Showcase „paths through my garden – Kunst von Mark Sieczkarek“

Exhibition, Performances, Films

Oktober 9. – 26, 2025 / Fridays to Sundays 3 – 9 pm and during the events
at Schauspielhaus / Pina Bausch Centre under construction
Bundesallee 260, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
barrier-free access, free seating

Vernissage and Opening reception on October 9 at 6 pm with music, speeches and performances

Tickets and registration via Wuppertal-Live

In the midst of preparing "paths through my garden – The Art of Mark Sieczkarek," what began as a diverse showcase of works has also become a painful memorial. We mourn Mark Sieczkarek, a wonderful person, valuable friend, and unique artist. He passed away on September 8, 2025. The exhibition and entire program were conceived with him. Now we will continue to let the garden grow for him, with many companions along the way. Between dance, visual arts, costumes, film, performance, installation, upcycling, music, and conversations.

We invite you to the showcase paths through my garden – Art by Mark Sieczkarek, an outstanding choreographer and artist, and ask you to draw attention to it. The showcase will take place from Thursday, October 9 to Sunday, October 26, 2025 at the Schauspielhaus and future Pina Bausch Centre, Bundesallee 260, 42103 Wuppertal. For the first time, it illuminates comprehensive questions and recurring motifs of the artist, his artistic research and experiments, his companions and fields of influence. As a retrospective, it is more than an exhibition – it is also an encounter with the work of an artist that influences the future of performative arts.

Opening hours are Friday through Sunday, 3 - 9 pm. Additionally, a diverse accompanying program with films, performances and subsequent discussions, as well as two publications, invite visitors to experience and explore the artist's multifaceted work.

What happens when a choreographer, working as a versatile artist, brings together virtuoso devotion, stillness, and eccentricity? A deep aura of change and transformation emerges. For four decades, Mark Sieczkarek has been fascinatingly diverse in his activity. In doing so, he transforms materials – from leaves and blossoms to seemingly useless, discarded things – into poetic artworks, creating entirely new worlds. We invite you to discover an artist who unites restraint, virtuoso devotion, imagination, love for people, much humor, and the quirkiness in his person and in his art. His first major showcase paths through my garden – Art by Mark Sieczkarek is a journey through artistic worlds, from intimate sketches and powerful images to innovative costume and stage designs to moving films. Experience how Mark Sieczkarek has explored and redefined the boundaries between dance, visual arts, and performance since the 80s, manifesting his vision in various media. The showcase paths through my garden opens the doors to his multilayered universe for the first time and makes the poetic power of his creation experienceable in all its facets.

Mark Sieczkarek was born in Scotland in 1962 and came to Wuppertal in 1986 as a dancer with Pina Bausch's Tanztheater, where he has lived ever since. He danced in the premieres of Pina Bausch's Viktor and Ahnen as well as in many masterworks, including Arien, Kontakthof, Die sieben Todsünden, Das Frühlingsopfer, Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört, and Nelken. He appeared in the films Die Klage der Kaiserin and Ahnen ahnen directed by Pina Bausch. Then he launched his own international career as choreographer and dancer. Since then, he has travelled nationally and internationally with over 50 of his own productions and in various collaborations, in Germany for example at tanzhaus NRW, Ringlokschuppen Mülheim, Pumpenhaus Münster, but also in Ghana, Brazil, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. His diverse work, which includes choreographies as well as costumes, stage designs, drawings, photographs, and films, invites exploration of the work and aura – like a lush garden – to be discovered and experienced.

The opening begins with the vernissage on October 9 at 6 pm including music, speeches, and performances by Julie Shanahan, Wigabriel Soto Eschebach, Jean Laurent Sasportes, Mihara Keizuke, and music by Roberto Graiff and RitalPop. Further highlights are film evenings in cooperation with the Pina Bausch Foundation, and cinematic time travels through Sieczkarek's visual worlds including his moving dancer history at Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: On Friday, October 10 at 4 pm, Pina Bausch's film Die Klage der Kaiserin (1989) will be shown, in which Mark Sieczkarek participated as a dancer. On Saturday, October 11 at 7 pm, the film by Mark Sieczkarek Malou and Dominique (2020) shows his extraordinary work full of surprises with the legendary dance theater dancers Malou Airaudo and Dominique Mercy. The first showcase weekend concludes on Sunday, October 12 at 6 pm with Pina Bausch's film AHNEN ahnen (1987/2014) and a subsequent discussion.

On Saturday, October 18 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, October 19 at 5 pm, the dance performance by and with the two dancer personalities Cristiana Morganti and Emanuele Soavi invites to Open Studio THIS IS A PREMIERE Unplugged with subsequent LIVING ROOM, an audience discussion.

All people from 6 to 99 can discover their creative side on Saturday, October 25 from 11 am to 3 pm in this unique workshop that combines costume design and movement in a GARDEN PARTY. Under the direction of Berlin choreographer and costume designer Lee Méir, recipient of the Pina Bausch Fellowship and internationally present on renowned stages such as Radialsystem Berlin and Tanz im August, you will experience an inspiring day full of artistic encounter and embodied learning.

The performance Plastic takes up scenes from one of his choreographies on the evening of October 25 at 7 pm, moving between environmental crisis and magical beauty. With Kenji Takagi, Stsiapan Hurski, Anna Lisa Palmieri, and Wigabriel Soto Eschebach, long-time dance colleagues of Mark Sieczkarek come together for a poetic play with materials, bodies, and sounds, accompanied by live music (trumpet: Karlo Wentzel, percussion: André Füsser).

As the conclusion of the showcase, on Sunday, October 26 at 6 pm, the film Streetwear (2025) directed by Mark Sieczkarek will be shown. In this curious dance film, Wuppertal transforms into a pulsating Gesamtkunstwerk of movement, fashion, and urban poetry, bringing the city to new life with 22 performers.

Conceived with Mark Sieczkarek, the exhibition and entire program now invite us to continue growing his garden together with all his companions, with all our hearts, in love – that which perhaps distinguished him most.

We thank you for announcing the showcase and program.
With warm regards, Kerstin Hamburg, Uta Atzpodien, Bettina Milz, Felicitas Willems
paths through my garden preparation team

The project is produced by TANZRAUSCHEN and is part of the preparatory phase of the Pina Bausch Centre. Cooperation partners are the Dachverband Tanz, the Pina Bausch Foundation, and the German Dance Archive Cologne.

The showcase can be realized thanks to funding from the Kunststiftung NRW, the Fonds Darstellende Künste, the Cultural Office of the City of Wuppertal, the Dr. Werner Jackstädt Foundation Wuppertal, the Sparkassenfonds for Art and Culture in Wuppertal, and the Stiftung Kalkwerke Oetelshofen.

The Pina Bausch Centre is a project of the City of Wuppertal, funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, in cooperation with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and the Pina Bausch Foundation.

TANZRAUSCHEN is a recognized non-profit organization in Wuppertal and is supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Wuppertal.

Tickets for the exhibition and program are available at wuppertal-live.de

Further informations:

www.pinabauschzentrum.de www.under-construction-wuppertal.de www.tanzrauschen.de