"The aim of love is to love, that is all" wrote Oscar Wilde, but what is love? What forms does love take? And what does it really mean to fall in love? What does it feel like to be "in love" and what might become of it?

PRETTY PLAYFUL PRODUCTIONS embarks on a search for the core of romantic love - a topic that is so big and seemingly earth-shattering, we explore it piece by piece. Together with the audience. We want to animate the stage space together and plunge into the flood of love in our society: who will go with the flow and who will swim against it?

PREMIERE  June 2024 / Zentrum für Kunst, Bremen

Humans are masters at underestimating two fundamental things: the size of the space that surrounds them and how little of it they actually comprehend - everyone lives in their own reality and defines it as the only truth.

In the project "alien reality" two people from different worlds meet in a space they both claim as their own. The strangers suddenly find themselves in front of each other and have to deal with feelings such as fear, aversion, but also curiosity - which inevitably leads to tension.  Because, they have to learn that their own truth is not the only valid one.

PREMIERE  March 2022 / Theater Ansbach

The public space is our stage. Three performers leave the loneliness in front of their home screens and venture out onto the street to (try to) find a community between rules of distance and the obligation to wear a mask. Living together, how did that go again? Where some feel restricted, others urge responsibility for one another. How do individuals become a society? This question is explored by performing:group in the new edition of CAN TOUCH THIS [Einige Von Uns].

PREMIERE  2020 in Berlin & July 2021  Festival Starke Stücke

To touch is provocation. To touch is beautiful. To touch is inappropriate. To touch is vital. Culture and traditions determine whether a touch is pleasant or embarrassing. Or are we the ones who decide that?
We want to be seen, we want to be loved, we want to be wanted. But please don’t touch!
Five actors examine this dilemma of modern life: We long to be touched, and yet we also want to be safe from harm. The performers allow closeness and lose control. They push their own and others’ boundaries, they touch and experience lust. They blunder and stumble over cultural barriers, cause embarrassment – and then they gently take the audience back to a safe place.

BERLIN PREMIERE   January 2020 / Theater Strahl Berlin, as part of the PURPLE Dance Festival

NRW PREMIERE  January 2020 / Tanzfaktur Cologne

The bread is being cut with a circular saw, Dad is wearing high heels, Mom is at the fire department, little sister is fetching the hunting rifle, Grandma is breakdancing, little brother is putting on makeup with a kohl pencil. Everyone is holding hands and yelling "Bon appetit!"
Images that do not sound like usual traditions and rather cause alienation because - simply put - they do not correspond to one's expectations and knowledge. However, these images are not completely unrealistic. They are certainly conceivable.
Traditions, rituals, role models, and worldviews can provide security and safety, but they can also foster narrowness, limitation, and prejudice. With fun and humor, the five dancers dissect common clichés, whirl them around, put them back together again, and in the process ask what the generations can learn from each other.

PREMIERE  June 2018 / Tafelhalle Nuremberg

How do we form an image of something? How do we perceive? What is reality and what is fiction? What really happens and what do we only think we know?
We are constantly fed information by the media or in real life that creates images in our minds. Visual and acoustic stimuli are in the foreground. We put information together like pieces of a puzzle to form an overall picture, unconsciously compare it with our experiences and in this way form a picture of something.
Trigger produces fragments of information that largely elude the visible as certain knowledge.
Soundscapes, text fragments, dance actions and darkness challenge the viewers' perception, bring the speculative to the fore and pose the question of how individuals and societies behave when we no longer know what to believe.

PREMIERE  March 2018 / Künstlerhaus Nuremberg

More than one million refugees are seeking protection from persecution and war in Germany. In children's news, in families, at school, there is talk about living together with the strangers who come into our society. How do we deal with the stranger(s)? What fears and prejudices are awakened? What can be tolerated or even accepted and what not?

How do the "strangers" deal with what is foreign to them? And finally: How can we shape living together in the future?

In a kind of test laboratory, five dancers from different cultures develop ever new ideas about how living together could work. If an attempt fails, tabula rasa is created, everything is reset to zero and a new attempt begins.

