»There is no love of life without despair of life.« — Albert Camus
Image gallery
»if I was real from« is inspired by Albert Camus' early essay »L’envers et l’endroit« (Light and Shadow).
For Camus, light and shadow reflect the struggle between feeling and rationality — a tension that also forms the core of the piece.
»if I was real« explores the paradoxes and ambiguities of human alienation and isolation.
In fragmentary images, a mysterious world of hidden connections unfolds. What at first seems strange gradually becomes familiar — in ways that cannot be put into words.
The dancers immerse themselves in secret rituals, balancing between reality and dream. The choreography plays with illusion and sensuality without fixing itself to definite meanings. Sensory impressions remain open to association, preserving their original beauty.
Additional information
‘Despair and love … inspired by Camus – that is the apt description for this choreography. Whilst early essays, including Camus’s debut work *Light and Shadow* from 1937, served as source material, Toula Limnaios has just stated in an interview that it is impossible to visualise Camus.
Echoes of his work can, however, be found: ‘Light and Shadow’ are to be understood here, in the spirit of Camus, as the rejection and acceptance of the world as it is, as a consciously experienced sense of alienation and a celebration of its beauty, as despair at life and love for life – which, as Camus says, are inseparable.
A field of tension in which Toula Limnaios operates anyway, within her existentialist-rooted magical realism, to which poetry and drama belong as sisters. Yet, surprisingly, in her new choreography she leaves fate, pain and suffering behind and soars into a round dance of festive, wild beauty.”
(Kulturradio, Frank Schmid)
“A Janus-faced dance between fine lines … spaces slide into one another … It is quite astonishing how Toula Limnaios and her company, based at the HALLE Tanzbühne Berlin, continually reinvent themselves. Thus, the eight performers roam between worlds in a stage space divided into three parts. … In the polyphonic solo and group scenes, the protagonists bear little resemblance to lone fighters or shattered individuals who exhaust themselves in conflict with one another. No, in this new work, Toula Limnaios constantly dissolves the powerful unison formations. She creates sensual reflections of movement, of fleeting, sensitive beauty.
The versatile company ‘cie. toula limnaios’ presents us with a danced essay inspired by Camus’s *L’envers et l’endroit* / *Light and Shadow* on the possibilities of existence. Quiet, mysterious, open to new perspectives, a little bit mad.”
(Neues Deutschland, Karin Schmidt-Feister)
Anniversary Festival HALLE Tanzbühne Berlin
- CONCEPT/ CHOREOGRAPHY/ SPACE: Toula Limnaios
- MUSIC: Ralf R. Ollertz
- DANCE/ CREATION: Daniel Afonso, Francesca Bedin, Marco Rizzi, Karolina Kardasz, Enno Kleinehanding, Amandine Lamouroux, Andrés Ortiz, Alessia Vinotto
- TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Felix Grimm
- LIGHTING DESIGN/ LIGHTING/ STAGE TECHNOLOGY: Domenik Engemann
- TOURS/ PARTNERSHIPS: Marie Schmieder
- PUBLIC RELATIONS: Sarah Böhmer
- COSTUMES: Kristina Weiß-Busch
Dates
December 2026
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