Onbashira Diptych

Choreography by Damien Jalet

Cast

Skid
First performed in 2017 for the GöteborgsOperans Danskompani
Revival from the 2022-2023 Season of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève

Choreographer Damien Jalet
Choreography Advisor Aimilios Arapoglou
Musical composition Christian Fennesz & Marihiko Hara
Scenographers Jim Hodges & Carlos Marques da Cruz
Costumes designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard
Lighting designer Joakim Brink

Thr(o)ugh
First performed in 2016 for the Hessiches Staatballet de Darmstadt
Revival from the 2022-2023 Season of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève

Choreographer Damien Jalet
Choreography Advisor Aimilios Arapoglou
Musical composition Christian Fennesz
Scenographers Jim Hodges & Carlos Marques da Cruz
Costumes designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard
Lighting designer Jan Maertens

About

Onbashira is a mythic festival held every six years for the past twelve hundred years in Suwa, in the highlands of Nagano, central Japan. To celebrate the symbolic renewal of Suwa- taisha, the ‘great shrine of Suwa’, thousands of men hurtle down the side of a steep mountain, riding on enormous tree trunks. The Onbashira ritual is thus synonymous with danger, but also with bravery and surpassing oneself.

Fascinated and inspired by this ritual and its states of danger, Damien Jalet naturally chose this title for the evening which brings together his pieces Skid and Thr(o)ugh. To coincide with the performances of Mirage, his first creation for the GTG Ballet, the Geneva public will be able to discover or rediscover these two pieces – mounted separately over the course of previous seasons – during the same evening, as desired by the choreographer. The opportunity for a unique dive into his aesthetic universe.

In Skid, a 34° slope on which the performers move evokes the mountain, while in Thr(o)ugh, a gigantic rotating cylinder recalls the motif of the tree trunk. The impressive stage installations, designed in partnership with New York visual artist Jim Hodges, place the dancers between control and imbalance, forcing them to struggle with forces beyond their power that push them, in fine, to trust themselves.

The notion of danger is therefore omnipresent, particularly in Thr(o)ugh, which Damien Jalet created a few months after witnessing the November 2015 Paris attacks, the tenth anniversary of which will soon be commemorated. The piece bears the traces of this experience of mortal danger: in the rotating cylinder on stage, the performers move in a corporeality between crash test dummies and ghosts, immobility becoming synonymous with death.

Oscillating between verticality and horizontality, Skid seems more peaceful. To the electro-acoustic music of Christian Fennesz, inspired by Mahler’s symphonies, the dancers surrender themselves and resist, get up and let themselves fall, drawing lines of physical history between appearance and disappearance. At times epic, dangerous, humorous and moving, Skid‘s slope prohibits stillness and creates a chain reaction of physical and emotional events.

In these two pieces, to ward off danger, physical relationships with others are often the only comfort, whether against the call of the void or in those inexorable moments when time and place determine our future.