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phone: 0033 (0)3 6 21 21 21 21. - open tuesday - saturday 12:00 to 19:00 or online.

Alain Platel, Gustav Mahler and Berlinde De Bruyckere : a golden combination!

A group of men gather around a couple of dead horses for a ritual. Among them there's also one woman. Will a new Sacre du Printemps be performed here ? Is a woman once more to be sacrificed for failing manliness ? 

For his newest dance theatre production Nicht Schlafen, director Alain Platel let himself be inspired -at the suggestion of the late Gerard Mortier- by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. For Platel it wasn't love at first sight. Initially he especially felt an affinity with the juncture Mahler expresses in his music : a time of great acceleration and disruption in the build-up to the First World War. But in the nervousness and belligerence, the passion and the yearning for a lost harmony that Mahler's compositions manifest, Platel eventually also found connection with the gripping images he wanted to evoke in Nicht schlafen.

The musical direction of Nicht Schlafen is in the capable hands of Steven Prengels (Gardenia, C(h)oeurs and En avant, marche !). In the soundscapes he contrasts Mahler's music with African polyphonous songs and even the sound of sleeping animals. For the décor Alain Platel has worked together with visual artist Berlinde De Bruyckere for the first time. What they have in common : a predilection for the big issues of suffering and death. Together with a team of nine dancers they went on a search for the possibility of transformation in the brittle hope not to end in large-scale destruction. This possibility is what this group of dancers want to seek out again and again in each performance, without a safety net. A life-and-death dance because even in the breath of sleep reverberates the uncontrollable urge to live. 

“A moving lamentation about our confused time”, wrote De Morgen after the world première at the past Ruhr Triennial in the beginning of September. Just like Tauberbach in 2014 there's no doubt that Nicht Schlafen will again conquer the hearts of the NEXT audience !