PERFORM!

The focus is on Trisha Brown’s ‘Walking on the Wall’ (1971), a major work of the US Judson Dance movement, which is being staged to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence.

Further performances by Kianí Del Valle, Josh Johnson, Miriam Kongstad and Deva Schubert offer diverse perspectives on the contemporary concept of performance.

As is tradition, a historically groundbreaking performance forms the starting point for the PERFORM! programme. Trisha Brown’s “Walking on the Wall” (1971) is being further developed in close collaboration with the Trisha Brown Dance Company and will be presented on the outer glass façade of the Neue Nationalgalerie. From 9 to 12 September 2026, the work will be staged once daily at 5 pm on the terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie. On Sunday, 13 September 2026, the work can be seen at 2 pm and 6.30 pm.

With the performance “INSTRUCCIONES PARA EXISTIR (INSTRUCTIONS FOR EXISTING)”, which will be staged on 9 and 13 September 2026, Berlin-based artist Kianí Del Valle, together with the KDV Performance Group, presents a work developed specifically for the Neue Nationalgalerie. In her practice, Del Valle combines dance with stunt elements and places bodies in a direct relationship with the surrounding architecture. ‘INSTRUCCIONES PARA EXISTIR’ responds to Mies van der Rohe’s iconic building and can also be read as a contemporary homage to the pioneering work of Trisha Brown.

For members of the press, the Neue Nationalgalerie will be screening the dress rehearsal of “INSTRUCCIONES PARA EXISTIR” on Monday, 7 September 2026, at 6 pm – accreditation via email to: presse.nng@smb.spk-berin.de

On Sunday 13 September 2026, performances by Josh Johnson, Miriam Kongstad and Deva Schubert will round off the festival programme.

Over the past four years, the Neue Nationalgalerie has already organised the performance art festival PERFORM! with great success as part of Berlin Art Week. Building on historical works by Simone Forti (2022), Yoko Ono (2023), Yvonne Rainer (2024) and Joan Jonas (2025), the festival has also featured contemporary contributions from artists including Göksu Kunak, Miles Greenberg, Enad Marouf, Bendik Giske, Constantin Hartenstein, Billy Bultheel, Isaac Chong Wai and Corey Scott-Gilbert (vAL).

PERFORM! is curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, together with Lisa Botti, curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, and Gregor Quack, Volkswagen Group Curator.

The American Academy in Berlin is a partner of PERFORM! 2026.

PROGRAMME

Trisha Brown: Walking on the Wall (1971)

Wed 9 September 2026, 5.00–5.30 pm

Thu 10 September 2026, 5.00 – 5.30 pm

Fri 11 September 2026, 5.00 – 5.30 pm

Sat 12 September 2026, 5.00–5.30 pm

Sun 13 September 2026, 2.00 – 2.30 pm + 6.30 – 7.00 pm

Venue: Terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie

‘Walking on the Wall’ is one of the best-known and most influential works by the American choreographer and conceptual artist Trisha Brown. The piece premiered in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and is regarded as a seminal work. By having an ensemble of seven dancers walk along the museum wall with the aid of ropes and body harnesses, Brown challenged the perceived laws of the performing arts with a simple yet radical gesture. Whilst the virtuoso defiance of vertical gravity often serves as the visual climax in classical ballet, Brown changed the rules of the game by inverting the forces of gravity – and raises questions about the standardisation of movement sequences and the point at which a movement becomes dance or performance. At the Neue Nationalgalerie, ‘Walking on the Wall’ reveals new layers of meaning in interplay with Mies van der Rohe’s glass façade

Trisha Brown (1936–2017) was one of the most influential choreographers of her time. As a co-founder of the Judson Dance Theatre, she contributed to a wave of interdisciplinary creativity that came to define 1960s New York. Over the course of her career, Brown created more than 100 choreographies and six operas. Her ‘Equipment Pieces’ – including ‘Man Walking Down the Side of a Building’ (1970) – radically expanded the concept of dance to encompass questions of gravity and everyday space.

KDV Performance Group / Kianí Del Valle: INSTRUCCIONES PARA EXISTIR (INSTRUCTIONS FOR EXISTING) (2026)

Wed 9 September 2026, 5.30 – 6.00 pm

Sun 13 September 2026, 7.00–7.30 pm

Venue: Terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie

Inspired by Trisha Brown’s ‘Walking on the Wall’, the KDV Performance Group takes to the roof of the Neue Nationalgalerie with the site-specific performance ‘INSTRUCCIONES PARA EXISTIR (INSTRUCTIONS FOR EXISTING)’. Directed and choreographed by Kianí Del Valle, and featuring original music by Devonté Hynes, the architectural space is reinterpreted as a dynamic tableau in which an avant-garde dance ensemble meets the disciplined formations of a military unit. The starting point is a fictional text by Del Valle set in the year 3036. He envisions a future in which nostalgia and the memory of our former selves have been completely erased, and militarisation permeates everyday life to such an extent that even mundane actions are organised according to the principles of military structures. The performance explores the tension between control and chaos, the organic and the military, authority and resistance. Through these juxtapositions, it raises fundamental questions about power, surveillance and human connection, whilst simultaneously addressing the urgent need to preserve love, vulnerability and collective memory.

