Xenia
Xenia invites you into a play, a choral reading, a dance performance—where the roles of observer and performer are fluid. It moves between the anticipated and the alien, exploring the theatrical potential of somatic practices while also bringing them into a space of encounter.
At its core is a script: a choral text to be read and enacted by everyone in the room. This reading conjures a situation for dance, imagination, sensations, and minor stories to unfold in parallel.
The title comes from the Greek words xenios (the hospitable one) and xenos (the stranger), inviting a kind of welcome—not just of others, but of what feels unfamiliar within ourselves. This duality threads through the structure of the piece and shapes a fictional persona who slips into the role of hostess, modulating how we are together. Through this lens, performing becomes a practice of hosting and ghosting—where somatic practices offer pathways for alienation and reconnection, as well as tools to navigate proximity and distance.
Tickets and accessibility
There is a limited number of tickets, so please register.
>> Book your tickets for Xenia here!
Notes on accessibility:
Language in the performance is English
The performance venue is on the first floor of the building. In case of need to access the venue with an elevator please reach out to karin.hauptmann@uniarts.se in advance.
Credits
Choreography, performance: Susanne Grau
Sound design: Ismail Yakout
Supervisors: Anne Juren, Stina Nyberg and Melanie Jame Wolf
Production: Karin Hauptmann
Thank you for all the support to my supervisors, my NPP peers and NPP staff. Thank you to Midsommargården and its team for the support in the frame of C/O Midsommargården.
Bio
Susanne Grau (*1988, Germany) works as a dancer, choreographer and Rolfing practitioner based in Berlin. Across projects, she explores relationships of language, physicality, imagination and rhythm. She likes to see performative practice as a facilitation of encounters, as a kind of seance and psychomagical field of experimentation.
Together with Arantxa Ciafrino, Juana del Mar and Franziska Gerth she is organising and teaching regular dance classes for children and teenagers living in refugee centers in Berlin. Since 2024 Susanne is a member of considering network, a group of artists with a bodywork practice interested in the intersection of choreography and bodywork and the politics of touch.
