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Damien Jalet – Thrice

June 21st – 22nd, 2025 Den Norske Opera & Ballett, Oslo
July 26th, 2025 Kalamata International Dance Festival, Kalamata
July 28th & 30th, 2025 ImPulsTanz, Vienna
September 24th – 25th, 2025 Bærum Kulturhus, Sandvika
60 minutes

Damien Jalet’s Triptych

© JR

The triple bill Thrice consists of the three pieces GustsMédusés, and Brise-lames.

Gusts, the first section, is about air—breath and movement – and pays homage to the force that carries us. With live music by saxophonist Bendik Giske, Gusts becomes a dialogue between body and sound, highlighting the tension between gravity and centripetal force.

Médusés, the second chapter, takes its cue from the myth of Medusa and the idea of being petrified by a gaze. Here, bodies resist – between rigidity and fluidity, the individual and the collective.

Brise-lames, the final part, transports us underwater. Created in collaboration with artist JR and Japanese pianist Koki Nakano, this piece, which has only been available to the public as a film directed by Louise Narboni in close collaboration with Damien Jalet, will now be performed live for the first time. The movements here are slow – like a ship approaching shore, or waves reaching land.

Thrice
 is a work in constant motion – a story of bodies attempting not to solidify. This project has allowed Damien Jalet to return to the founding principles of his work, a minimalist exploration of movement. His more recent creations have operated on a very grand scale, with ambitious scenography and apparatus. In Thrice, complexity lies elsewhere: in the movements, lights and sound, and in the search of how combination, association and repetition might generate new emotions.

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Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa – Mirage for the Ballet du GTG

May 6th – 11th, 2025 Grand Théâtre de Genève, Geneva
June 5th – 7th, 2025 Kampnagel, Hamburg
January 14th – 17th, 2026 Maison de la Danse, Lyon
January 24th, 2026 Festspielhaus St. Pölten, St. Pölten
June 11th – 14th, 2026 De Singel, Antwerp
65 minutes

A Dream of Atmospheric Phenomena

© Gregory Batardon

With Mirage, Damien Jalet offers his very first creation for the Ballet du Grand Théâtre, where he has been an associate artist since 2022. Mirage also constitutes the fourth chapter of his collaboration with Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa.

Inspired by the phenomenon of mirages and Fata Morgana – optical illusions linked to specific meteorological conditions, caused by light being distorted as it passes through different- temperature layers of air – Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa depict humanity wandering in a metaphorical desert in search of itself.

Through a series of unpredictable transformations inspired by different mythologies, climatology, botany and entomology, as well as Hayagawari – a Japanese kabuki theatre technique in which performers suddenly transform during a performance –, the piece peels back the performers, layer after layer, exploring an endless variety of physical and emotional states.

Sometimes evoking the spectres of a civilization at the edge of a dry well, sometimes crossed with the dazzling colours and sensuality of tropical nature, Mirage passes through like a moving, fluctuating, waking dream of atmospheric phenomena.

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Damien Jalet × Kohei Nawa – Mirage [transitory]

September 27 – October 6, 2024 THEATER 010, Fukuoka
70 mins

The New Collaboration of Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa

© Yoshikazu Inoue

In this work, the dancers change their forms from moment to moment, just like the flickering light, the changing weather, or the evolving plants and animals. Through the interaction of these different forms, the boundaries between seemingly opposing concepts, such as life and death, the ancient and the future, as well as harmony and chaos, are explored. Eventually, the stage, where even the boundary between information and matter has become blurred, will become a place of transformation.

Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa aim to depict the unknown landscape that lies beyond.