April 25th – 27th, 2025 Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Antwerp May 27th, 2025 O. Festival, Rotterdam July 8th – 9th, 2025 Julidans Festival, Amsterdam 100 minutes
NOW WE ARE EARTH is a grand future vision of choreographer and theater maker Nicole Beutler. Music, dance, choir, and audience unite in this eco-futuristic symphony, creating a sense of greater harmony. With 8 dancers and singers, accompanied by a city choir of 45 voices, this 100-minute piece becomes a vibrant convergence of sound and movement, offering a glimpse into a dream of a possible future.
The piece explores the theme of interconnectedness, seeking balance across five realms: animals, humans, plants, fungi, and technology.
NOW WE ARE EARTH promises to be a total artwork, a dance opera featuring a local city choir, with a key role for the audience. Drawing inspiration from the intricate, interconnected threads of a mycelium, the performers weave a multi-layered, resonating tapestry of colors and sounds, unfolding in endlessly branching and repeating patterns.
Music Hole is a performance that explores our spectral relationship to memory, time and reality. Conceived with four physical, musical and/or vocal performers, the performance is inspired by the notion of hauntology (imagined by philosopher Jacques Derrida and later developed by music critic Mark Fisher), which describes, among other things, the accumulation of ghostly traces of the past as we move into the future. Stevens aim is to translate, choreographically and musically, the idea of survival and erasure, embodiment and disappearance, delay and anticipation.
To haunt is somehow to survive, and also to return. Hence Stevens desire to work with vocal recordings, sound samples, visual loops and iterations of movement. Questioning the idea of the ghost. Not in its figurative aspect, but in its metaphorical use. A ghost can be a trace, something perceived, a feeling of unease. Not necessarily visible, but a presence, an atmosphere. A memory that lingers, a mantra that resists.
What do these ghosts say about us? Our spirits? Our beliefs? Our fears? Our rituals? A hybrid form combining recording sessions, dance mania and vocal mantra, the performance Music Hole is a ghost in itself. It seeks to take shape in the bodies and voices of the performers, in the theatrical space and in the lived or unlived memory of the audience. It seeks hosts in order to express itself.
In Satie / The Rite Of Spring is a double-bill production blending music and dance theater. First initiated in 2021, this world premiere at the Shanghai International Dance Center features the collaboration between Chinese classical musicians and Xie Xin Dance Theatre dancers.
In Satie-The Lightness
This segment features re-arranged versions of Satie’s Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes for piano and vibraphone by Fu Yifei. Choreographer Xie Xin seamlessly integrates musicians as part of the dance ensemble.
The Rite of the Spring-The Rising Road
Based on the original two-piano arrangement, Fu Yifei has re-imagined the orchestral percussion for a version featuring two pianists and two percussionists. Since its 1913 debut, Stravinsky’s monumental score has inspired countless dance productions. Now, Xie Xin—already internationally recognized takes on the challenge of creating a fresh and stunning interpretation of La Sacre du Printemps, performed with this unique instrumental ensemble.
This production promises to be truly one-of-a-kind, showcasing innovative artistry in both music and dance.
With My Fierce Ignorant Step (Working Title), Papadopoulos seeks to consciously process the influence that “Axion Esti”—the monumental work by Mikis Theodorakis founded on the poetry of Odysseas Elytis—exerted on him, exploring the extent to which sound and speech can dilate and reach a state of abstraction that alludes to that of a movement: a lifted arm, an oscillating body, a trembling leg.
For the choreographer, the first impulse for the creation of “My Fierce Ignorant Step (Working Title)” is grounded in aural memories of his childhood and younger age, memories that he shares with many other Greeks: collective memories that are connected with the fate of this country, even if this is not immediately apparent. Is it possible to work on a text with the same composition principles applied to the choreography of a body? How close to words can a body come, and vice versa? Can this turn into a shared, transparent, and simple experience?
