Ukiyo-e

In the organizer's words:

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who has directed the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève since the 2022/23 season, provided a brilliant opening in Geneva with the world premiere of Ukiyo-e. And so it was only natural that this extraordinary creation should also open the Ludwigshafen Festival. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is an exceptional phenomenon among top-class dance creators. He could be described as a philosopher, although he never studied philosophy. Nor was he a ballet dancer and yet he seems to have been born with the choreography gene. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's new work is a meditation on our capacity for resilience. It is named after the "Pictures of the Floating World", the famous artistic movement that emerged in Japan during the Edo period in the demimonde of urban hedonism. Ukiyo-e is a plea for inner balance in the face of transience. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui imagines bodies that do not end with fractures and limitations, but emphasize them as enlargements of our person, like the Japanese technique of Kintsugi, which repairs broken porcelain with joints of pure gold. Alexander Dodge's stage design shows a construct of stairs in which the dancers lose themselves. These moving, labyrinthine structures are intended to evoke both the ascent and the abyss. In the movement sequences, the bodies are encouraged to unite, enter into dialog and infect each other. The worlds brought together in Ukiyo-e resonate with the ballet's search for redemption and transcendence. The performance will be accompanied live by Szymon Brzóska's new compositions for string trio and piano and Alexandre Dai Castaing's rhythmic, percussive and electronic creations.