2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. For over three decades, Oslo Danse Ensemble was Norway's most popular dance company. Paradoxically, they never performed outside their home country. When the company closed in 2018, it begged the question: how could Norway expect the world to understand its national culture if it remained such a closely guarded secret? Jo Strømgren Kompani has taken on the challenge of remedying that situation, bringing together a selection of creations by Jo Strømgren for this company in a triple-header "Made in Oslo".
2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. First popularised in the 1920s and 30s, dance marathons saw couples attempt to keep dancing continuously for as long as they could (simply swaying or stepping were allowed), in the hope of winning a prize of around one hundred dollars. The crash of 1929 brought such grinding poverty that participants were prepared to go to any lengths for a few bucks, turning normally joyous dance marathons into horror balls.
2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. In 2015, director Sue Buckmaster from Thatre-Rites adapted Akram Khan's critically acclaimed, Olivier Award-winning solo Desh. The heartwarming story follows a young man trying to find his place in the world. Chotto Desh, which means signifie "little homeland", draws on the unique quality of Akram Khan's intercultural storytelling, weaving a captivating tale of a boy's dreams and memories, from Britain to Bangladesh.
2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. In collaboration with the Audiovisual Institute of Monaco. To prevent composer Pierre Borov from offering his proletarian talents to the makers of an American capitalist movie, commissars Bibikov, Ivanov and Brankov are dispatched to Paris to bring the musician home. Willingly or otherwise.
2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. The sheer energy and density of Last Work by legendary choreographer Ohad Naharin are infused with an ephemeral aura. A sensation of clarity and reflection, like the calm at the eye of a hurricane. Unflappable, a person in the background runs across a set for the whole 70 minute duration of the piece. Seemingly fleeing or dreaming of flight, the body remains locked on the spot. Perhaps symbolising the desire for progress?
2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. With flamenco, as with every art form, historians, specialists, and critics gradually identified particular periods. The period they called "La Edad de Oro", the golden age of flamenco, ran from the late 19th century to the 1930s. It was a time when the emphasis was very much on singing and dancing, with the guitar becoming popular much later. According to this tradition, and aside from some special exceptions, no contemporary singer or dancer could hope to match the quality, purity, and creativity of those who bore flamenco to its very pinnacle, and forged the legend of the golden age.
2024/2025 Season - Monaco Dance Forum. The spotlight comes on and we find ourselves pitched into the mind of a man, as the story of his life flashes before him, interwoven with those of other people, past and future. Thus begins the labyrinthine two-part journey of Diptych, through the passageways of a ship. Time, memory, and premonition whirl around illusions, utopias, and the lost loves of a couple and blinded characters, actors in their own story. At every stage of their quest, they are thrown off course by uncontrollable forces of nature.
2023/2024 season - ACADEMY GALA. The Princess Grace Academy Gala is one of the highlights of the year for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. During this special evening, the public have the unique chance to meet the members of the prestigious ballet school, and learn about the elite training it dispenses to students, encompassing a wide variety of styles from the classic to the contemporary. For the young dancers and their instructors, the Gala is the culmination of a year's work. New arrivals will make their debut performing on the stage of the Salle Garnier, while the Academy's graduates will bid their farewells before heading off to join international ballet companies.
2023/2024 season - Monaco Dance Forum - C'EST BEAU ! - 6e SENS & DK-BEL. Dance troupes DK-BEL and 6eSens have for several years now been performing shows featuring both disabled and able-bodied dancers. And the response from audiences is often simply "It's beautiful!" We wanted to delve deeper into the meaning of beauty, to try and understand its power to convey emotions - on a personal, collective, and even universal level.
Choreography JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MAILLOT with ANTONIO CASTRIGNANÒ and THE ORCHESTRA OF PUGLIA TARANTA SOUNDS
DJ Agathe MOUGIN