A physical and metaphorical race against time: Three performers navigate a world that values productivity above all else. The tyranny of time becomes a force of constraint and urgency, amplifying the stakes of the performers’ pursuit of autonomy in a system that demands efficiency without acknowledging diverse experiences. This piece delves into the complexities of marginalized bodies in a society that prioritizes output over well-being, questioning the cost of constant productivity and the possibility of reclaiming one’s self within its relentless march. As a compelling exploration of power, play and the merciless passage of time, the work confronts the intersection of neurodivergence, body dysmorphia and societal pressures.
MacArthur Fellow Kyle Abraham is one of the most sought after choreographers and dancers of our time, creating a unique and expressive style of dance that explores issues of identity, history, and geography. In addition to performing and developing new works for his company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, the bold creator has been commissioned by a variety of dance companies including New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Royal Ballet, and The National Ballet of Cuba. He has also choreographed for many of the leading dancers of our time, including Misty Copeland, Calvin Royal III, and Wendy Whelan. He unleashes his signature style—a unique blend of modern dance techniques ranging from ballet to hip hop—in the world premiere of a new evening-length work.
Featuring a large ensemble of dancers with whom he has collaborated from across the country, plus Abraham himself, this Armory commission includes an innovative visual design created by Cao Yuxi (JAMES) and an Armory-commissioned score composed and performed live by the critically acclaimed new music ensemble yMusic to explore the growing sensitivities of life and transition, and nature and humanity, in our chaotic world. The underlying choreography employs layers of counterpoint to find intimacy and evoke ideas of empathy and constant change, fueling an evocative new dance work that migrates through the fragility of time and an ever-changing ecology.
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 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.
After the successful productions Timeless by Xie Xin and I’m afraid to forget your smile by Imre & Marne van Opstal, which was nominated for the DER FAUST 2023 theater prize, the Hessisches Staatsballett combines the dance positions of these currently groundbreaking choreographers for the first time in a double evening in Broken Bob. The marble is created in the earth like the ashes after the fire. In a long transformation, under heat and pressure, its fine lines paint themselves into the stone; tell of the past like the black from the ravages of the flames. Traces decorate and they stick. Hidden deep in the layers of being and buried in the overlay of inner impressions, a broken sense of beauty appears.
Powerful and sublime. Rice paper, gunpowder and six bodies are the ingredients of Xie Xin’s new creation Broken Sense of Beauty. In the piece, the Chinese choreographer deals with a personal tragedy. When dance comes into play, it’s about movement. About movements and their structure. Does this exist outside of the movement that produces it? When structure comes into play, it’s about systems. About systems and their meaning. Does this lie outside of the system that generates it? When meaning comes into play, it’s about people. About people and about Bob. In their new creation I am Bob, Imre & Marne van Opstal explore the effects of patterns in dance. In close connection with music and text, the Dutch siblings create a large choreographic network of identity.
Christos Papadopoulos’ new work explores our subtle, everyday social connections, revealing the beauty within the most profound connections that often go unnoticed. Drawing from the unadorned fabric of the human experience, the choreographer illustrates the simplicity of shared moments: the unspoken understanding between friends, silent nods of solidarity among strangers, and the quiet resilience threaded through collective struggles.
A new voice for NDT, the Greek-born choreographer favours a minimalist and precise language of movement. Through small gestures that belie an intense physicality, Papadopoulos has created an ode to the power of invisible forces and transports the audience to a mysterious space in which there is neither beginning nor end.
Georgina Philp, known in the ballroom world as Legendary Trailblazer Mother Leo St. Laurent, invites you to the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum for an unforgettable evening full of glitz and glamour. At the Pump Into The Future Ball, the Ruhrtriennale will celebrate ballroom and its outstanding performers on the runway. A range of houses and participants will show off their talents in front of an international jury and compete with each other in classical ballroom categories to take home one of the coveted trophies.
Ballroom culture originated in the USA, where it was invented in New York in the 60s/70s by Black and Latinx trans women. Ballroom was introduced to Germany by Mother Leo with a first ball at the Berlin Voguing Out Festival in 2012. That same year she also founded the first local ballroom house, which was known at the time as the House of Melody.
To coincide with the Pump Into The Future Ball, Georgina Philp will also meet international icons of the ballroom scene for a panel talk about ballroom. In addition to the panel talk, there will also be workshops on voguing and runway given by the ballroom community.
