Valerie Reding, Genosidra

Imagine a gloomy, post-apocalyptic urban setting. The air is thick and heavy with smoke and steam. A faint light bounces off the wet floor. A distorted industrial sound haunts the space, pulsating. Mysterious shapes lurk in the shadows. If you look carefully, you might catch glimpses of bodies moving through this strange universe. Come closer. Do you want to be part of this intoxicating dream?

Performer Valerie Reding and sound artist Genosidra will share their first experiments for the new stage work wet dreams, premiering at Tanzhaus in 2026. In their research process, they are supported by choreographic coach Simone Aughterlony, light designer Joseph Wegmann, object designer Victoria Papagni, and dramaturgical advisors Yuvviki Dioh and Jennifer Lopes Santos.

Inspired by hydro-feminism, pleasure activism, and decolonial studies, wet dreams explores our shared vulnerabilities and mutual interdependencies as watery beings on an aqueous planet—dreaming up ways of being together that honor all bodies of water, including non-human ones. What strategies can we embody to transform the atomizing and destructive structures of oppression in our capitalist, colonial, racial, and patriarchal contemporary society—with fluidity and friction, pleasure and care, anger and contagious joy? What is the potential of rituals to transcend, transform, heal, and build connection? How can we be this dystopian mess together?