June 22nd – 24th, 2025 Montpellier Danse, Montpellier July 29th – August 1st, 2025 ImPulsTanz, Vienna August 17th, 2025 Santander International Festival, Santander September 19th – 21st, 2025 Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg September 26th – 28th, 2025 Théâtre Sénart, Lieusaint October 2nd – 18th, 2025 Théâtre de la Ville, Paris October 28th – November 1st, 2025 Sadler’s Wells, London November 5th – 6th, 2025 Romaeuropa Festival, Rome November 11th – 12th, 2025 Berliner Festspiele, Berlin November 19th – 20th, 2025 Tanz Köln, Cologne 65 minutes
Thikra: Night of Remembering is Akram Khan Company’s latest production created in collaboration with award-winning visual artist Manal AlDowayan.
Thikra draws inspiration from AlUla’s ancient landscapes, mythology and cultural heritage to evoke the idea that “without a past, there is no future.”
Blending Bharatanatyam with contemporary, the piece is performed by a collective of all-female voices, accompanied by an original score from Aditya Prakash, sound design by Gareth Fry, lighting by Zeynep Kepekli and dramaturgy by Blue Pieta.
Among the immortal, each act (and each thought) is an echo of those who anticipated it in the past or the faithful omen of those who, in the future, will repeat it to the point of vertigo. – Jorge Luis Borges
Five figures are trapped in a temporal maze, mutating and colliding in an attempt to defy immortality. Their existence takes place in a vast sulfuric landscape, unfolding in a series of chronicles. Is this landscape the ground for new creations, or made out of remnants of what once existed?
Confronted with different laws and physical phenomena, their bodies reveal other behaviors and possibilities of being, without knowing if they are at the twilight or dawn of their existence. We are witnessing a bodily metamorphosis in an abyssal and poetic dimension.
Chroniques unveils the next chapter in Peeping Tom’s universe.
MOMO has two souls. One sends long roots to the depths of the earth – a soul that embodies archetypes and myths of hardened, raw masculinity, and the other is in a constant search for an individual and distinct DNA; one moves within its own autonomous and independent force field and the other is a constellation of elements that spin around the same nucleus – alternately drifting away and towards it, making room for necessary tenderness and catharsis.
With a soundtrack comprised mostly of the album Landfall by the legendary Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet, one of the foremost contemporary classical music ensembles, a shared passion of deep sorrow and beauty unfolds on stage. Relinquishment becomes a dedicated search for a crack, and glitches in the movement code turn out to be free, playful, and emotive material.
November 13th – 19th, 2024 Grand Théâtre de Genève, Geneva January 18th – 19th, 2025 Staatenhaus, Cologne January 24th, 2025 Festspielhaus St. Pölten, St. Pölten March 30th – April 6th, 2025 Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris October 2nd – 4th, 2025 Danse Danse, Montreal December 12th – 17th, 2025 De Singel, Antwerp Duration: 90 minutes
In Arabic, the word Ihsane represents an ideal of goodness, kindness and benevolence. In Islam, it refers to a form of communion with the universe. With Ihsane, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui continues a diptych begun within his Eastman company with Vlaemsch (chez moi), in 2022. While Vlaemsch was dedicated to his mother and his Flemish roots, Ihsane explores his relationship with his father, who left Morocco for Flanders, emigrating but always retaining – despite leaving – an unconditional love for his home country. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was still a teenager when his father died. Thirty years later, he searched for him in vain in a Tangier cemetery too full of graves. He continues to search for him through this creation bringing together dancers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and Eastman.
But in Belgium, Ihsane is also associated with a racist and homophobic crime that took place in Liège in 2012: a young homosexual man of 32, of Moroccan origin, beaten to death outside a nightclub. As someone who himself identifies as an artist, a queer and an Arab, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui identifies with and pays tribute to him through this production which revisits his family story. Ihsane is a journey towards the quest for inner peace, and the attempt to transcend conflict, abandonment and forgetting. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui dances the questions that obsess him: what do we have left when our place slips away and fades? How can multiple identities coexist in the same body?
As ever, the choreographer has assembled a unique artistic team, reflecting the effervescence and artistic vitality of this region of the world to which Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is linked through his ancestors. Tunisian musician and viola d’amore virtuoso, Jasser Haj Youssef, will compose the music and perform it onstage with Moroccan singer Mohammed el Arabi Serghini and Lebanese singer Fadia Tomb El-Hage. Stage design will be from visual artist Amine Amharech, who creates sensory and sensitive spaces into which Moroccan influences are often melded, while costumes are by fashion designer Amine Bendriouich, who elevates traditional forms of Berber clothing beyond norms and gender.
With Ihsane, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui watches the world change in a never-ending cycle of destruction and rebirth. He is wary of cultures when they imprison and separate individuals. He prefers geography in the making, ever-changing landscapes, and the shared space where we coexist. In this space, he reveals the invisible threads that connect us to each other.
August 29th – September 1st, 2024 radialsystem, Berlin November 23rd – 24th, 2024, Tanz Köln, Cologne November 28th – December 1st, 2024 Kampnagel, Hamburg December 13th – 15th, 2024 TEATR ŁAŹNIA NOWA, Kraków 80 minutes
This piece is an experiment,conducted anew in every performance. It revolves around the human brain and its relationship with the body. The audience is an essential part of the experiment, because its members are invited not only to watch the dancers but also to find their own groove, to participate from their seats as an active part of a collective system, and to feel the sensation of belonging to a vast hive brain.
Spiegelneuronen (Mirror Neurons) marks the first joint project with Sasha Waltz & Guests. Following on from Andrew Schneider’s remains in 2020, this project continues the dance company’s openness to new styles as well as its commitment to broaden its repertory through artistic exploration and interdisciplinary cooperation with international artists. The collectives come from markedly different artistic directions, but are equally interested in the unconventional use of space and in interdisciplinary work. In this first collaboration, Stefan Kaegi will join forces with both the dancers from Sasha Waltz & Guests and the audience for an exploration of the relationship between the individual and society, conducted through the medium of dance in front of a large mirror.
