David Attenberger

David Attenberger works as a performer and maker in Theater, Dance and Performance Art. Raised in Wanne-Eickel, Germany (Ruhr Area), they trained as an electrician and moved on to study Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science at University of Konstanz. After two years, they transferred to Zurich University of the Arts to study Acting, and later on to study Contemporary Theatre & Performance at University of the Arts London.

While still studying, David got invited to join the ensemble of Theater Neumarkt, Zurich, for three years. They danced in Michiel Vandevelde’s duet “Le Sacre du Printemps”, which toured Belgium repeatedly, and started collaborating with NYC-based dance company [REDACTED]. In 2025, David’s first dance solo “Hooligan” premiered at Theater Neumarkt; a close interrogation of the homoeroticism of homophobia in male soccer culture. David is now based in Brooklyn, where they play in the Autonomous Football League and are part of the editorial collective of “Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory”.

Project Title: [...]  searching for word. a mutation

Project Description: “What I want to suggest is that there is silence, even when there is at the same moment words. There is silence, and by that I do not just mean the silence between the words, but at their very place. This silence consists of the simultaneous existence of all the words that have not been said in the very same moment, and, beyond that: the silence consists of all the things that couldn’t have been said because there are no words to say them. What I am suggesting is that there is speechlessness in the very moments of speech.”

An investigation of the words we try to find, struggle to grasp and do not remember. A theater play in which nobody speaks.  A search for words that may have never existed.

Project Inspiration: years of feeling drawn to speechlessness