Free entry, registration via balletforfuture@staatsballett-berlin.de required. 

Art and Criticism

The Staatsballett Berlin invites you to an extra date of its discussion format "Ballet for future? We have to talk!" and dedicates itself to the topic of theatre criticism and its subject, the production of art, in order to have an open discussion.

Are there journalistic tools and rules for a review? What is the task of a theatre critique? Who needs whom to be successful? What do the arts need to offer in order to expect diverse cultural journalistic response? And who should read the reviews? Theatre criticism itself sometimes becomes a stage on which cultural-political disputes are carried out and in which marketing purposes can be fulfilled. What is the relationship of dependence between theater creators - producers and performers - and their reviewers? A certain skepticism and bias seems to fundamentally burden the relationship, in both directions.

In the end, however, the question also plays a role: Is it possible to describe a work of art? "No," is the answer of Alfred Polgar (1873-1955, author of many hundreds of theatre reviews in Vienna and Berlin), and no one has ever succeeded, because "in that which cannot be perceived with the senses, in that which cannot be weighed, measured, reflected, isolated, lies its decisive quality. There, where effect is without recognizable cause." This question is as old as the feuilleton of the European Enlightenment. Is it still asked?

Participants: Esther Boldt (Journalist, Akademie für zeitgenössischen Theaterjournalismus), Eric Gauthier (Artistic Director, Gauthier Dance), Elisabeth Nehring (Journalist, Deutschlandfunk), Christiane Theobald (Acting Artistic Director, Staatsballett Berlin), Ulrich Khuon (Artistic Director, Deutsches Theater), moderated by Claudia Henne

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On the night, a photographer will be present do take photos of the event. Even though, the focus will be on the panelists, audience members might still appear in the background. In case you don't want to appear in any of the photos, please talk to the photographer beforehand.