PREMIERE  29th May 2016 / Tafelhalle Nürnberg

A sense of threat is in the air. Education plan reform, homosexual marriage, rainbow families - what else should be tolerated, what should be accepted in the end? People who live differently raise questions and there is a lot of friction in society. Traditional and stereotypical role and family images are being shaken up.
What can and should a "man" or a "woman" be today? What is a normal family today? What is normal at all? What is accepted? How much freedom do I dare to live myself?
Using the example of queer lifestyles, "Stereo Types" tells of fears, the desire for security and the courage to go one's own way beyond social norms and conventions.

PREMIERE  March 2015 / Künstlerhaus Nuremberg

The project has two special features: On the one hand, we deal with the subject matter of the plays "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (Edward Albee) and "The God of Carnage" (Yasmina Reza), in the form of two couples of the educated middle class who meet on stage. "The God of Carnage" is currently already being performed on many theater stages, including the Nuremberg State Theater, with great success. The project "body.bilder.strip" wants to illuminate the topic for the spectator from a completely different perspective through dance-theatrical presentation. On the other hand, the viewer witnesses a delicate process: namely the fusion of sequential representation, which is inherent to comics, and dance! The endeavor to unite static images and snapshots with the dynamic quality of dance resembles the attempted solution of a paradox. But exactly in this the ensemble also sees the chance to climb a new rock of narrative art and even more: as a seemingly logical consequence the SETanztheater will publish a comic book from the sequence of images of the piece, which makes the dance theater body.bilder.strip consumable as a reading - dance theater "to go"!

PREMIERE  6th March2014 / Tafelhalle Nuremberg

Dance theater piece for 4 dancers and a band. In a puzzle of songs they interact with each other in a dynamic piece.

PREMIERE  January 2012 / Tafelhalle Nuremberg

Who is Peer Gynt? A ruthless egoist, a notorious swindler, a manic seeker of meaning or a megalomaniac dreamer? In any case, he does not allow himself to be restricted by conventions. And he throws himself into ever new experiences: No sooner does he reach one goal than he reaches for the next.

In his decidedly contemporary and musical version of the play, choreographer and director Sebastian Eilers sends a dancer, a dancer and an actor on a wild and excessive journey ... Berlin musician Gerhard Schmitt (Blue Men Group) composed songs to which Henrik Ibsen immediately supplied the lyrics in his dramatic poem.

PERFORMANCE  February 2015 / Schleudertraum Festival Regensburg

"What am I proud of?" "What is my personal contribution to society?" "Am I the person I want to be or am I basically guided by my surrounding?" In advance, those and more questions where asked to several people with different working backgrounds. We all wanna belong to somewhere and are mainly influenced by our origin. There is a big imprint by our parents in our early childhood - they teach us values and give an idea about goals in life. Then there are cultural aspects which define also our belonging and our social life.

Nevertheless the country we were born into stands for a lot of values that we unconsciously take over. But how individual can we be and when is the moment to rest and be proud of what we did in life?

PREMIERE  June 2017 / TanzArt Kirschau e.V

We do live in a time that is very much affected by virtuality, where a „like“ seems to have the power to decide over popularity and pretended quality. Hardly no company can do without a digital presence and also in the individual presentation we tend to show quite the best version of ourselves. We do ask the internet first and then decide if it´s worth to to what we wanted to do instead of asking friends for recommendations.

Being kids we were motivated to continue if you fail. Continue learning how to ride a bike, how to swim or just to accept that weird taste of spinach.

So, what does this overhasty pushing the button of „I like“ but also judging others and ourselves do with us? Don´t we loose the curiosity, the joy of playing and trust in discovering something.

PREMIERE  February 2016 / Tanzwerkstatt Cottbus

Inspired by musicals of the 1930's and 40's, "Three Headed Hollywood" plays with the formalities of dance tradition with humour and benevolence, referencing elements of music and fashion of the time.

Whilst still keeping true to tradition, the work adapts key elements to create a contemporary twist.

PREMIERE  April 2015 / Tanzwoche Dresden