August 2025

Tanz im August 2025, a festival of contemporary dance in Berlin, came to a close after three weeks with 20 productions spread across 10 venues.

Like each of the years beforehand, the festival championed international artists, who brought their own cultural sensibilities to the medium of dance. Berlin is a centre of dance in Germany, so rather unsurprisingly the productions played to a 95% capacity with 18,800 visitors.

Indeed impressive.

With all these acclaims, I have to say, that I wasn’t as riveted with the offerings this time around. (Read my previous reviews here). I struggled to be excited about the program and although I did manage to see quite a bit, that feeling never left me. Yes, there where some interesting pieces, but apart from one performance, they didn’t grab me emotionally. Which, in my mind, is the thing that dance should do.

Still I do have three performances, that stood above the rest:

Borda by Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças

What I liked best about this piece, was its audacity of the beginning. Because at first, there was no sign of dancing, all you saw was a pile of white rags made of fabric and plastic. For a while, it went on without sound, so much so that you thought there must be a technical problem. But no, in micro-movements at a glacial pace, shapes, then figures, and then even faces slowly emerged. Apparently too much nothingness for the Berlin audience, who bridged the silence with a storm of loud coughing in a nervous, involuntary action, as if not being able to handle this without breaking out in ticks. Still, if you let yourself go and accepted the tempo and scope, the whole thing had a hypnotic appeal that I loved and that lingered. It’s a shame that the second part then developed in a different direction, that was definitely the weaker of the two. But overall, I thought about the piece for a long time – always a good sign!

The valley of sleep by Yara Boustany
The Lebanese choreographer and her three dancers explore dreams and images of the war-torn city of Beirut that haunt them and that dictate past and present. Again, there’s little movement in the beginning, and thanks to a plastic sheet, it’s barely comprehensible what the moving shapes are, how the body parts connect. This mysteriousness combined with exquisitely designed sounds and video images, evoke the city and it’s spirit. The shapes and movements become clearer once the sheet is removed and you can see and experience the force with which the bodies are expressing their connection to the ideas. Somehow it remains rather cerebral and not sensual. Over all the effect of all these components, is nonetheless very disturbing and powerful.

Fandango Reloaded by Inka Romaní

My favourite perfomance comes from the group of six dancers, who combine traditional folkloristic movements and dance sequences with house, break dance and contemporary elements. Castanets, folklore garments and ribbons and old songs are cleverly used to call back to the traditions with which the modern movements begin a dialogue. What stood out for me most was the sheer joy, with which the performers brought their history and traditions to life and flipped everything on their head to find fun combinations. The fact, that three of the dancers also sing or rap during this performance, is the icing on the cake. Apparently their texts were funny too, because they elicited heaps of laughter from a group of Spaniards in the audience. All in all a great evening which left the audience on their feet and begging for more.

Tanz im August will always be interesting and worth visiting for its fresh ideas, its unique international participants and the fascinating venues. But it will have to work hard, to stand out in such a competitive field as the outstanding Berlin dance scene.

Read more about Tanz im August.