The Norwegian National Ballet pays tribute to one of the great masters of contemporary dance with Arc-en-ciel – Celebrating Kylián, a kaleidoscopic programme bringing together five emblematic works from his career.

A premier company at the forefront of innovation and renowned for its exceptional technical standards, the Norwegian National Ballet has maintained a close artistic relationship with Jiří Kylián for more than thirty years. First presented in Paris in 2014 as part of TranscenDanses (in a programme already dedicated to Kylián), the company has since established itself as one of the key representatives of the series’ artistic identity. A regular guest at TranscenDanses, it has presented works such as Alexander Ekman’s A Swan Lake and Crystal Pite’s Light of Passage, confirming both its technical excellence and its commitment to major voices in contemporary choreography. Under the direction of Ingrid Lorentzen, the company has developed a remarkably rich repertoire, including nearly twenty works by Jiří Kylián.

Considered one of the defining choreographers of our time, Jiří Kylián has profoundly reshaped the language of contemporary ballet through an exceptionally musical writing, where poetry, humour, sensuality and a finely attuned reading of human emotion converge. Rejecting any fixed aesthetic, he has constantly explored new territories, drawing inspiration from literature, visual arts, myth and personal memory. To mark this enduring partnership with the Norwegian National Ballet, he created Arc-en-ciel, a kaleidoscopic programme that reveals the full breadth of his imagination.

Mémoires d’Oubliettes opens the evening as a meditation on time, memory and disappearance. In the Middle Ages, “oubliettes” were small prison cells used to confine those destined to be forgotten. Dance, filmed imagery and stage installations intertwine in a living archive, where fragments of memory and echoes of past works appear and fade away. With Sweet Dreams, inspired by a painting by René Magritte, Kylián enters a universe governed by dream logic, where perspective shifts and the absurd takes on a subtle sense of humour. In Petite Mort, one of his most celebrated ballets, six women and six men perform to two piano concertos by Mozart in a reflection on desire, birth, disappearance and the space between these extremes of existence. No More Play, inspired by a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, stages a shifting game of human relations whose rules emerge only as it unfolds. Finally, Polonaise de Arcimboldo brings together a large ensemble of dancers in a richly layered world inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moving between fantasy, humour and reflections on the cycles of life.

An exceptional Arc-en-ciel evening in tribute to Jiří Kylián, performed by a company that remains one of his most devoted interpreters.

OTHER SHOWS