Festival in London

This edition will feature recent as well as repertory works, dance workshops, artist forums and awareness raising initiatives, all highlighting the links between choreographic heritage and contemporary creation.

A number of creations embody this approach, including Working Title (1985) by Trisha Brown, presented alongside In the Fall (2023), a piece from Noé Soulier commissioned by the company of this celebrated artist. Beach Birds and BIPED, major works by Merce Cunningham reinterpreted by the Lyon Opera Ballet, also showcase the recent history of dance. With Giselle…, François Gremaud revisits a fundamental romantic work of the classical repertoire: Giselle (1841).

This approach is enriched by contemporary choreographers’ development of new languages with many influences. While Age of Content by (LA)HORDE – Ballet national de Marseille draws on action films, musicals and the video game universe, Sakinan göze çöp batar by Christian Rizzo is inspired by a traditional Turkish dance. At Tate Modern, Shu Lea Cheang and Dondon Hounwn are staging Hagay Dreaming, a visual and performance piece combining tribal legends from Taiwan’s indigenous Truku culture with science fiction. Robyn Orlin pays tribute to the Zulu rickshaws of her childhood in We wear our wheels with pride... Finally, for his last piece, Close Up, Noé Soulier creates a space of intimacy with dance through the use of video. Ioannis Mandafounis, the new Director of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company, explores the stakes involved in creation and transmission by bringing together on stage students of London’s Rambert School and professional dancers. With Outsider, The Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève joins choreographer Rachid Ouramdane in his fascinating research on the meeting of two disciplines, dance and extreme sports.

This Festival is also an occasion to unveil new creations, such as CROW and Pigeons by British choreographer Jules Cunningham and Neither drums nor trumpets by American choreographer Pam Tanowitz. Alongside these are the first works by Soa Ratsifandrihana and Georges Labbat, two young artists from P.A.R.T.S., a school founded by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

To round off this event, we are honouring three major pieces from the repertoire of George Balanchine, Serenade (1935), Prodigal Son (1929) and Symphony in C (1947). Weaving together the modern and the contemporary, this historical perspective offers an opportunity to better understand today’s choreographic art and nurture that of tomorrow.

SERGE LAURENT

Van Cleef & Arpels’ Director of Dance and Culture Programs