Common Ground - Ballet

Dear members

An initially seemingly innocent object such as a cactus can take on immense importance, if it is simply described verbosely enough. Alexander Ekman presents this on the stage with 27 cacti, also cacti in Latin, and with other bizarre means also scrutinises the conventions of the art sector and above all the speaking and writing about artistic products. There is much to laugh about in this piece, not just because of the theatrical situations in motion, but rather also because of the merging of text, music and movement.

Impasse in French also means something like “dead end”. In a spatially corresponding stage situation Johan Inger explores how people react to the dawning of new facts, how they approach other people who have previously gone through life in an entirely different way to themselves. To energetic and multifaceted music from the pen of Ibrahim Maalouf and Amos Ben-Tal, Inger strings together episodes, which despite the basic hopelessness, are characterised by wit and above all by hope.

According to Jiří Kylián, Bella Figura is a "parable about the relativity of sensuality, beauty and aesthetics in general, and about how we encounter this phenomenon in our everyday lives. It is a journey through time and space that illuminates our dignity, but also our doubts. Finding beauty in a grimace – in an entanglement of the mind – or in a physical contortion. It is like trying to perform a balancing act on the umbilical cord."

See you there