(Germany / Romania)

“Extinction room” is a place where dreamlike bird calls, cries and songs of extinct and endangered species echo, while three performers recount the stories of these birds. Arranged and composed by AGF, also known as Antye Greie, these sounds become artefacts reflecting the glow of human interaction with nature. 

The bird recordings, collected over several decades by the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Xeno-canto Foundation (Netherland) are mixed with stories – scientific and mythical – and with exciting dance performance choreographed by Sergiu Matis.

“Extinction Room” has toured throughout Europe, including shows at Piatra Neamț Theater Festival, Europalia Arts Festival (Bozar, Brussels), Tanznacht Berlin (Uferstudios), Artdanthé Festival (Vanves), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), DansFabrik (Brest), Bazaar Festival (Prague), Impulse Theater Festival (Mülheim), Latitudes Contemporaines (Lille), Claiming Common Spaces IV (PACT Zollverein, Essen), and Feminist Futures Festival (SZENE, Salzburg).

Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer born in 1981 in Cluj-Napoca. He received his dance education at the Liceul de Coregrafie in Cluj and the Mannheim Academy of Dance, and began his career at Tanztheater Nuremberg. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2008, creating his own works such as Keep It Real (2013), Explicit Content (2015), Neverendings (2017), Hopeless. (2019), UNREST (2021), DRANG (2022) and Blazing Worlds (2023). He has led workshops and educational activities at a range of institutions worldwide. In 2014 he completed his masters in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) / Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).