Leila Hekmat presents "Roses Rising – The Movement," a newly commissioned performance at Gropius Bau. The work takes place in the building's atrium across two evenings: Friday March 6 and Saturday March 7, both starting at 8pm.
The performance follows a group of women who transform from dinner guests into leaders with followers. They sing, rant, chant, preach, dance, burn incense and work with flowers. The piece asks whether these gestures constitute revolution or something else entirely. The performers address the audience directly, inviting participation: "Calling all of today's new tribe of teenagers, turned-on children, teeny-boppers and adolescent hippies! Are you tired, rundown, listless? Corruptible minds and masses: help the helpless, hump the hopeless, heal the hapless."
The format moves between concert, happening, ballet and collective dream. Hekmat developed the work through research on 1970s protest cultures, creating a performative collage that examines how people respond to crisis. The staging includes meticulously handcrafted costumes and set designs, each element built specifically for this production.
Hekmat's approach combines comedy, musical tableau vivant and performance. The work examines the relationship between political action and theatrical gesture, asking what happens when revolutionary movements adopt the language and aesthetics of spectacle. The 1970s protest materials she collected get reassembled not as historical recreation but as active investigation into how dissent presents itself.
The performance tests whether revolution can function as ritual, whether political desire survives its own staging, whether collective action requires belief or simply participation. These questions address contemporary conditions where protest already operates through performance, already stages itself for documentation, already borrows from entertainment vocabularies.
The atrium setting matters. Gropius Bau's central space becomes both stage and gathering place, with the architecture defining how performers and audience relate. The two performances offer limited opportunities to witness the work in its commissioned context.
Friday March 6 and Saturday March 7, 8pm. Gropius Bau, Berlin.