Kianí Del Valle is a performance artist based in Berlin and Los Angeles. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she has been developing a transdisciplinary practice for more than two decades, combining contemporary dance with elements from the visual arts, film, installation and sound, as well as stunt acrobatics. Her works emerge from rituals, intuitive movement and physical endurance, combining these with perspectives drawn from surrealism and mysticism, as well as dystopian realities. Having developed a solo repertoire of more than 22 works, Del Valle founded the KDV Performance Group in Berlin. Del Valle’s works have been shown internationally at numerous renowned institutions, including the Barbican Centre in London, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Volksbühne Berlin, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. In recent years, both Del Valle’s solo works and performances by the KDV Performance Group have been featured at numerous international festivals.

“INSTRUCCIONES PARA EXISTIR (INSTRUCTIONS FOR EXISTING)” is a co-production by the Neue Nationalgalerie and TONO, with support from Nike Sportswear | Nike Air Max Liquid & Studio Fleece.

Josh Johnson: In my garden (2026)

Sun 13 September 2026, 2.30–4.30 pm

Venue: Terrace, Neue Nationalgalerie

A garden thrives not on striking statements and symbols, but on attention and long-term care. “In my garden”, the new solo performance by Josh Johnson, plays with forms of dispersion, distribution and falling. As conventional forms of dance dissolve, new creative impulses emerge in the flow of movement. Johnson develops this work in the spirit of the American writer Toni Morrison, who discovered the laws governing natural cycles of life within historical developments. Consequently, even that which disappears from the surface is not entirely extinguished, but merely returns to the earth, from which new forms can soon emerge once more.

Josh Johnson is a dancer, performer and choreographer from Los Angeles. He was a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (from 2009) and the Forsythe Company (2010–2015), as well as a guest member at the Schauspielhaus Zürich as part of the collective Moved by the Motion (Wu Tsang, boychild, Asma Maroof, Fred Moten). As a co-founder of the SAD Collective, he has staged performances, DJ sets, video works and installations in Europe, the USA and Asia. Johnson has collaborated with artists such as Anne Imhof, Kandis Williams, Wu Tsang and boychild.

Miriam Kongstad: Hard Play (2025)

Sun 13 September 2026, 2.30–4.30 pm

Venue: Terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie

‘Hard Play’ is a choreographic analysis of children’s games. In her work, Miriam Kongstad explores how, from an early age, we are trained to accept and reproduce (gender) identities and social norms. The piece is conceived as a duet and combines the performer’s physical movements with a live soundscape created by musician Heva Vaupel. At the heart of the choreography is a 1.5-metre-long plait, attached to the performer’s hair, which symbolically transforms into various objects commonly associated with children’s games, such as a princess’s hair, a dog lead, a lasso, a skipping rope and a whip.

Miriam Kongstad (born 1991, Denmark) is a choreographer and visual artist who lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen. She trained as a choreographer at the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT) and completed an MFA in Fine Art at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2020. Her practice revolves around physicality, identity and social norms, and takes the form of images, installations, performance, sculpture and sound. Kongstad’s work has been exhibited at venues including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Bergen Kunsthall and the Gwangju Biennale.

Deva Schubert: vocal collisions (variations on the mouth) (2026)

Sun 13 September 2026, 2.30 – 4.30 pm

Venue: Terrace, Neue Nationalgalerie

The mouth is a place characterised by ambivalence. It contaminates and connects, communicates and disrupts in equal measure. It creates bonds and breaks them; it can establish intimacy and destroy it again. It is a gaping hole and yet contains a world of its own. In the new performance ‘vocal collisions (variations on the mouth)’, which builds on her ‘Glitch Choir’ series, Deva Schubert explores the various facets of the mouth through a vocal choreography of microtonal sounds. Here, the mouth becomes both a resonating chamber and an instrument. Accompanied by a soundtrack by Davide Luciani, five performers form shifting vocal constellations, oscillating between gentleness and confrontation.

Deva Schubert is a choreographer and artist based in Berlin. She studied dance in Salzburg, Kassel, Copenhagen and at the HZT Berlin, as well as fine art at the Kassel Academy of Fine Arts. Her works lie at the intersection of dance, installation and digital media, and explore questions of intimacy, collectivity and transdisciplinary synergies. As a dancer, she has worked for, amongst others, Isabelle Schad, Michael Portnoy and Julie Favreau at festivals such as the Venice Biennale, documenta 14 and the Steirischer Herbst. Her work “Glitch Choir” was awarded the ImPulsTanz Young Choreographers’ Award in 2024 and has been shown at venues including the Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Sophiensælen in Berlin.