Five projects have been selected to be presented this year as part of the International May Festival in Wiesbaden: 

· “There will be no blood”; Genre: Performance; Participants: Katharina Heißenhuber, Nora Bussenius, Dea Bejleri. The performance “There will be no blood” explores menstruation as the source and pacemaker of life force. The main character embarks on a journey, exploring her own Catholic-influenced body image during her teenage years, which must grapple with her first menstruation. She navigates the ups and downs of hormonal fluctuations and then attempts to prepare herself for the impending cessation of menstruation—to arm herself, to gear up. Is a new interpretation of this phase of life possible? The attempt is made. Date: Wednesday, May 6, 7:30 p.m., Studio, Hessisches Staatstheater, Christian Zais Straße 3, Admission: 18 euros, reduced 9 euros.

· “We Must Play, or: Don’t Talk About Operas”; Genre: concert performance, Participants: art.ist.kollektiv (Silvia Sauer, Leila Haas, Michael Protzen, Dirk Marwedel, Ulrike Schwarz, Stefan Varga, Jan-Filip Tupa, Ingo Deul, Leon Senger, Wolfgang Schliemann). Most of the time, there is a lot of talking, little is said, and hardly anyone listens: The art.ist.kollektiv asks: How and about what do people talk, what is said? Meanwhile, the collective plays with language and translates it into sound, rhythm, and melody, moving from text to music, from music to movement, from talking to playing. In the best case, understanding is achieved playfully: a resonant togetherness amidst the Babylonian confusion. Date: Saturday, May 9, 7:30 p.m., Kunsthaus, Schulberg 10. Admission: 18 euros, reduced 9 euros.

· “re-”; Genre: Dance, sound art, installation; Participants: Johannes Schropp, Lidia Luciano, Laura Salerno, Daniel Myers, Raquel Nevado Ramos, Mar Sanchez Cisneros – a production by Air Italics, supported by Dance Nexus e.V. re- invites immersion as a meditative, spatiotemporal site of resonance between dance, sound art, and video installation. The work is dedicated to the figure of the knight and the re-alization of masculinity, which unfolds between mystical, fairy-tale-like, romanticized, and historically documented realities. As both an artistic method and an attitude of reception, re- unfolds between the interior and the exterior—in search of a soft, malleable resonance of masculinity within the spatio-temporal, between the tangible and the elusive. Dates: Friday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., Georg Buch Haus, Wellritzstraße 38, and Saturday, May 16, 4:00 p.m., Georg Buch Haus, Wellritzstraße 38. Admission: 18 euros, reduced 9 euros. 

· “Stücke für Jetzt Vol. 3 – The Uncanny Rebellion of Dreams”; Genre: Performance concert, dance; Participants: Mareike Buchmann, Yi-Lun Chen Czajor, Lena Kunz, Felicitas Baumann, Lina Hartmann, Robert Krajnik. Ida Flux opens a poetic-surrealist space in which our dreams lead a rebellious life of their own. They well up as sounds, generate sprawling bodily forms, shimmering movements, and shape associative visual spaces. The “uncanny rebellion” refers to those moments in which the dream emerges as living energy and acts of resistance. Stücke für Jetzt explores the relationship between art and the present: Vol. 3 turns its gaze toward our collective dreamscapes. Date: Wednesday, May 20, 7:30 p.m., Wartburg, Schwalbacher Straße 51. Admission: 18 euros, reduced 9 euros.

· “At the Limits of the Pulse”; Genre: Concert, Exhibition, Installation; Participants: Wingel Gilberto Pérez Mendoza, Juan Bermudez, Irene de Luis Ballesteros, Olga Pacheco Lagutienko. “At the Limits of the Pulse” is a transdisciplinary performance that makes the human heartbeat tangible as a medium of collective resonance. Live music, electronics, a generative video, and an interactive sound sculpture combine individual and collective experience. The performers’ heartbeats, captured live, are interwoven with recorded pulses and activate an installation of percussion objects that makes the invisible rhythm audible and palpable. In four movements, the piece evolves from a dialogue between instrument and pulse into atmospheric soundscapes in which the heartbeat remains present. Installation dates: From Wednesday, May 20, to Sunday, May 31: During the Kunsthaus’s opening hours (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and holidays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.), Concert date: Friday, May 29, 7:30 p.m., Kunsthaus, Schulberg 10. Admission: 18 euros, reduced rate 9 euros (concert), installation free of charge. 

Further information can be found at www.wiesbaden.de/projektstipendium-maifestspiele (opens in a new tab). Tickets (and further information) are available at www.maifestspiele.de (opens in a new tab).