Bittersweet Comedies

A wall, 3 female and 6 male dancers, and Ravel's Bolero. This is the base of Swedish choreographer Johan Inger's one-act ballet, which he originally created for the Netherlands Dans Theatre in 2001.
The minimalist space takes newer and newer shapes for the ever intensifying music, and newer and newer characters appear in it, in more and more mad situations and states. 
"The famous Bolero from Ravel with its sexual, almost kitschy history was the trigger point to make my own version. I quickly decided that it was going to be about relationships in different forms and circumstances. I came up with the idea of a wall that could transform the space during this minimalistic music and create small pockets of space and situations. Walking Mad is a journey in which we encounter our fears, our longings and the lightness of being.
»Our biggest blessings come to us by way of madness« - said Socrates."Johan Inger

Choreographer Alexander Ekman addresses on the contemporary dance stage a theme with which he defines himself as well: modern dance itself. The work passionately, and often raucously, picks apart the mannerisms of dance. Sixteen dancers stand visibly frozen on gigantic Scrabble tiles. While the string quartet plays and ironic-sounding words are heard spoken, the dancers run around, fall down, writhe on the floor and attempt to escape from their invisible prison. Eventually, each of them acquires a cactus. A play of rhythms between dancers and musicians.

“Now in hindsight we realise that energy is everything. When we created Sad Case in 1998, so far in to Sol’s pregnancy, the hormones were jumping and emotions were high.  It is these hormones of laughter, madness and the trepidation of the unknown ahead that are the umbilical chord of this work,” says the British Paul Lightfoot, thinking back to the origin of the ballet. He and his partner, the Spanish Sol León share credit for the performance’s choreography and set and costume designs. Up until 2020, León worked as artistic consultant and Lightfoot as artistic director for the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), where they were responsible for bringing about sixty creations, including Sad Case, which is undoubtedly one of the pillars of their work. In it, surprising movements set to Mexican mambo music reflect the ongoing search for the tension between the satirical and the serious. The Opera has long planned the staging of this irresistible modern piece for Hungarian audiences – and by way of it, the art of the world-famous Lightfoot.