Idomeneo

While the young people of Europe forsake Love to follow Bellone at war, Cupid sets out to shoot his arrows into the rest of the world. A masterpiece of the Enlightenment, Les Indes galantes is sparkling entertainment. Yet Rameau’s first opera‑ballet also bears witness to the Europeans’ ambiguous view of ‘savage’ cultures. The Belgian choreographer-director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui adapts Les Indes Galantes to a contemporary setting, where globalisation has transformed the notions of exoticism.

Kamal resolves to change his life for the better, and so leaves Belgium to help victims of the war in Syria. But when he arrives, he is forced to join a militia and is left stranded in Raqqa. Back home, his younger brother Nassim quickly becomes easy prey for radical recruiters, who promise to reunite him with his brother. Their mother, Leila, fights to protect the only thing she has left: her youngest son.

As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

A man ahead of his time, Cyrano de Bergerac dazzles whether with ferocious wordplay at a verbal joust or with brilliant swordplay in a duel. But, convinced that his appearance renders him unworthy of the love of a devoted friend, the luminous Roxanne, Cyrano has yet to declare his feelings for her—and Roxanne has fallen in love, at first sight, with Christian.

A poetic and bittersweet codetta. Themes such as the craving for human contact and the impossibility to come together are central to this miniature piece.

Nomad transports the audience to the desert: Eleven dancers incarnate its vast expanse in all its beauty and terror. An atmospheric piece by the Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

As we, the world and all creation are experiencing a collective transition, a new future awaits us all. Space & time become utter necessities for the acceptance of a new state of being, while our wounds slowly heal. In all humbleness, the CYCLE collection offers an alternative to help us through the now. A bright red, encouraging life force and passion for creation... an ode to love. Smoothly textured fabrics with soft caresses, sensible colors chosen to highlight the new cycle we are entering. The elements are in constant rotation.

PROJECT#10 - A HORIZON is an attempt to create, while clearing the mind of obstructions and merely trusting the unknown. Trying to overrule distortion and to rise above the unnecessary noise, longing for a new paradigm; a contemporary way of understanding the whole and each other. Breaking through prevailing conditioning that limits the exploration of what we no longer perceive and desperately seek to re-establish.

The Belgian dancer and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui interprets Glucks late Baroque opera Alceste as an impressive symbiosis between dance and music. The opera can be experienced here in all its existential power. (SZ) It is here performed in the revised Paris version from 1776 where Gluck has revalued especially the ballet music. Cherkaoui director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders has worked with top artists across disciplines like superstar Beyoncé. The superb dancers of the Belgian Compagnie Eastman, Antwerp perform Glucks score physically, creating a fine and stringent aesthetics of beautiful images (Opernwelt). Dorothea Röschmann with her inimitable charisma (Financial Times) and Charles Castronovo deliver a brilliant performance in the roles of the self-sacrificing royal couple. Musically impressive.

To bring together again, for the first time since their premiere on a December evening in Moscow, Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta and ballet The Nutcracker, was the audacious challenge that Russian stage director Dmitri Tcherniakov accepted for the Palais Garnier in Paris in March 2016 : a revolutionary production, which was to become one of the key events of the Paris Opera season.

Noetic, Faun and Boléro: Three elements, three visions, three journeys through dance. Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's show offers a profound reflection on our intimate connection with the world around us. From putting mathematics in movement to Ravel's Boléro as a dance of death, Cherkaoui transcends the boundaries of the stage to offer us a unique philosophical perception of the world.

In Stuttgart, the Gauthier Dance company explores the seven deadly sins in a performance structured like an ‘exquisite corpse’, created by seven different choreographers.

In the acclaimed SUTRA Sidi Larbi has collaborated closely with Turner Prize winning artist Antony Gormley and Polish composer Szymon Brzóska. Gormley’s striking set design and Brzóska’s beautiful score set the scene for this mesmerising show. The seventeen Monks performing in SUTRA are from the original Shaolin Temple, situated near Dengfeng City in the Henan Province of China and established in 495AD. In 1983 the State Council defined the Shaolin Temple as the key national Buddhist Temple and the Monks still follow a strict Buddhist doctrine, of which Kung-Fu & Tai Chi martial arts are an integral part of their daily regime.

Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour is based around seven couples separating and intermingling, to music by Vivaldi and Ezio Bosso and lit with the rich colours suggested by sunset. In Flight Pattern, Crystal Pite combines Górecki's haunting “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” with a large dance ensemble to create a poignant and passionate reflection on migration. Between them, Medusa is new work inspired by the Greek myth, created for The Royal Ballet by the acclaimed choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which juxtaposes Purcell arias with an electronic score by Olga Wojciechowska.

SUNU is a collaborative fashion short film on the new AW21 Project#9 SUNU from Antwerp based designer Jan - Jan Van Essche. The collective idea SUNU, meaning ‘our’ in the Wolof language, summarizes the sentiment of unity, fragility and inclusive interconnectivity. A sense of responsibility towards each other and what surrounds us. A solid bond, a strong connection, which needs to be cherished and praised but simultaneously guarded.