TARAB is a participatory piece for 6 dancers, 1 live-act composer and 100 ‘accomplices’.
Choreographer Eric Minh Cuong Castaing invites us to a participatory celebration, under the guidance of artists from the countries of the Levant. He invites musician Rayess Bek and six dancers from the Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian diasporas, invoking the lively rhythms and dances of the Levant. For several hours, amateur dancers will rub shoulders with the professionals on stage, guided by choreographic protocols.
The dabke, a folk dance from the Levant, will take pride of place, in a game of transmission and shared joy.
Inspired by graffiti saying “Art will save the world”, Eggermont invites young people to share memories, poems, and references. These fragments form a time capsule, portraying a generation in search of meaning. Through his gestural language and music, Eggermont’s dance becomes a refuge, affirming art as a force for resilience and renewal in troubled times.
Created by Daniel Proietto, Hidden is a journey to the origins of art, myth and human consciousness. Blending film with live dance and music, the performance was first developed for the monumental spaces of Lascaux IV (International Centre for Parietal Art) and conceived to unfold across architectural and natural environments — evoking a ritual space of presence and ancestral memory.
Performed by acclaimed ballerina Yolanda Correa and Daniel Proietto, the work embodies themes of birth, life, and mortality. It merges myth, movement, and deep time — inviting reflection on what endures in us, what must be reclaimed, and what we carry forward.
Originally created as a commission for Lascaux IV, Hidden was developed in dialogue with Snøhetta, the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, and KNOW NATION. It now appears in a new spatial adaptation for the Artonov Festival, with the Tana Quartet performing music by Belgian composer Jean-Paul Dessy (b. 1963), whose work blends contemporary classical language with a spiritual dimension — resonating with Hidden’s vision of art as presence and offering.
F*cking Future searches the friction between militancy and militarization, exploring and challenging the systems that shape bodies and behaviors. On a quadrifrontal stage, drawing from those very same systems, a collective marches between rigidity and dilution, discipline and desire, invoking new forms of union and insurgency.
The São Paulo City Ballet presents a European tour with remarkable choreographies such as ‘Boca Abissal’, ‘Fôlego’ and ‘Réquiem SP’, signed by renowned Rafaela Sahyoun and Alejandro Ahmed.
Rafaela Sahyoun
Rafaela Sahyoun is a Latin American dance artist from São Paulo, currently based between Brazil and Portugal. She spirals through the intertwined roles of being a dancer, a young choreographer, and a teacher. She is fascinated by the ever-evolving landscape of performative practices, community, and context. She dedicates herself to artistic and pedagogical projects that unfold and shape-shift continuously through ongoing research and shared practices.
Actively collaborating with artists, researchers, students, and art institutions in Brazil and abroad, she has a strong inclination toward hybrid formats of collaboration in dialogues with multidisciplinary disciplines. Her most recent choreographic work, Fôlego (2022), was commissioned by São Paulo City Ballet (Balé da Cidade de São Paulo, BCSP) in partnership with São Paulo Cultural Centre (Centro Cultural de São Paulo, CCSP) and had its 2023 season at São Paulo Municipal Theatre (Theatro Municipal de São Paulo).
Alejandro Ahmed
Winner of three APCA (São Paulo Association of Art Critics) awards, as well as the Funarte Petrobras Dance Promotion Award, Bravo! Prime Award for Culture, and the Sergio Motta Art and Technology Award, Alejandro Ahmed is one of the most important choreographers in contemporary Brazilian dance. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he moved with his family to Florianópolis, Brazil, at the age of three, where he began dancing at just twelve.
As a guest of the São Paulo City Ballet in 2022, he conceived and choreographed a piece by the American avant-garde composer John Cage, written in the early 1990s, resulting in the performance “Sixty Eight in Axys Atlas.” Alejandro Ahmed now returns to his partnership with the São Paulo Municipal Ballet, this time as artistic director of the São Paulo City Ballet.
Thanks to its radical choreographic form, THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER revealed the audience’s perception of dancers, choreographers, spectators and the cultural policy at the time. Ten years on, these questions are still very much relevant due to current political and social trends: Where does the thin line between art and entertainment lie? Who are we as an audience when we contemplate the suffering of dancers from the theatre like a bullfight in an arena? Is contemporary dance striptease for the elite? THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER makes the viewer shift in his position: from being merely subjected to the experience to actively reflecting on it.
The Fridas is a duet inspired by the painting “The Two Fridas” by Frida Kahlo. It explores the complex theme of human identity through a relationship of complicity and contrast between two dancers. Specular and divergent movements embody internal conflicts and harmony. At the same time physical expressiveness and the use of space (in the Komoco language considered as a living element capable of uniting and dividing), represent two complementary and essential elements in the research.
Designed for theatrical but also unconventional and museum spaces, The Fridas lends itself to being observed from different perspectives, thus adding nuances to the research into the human essence and celebrating its complexity. The ending, however, suggests an ironic acceptance of the chaos of life: through parodic movements the dancers find in humor the balm to continue facing the challenges of existence.
Emotional, sensational, magnetic and deeply physical. You cannot stop watching. The highly skilled dancers of Sharon Eyal, express feelings that cannot be put in words. Eyal is considered one of the most important choreographers today. Her creations take us on a breathtaking journey along the emotions we face in life. Delay the Sadness is the new work by Eyal for S-E-D Dance Company, the new company founded by her and Gai Behar. Following their successful collaboration on ima for GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Josef Laimon will compose the soundtrack for this new piece, exclusively for S-E-D.
August 23rd, 2025 Norrlandsoperan, Umeå August 25th, 2025 Gävle Teater, Gävle August 28th, 2025 Folkets Hus, Säter August 30th, 2025 Dansnät Jönköping, Jönköping September 2nd, 2025 Dansstationen, Malmö September 4th, 2025 Dansscen Örebro, Örebro September 6th, 2025 Festival Platforma, Maribor October 12th, 2025 Hanzas Perons, Rīga 50 minutes
Vērpete (vortex, whirl), the creators-performers Erik Eriksson and Krišjānis Sants take the principle of a turning couple – a movement that is more familiar in games, folk and ballroom dancing – as a starting point and develop it into a dance of precision, speed, trust and exhilaration. As they vortex through the space, turning hand in hand, the performers bring the audience together and take part in dynamic patterns of repetition. The dancers create a paradox by committing to support one another through opposition, collaborating by constantly pulling apart. Vērpete is accompanied by live music of vibraphone and guitar, creating a dense and embracing soundscape, performed by Mārtiņš Miļevskis and Rihards Lībietis.
The audience shares the same space as performers and many have described their experience as if finding themselves in the midst of a natural force, perceived first by the body and then by the mind.
Magec / the Desert is the second part of a new trilogy by Radouan Mriziga, inspired by mythological stories from the Amazigh culture, and in particular those who have a close relationship with the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, in terms of spirituality, art, philosophy, craft, and science.
In his work, Mriziga continues his practice of collective creation, where rhythm, text, movement, and sound become interwoven through the contributions of his collaborators. The choreography unfolds as a polyphony of perspectives, where individual experiences intersect to form a shared, multifaceted vision. Like the layered textures of the desert, the performance resists singularity, instead offering a complexity that is at once intellectual and deeply sensory.
