I won't give up on this

“When you think the other is weaker, you punch them in the mouth. When you think they’re stronger, you laugh along.”
(from Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi)

l’amour toujours, the iconic Eurodance track by Gigi D’Agostino, became in the summer of 2024 a symbol of the unashamed rightward shift in German society—after young white adults on the island of Sylt turned it into the soundtrack of their celebration of youth, wealth, and privilege in an exclusive club.
Taking this incident as a starting point, we confront the cultural war imposed upon us—a Dirty Care, approached choreographically and through dance, as we search for tenderness and resistance.

l’amourtoujours (reprise/dirtycare) explores how intimacy and closeness respond to repression and power—and how they can be preserved. It asks how fragility and care work can endure within resistant movements. We search for forms of proximity, resistance, and self-defense.
How do we deal with the fact that a song that once meant intimacy and retreat for us has been appropriated by fascism?
Drawing on the philosophical inquiries of Elsa Dorlin, we question the self-defense dispositifs of our present. We look back at past resistance movements and at the foundations of bourgeois property promises. We aim to learn from earlier practices of self-defense and ask how future revolutionary and liberatory movements can sustain intimacy and fragility in the pursuit of a more just society.

l’amourtoujours (reprise/dirtycare) is a choreography and direction by the duo Hempel | calendal, in collaboration with musician Jasmina Rezig (sound concept) and performer/dancer Thato Kämmerer, embedded in the production “I won’t give up on this” at Theaterhaus Jena.
Since 2015, Hempel | calendal have worked together as a choreography and directing duo, exploring the artistic and social conditions under which collective life is organized.

Cast: Mona Louisa-Melinka Hempel, Thato Kämmerer, Jasmina Rezig
Direction: calendal
Choreography: Mona Louisa-Melinka Hempel
Music: Jasmina Rezig

This part of the evening is co-produced by the duo Hempel | calendal.

200 Years in the Future: The Last Inhabitant of Hiddensee

The last resident of Hiddensee—this island of longing, so flat and small that the Baltic Sea seemed poised to swallow it—remains. In a desperate attempt to protect the island from the rising sea, it was surrounded by a massive concrete wall. Within these walls, the last inhabitant preserves the remnants of centuries of residents, vacationers, and artists. He wonders what remains of humanity when people leave. Isn’t there a magic left in the grasses and sea buckthorn bushes where humans once lived, loved, and wrote poetry? Or why else do we not simply surrender Hiddensee to the sea?

Jonathan Perleth visited this enchanting island in his childhood, an island that so generously shares its magic. Along the coast, the climate crisis is palpable through rising sea levels and coastal erosion. Already in the early 2000s, Hiddensee was at risk: because the island is so narrow and flat, it threatened to break apart. Coastal protection measures have so far prevented this. But how far is humanity willing to go as the sea continues to rise? In engaging with themes of home, farewell, and the climate crisis, Jonathan Perleth wrote the text for this monologue in late summer 2025.

Performed by: Jonathan Perleth

Can a revolution be sparked by doing nothing?
Who is this man who simply stands there?

We dare the revolution! Against the madness of our times. No matter how strong the headwinds blow, the performance continues until death. Crises, jumbled letters, and nonsense. We perform for life and death in search of courage, hope, and a new language. The goal is serious, the journey humorous.

Kurt Schwitters was a revolutionary himself—in language and in art. His work flashes unpredictably, provokes, and delights—still today. Nothing was too ordinary for him to turn into art.

Schwitters moved between the aftermath of the First World War, the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Second World War. Disappointment and anger at the hypocrisy of past beliefs, along with fear in the face of an uncertain future, led to battles between parties, ideologies, and populists. The war shifted from the battlefield into the minds. With it, familiar order shattered into fragments. All established meanings lost significance.

Yet he was not rendered speechless: he captured these fragments and created an anti-cosmos, questioning all societal conventions through his art.

In this uncertain future lies opportunity—let us seize it!

Luana Velis takes Schwitters’ visual and verbal worlds to the turntable. In this Dada-inspired story, the question arises whether one person alone can tilt the world off its hinges. There she stands, all alone. For what does it take to make theatre? A performer and an audience.

With this fifth solo work, Luana Velis directs and performs herself. Her first solo evening, Viola Chilensis, earned a nomination for the Folkwang Prize, and her other solo works premiered at venues including the Residenztheater, the Staatsschauspiel Augsburg, and the Britney X Festival at Schauspiel Köln.

Performed by: Luana Velis

Shared solitude
Alone in the choir
Together, yet apart
Familiar estrangement
Loneliness in a duet
Close, yet untouched

Saba Hosseini, Ioana Nițulescu, and Florian Thongsap Welsch, together with musician Jakob Zimmer-Harwood, set out to create their part of the evening from nothing: without a pre-existing script, without predetermined content. From the very first rehearsal, they discussed, wrote, designed scenes, rehearsed, discarded—and in the process discovered the themes they could not let go of, the stories that had to be told. From this method emerges a collage of thoughts, texts, and scenes that playfully reflect a world startlingly close to our own.

In Solitär im Kollektiv, intimate memories, social questions, and grotesque scenarios collide. Three characters stumble through spotlights, family stories, meditation classes, talk shows, and ecstatic rituals. What happens when plants die, patriarchy collapses, and deities desire? Sometimes quietly and tenderly, sometimes loudly and absurdly. And the question remains: how much collective is there in the solitary?

Performed by: Saba Hosseini, Ioana Nițulescu, Florian Thongsap Welsch
Music: Jakob Zimmer-Harwood

This is the fifth world.
This is our world.
This is your world.

After the applause, the audience is invited to let go: come onto the stage and dance with us. Jasmina Rezig DJs every evening, creating a space for community, challenge, and connection. The DJ set, inspired by the different worlds of the piece, offers the opportunity to end the evening together with bass music—and to begin a new world.

DJ: Jasmina Rezig, until 11:30 PM on the main stage of Theaterhaus