Bausch / Platel / Mahler - Adagio / Soûl

In dialogue with Gustav Mahler With her early work Adagio, Pina Bausch created a poignant choreography based on the first movement of Gustav Mahler's unfinished tenth symphony. The music, composed during a deep personal crisis, shimmers between ecstatic joy and poignant grief. Bausch builds a poetic universe in which seemingly everyday encounters and simple gestures take center stage. The dancers experience extremes: from rapture to despair, from resistance to surrender. Thus they touch upon what makes us fundamentally human. Alain Platel, artistic heir to Bausch, creates the new production Soûl ('drunk') with several dancers from Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Like Bausch, he lets himself be inspired by Gustav Mahler. The early symphonic poem Totenfeier, which would later be transformed into the first movement of the second symphony 'Auferstehung', is a monumental funeral march. Through the dark score, gentle, almost pastoral moments of hope resound. Within that arc of tension, Platel poses an urgent question: could a light drunken state make this world more bearable?