The start of a long-term research for Benjamin Mengistu Navet into the possibilities to interweave textile on musical practices, focusing on the work of composer and musician Julius Eastman.

This research is about trans­la­ti­on : How do we under­stand the reper­toi­re of Julius Eastman?

This research is about echo : how are artists nowa­days re-in­ter­pre­ting his work?

This research is about wea­ving Julius's music :

How do we pre­ser­ve, and con­ti­nue a heri­ta­ge of mecha­ni­cal wea­ving looms by com­bi­ning them with musi­cal moda­li­ties, such as punch card systems.

Bruits Marrons is a creation inspired by the work Evil Nigger and reflections on the life of its composer, African-American musician Julius Eastman. Drawing on the concept of a quilombo (communities of marooned slaves, free and autonomous) and bringing it into contemporary contexts, the piece will gather one musician and five dancers (in addition to a large artistic and technical support team) to create an ephemeral community questioning resistance and solidarity through music that combines rage and beauty. The premiere takes place at the Festival d'Automne 2025.

Four bodies defy, choose, and free themselves from the multiple layers of violence that have shaped them over time: Soa Ratsifandrihana’s new work, simultaneously a dance choreography and a musical composition, excavates the corporal, oral, and melodic tales of diasporic lives. Together with a guitarist and two performers, she embarks on a wandering journey between Madagascar and several continents, between the history of movement and its heritage. Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna (translating to “Comparison, transmission, rivalry”) is a poetic reminder that not only words but also bodies and sounds can reshape the histories we inherit.

Lila Magnin's great-grandmother was called Azad, a first name that also means "free". In this solo, Lila explores the complexity of femininity in a world that does not always understand it.

In Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood three figures perform the intrinsic frenzy of being human. To do so, they revert to an old, almost extinct, tradition: clowning. Using the clown’s nonsensical language and wobbly body, with gleeful recklessness and frivolous pretence, they make their way through human history and beyond.

Please (don’t) let me be (mis)understood is a hybrid performance that moves in between clowning, dance and theatre, a performance in which human bodies step out of their banks to play non-human relationships as well. Everything with the clown’s wink.

Tukuleur gives center stage to a character of mixed ethnicities searching for their position in western society and public space. Hair, posture and skin color shift, intersect and alternate each other, creating a choreography of looks and poses based on representations throughout art-history and pop-culture. By making the character ever changing, Tukuleur attempts to expose how our gaze influences the interpretation of different bodies in different contexts. Subsequently the film shows the consequences of these gazes and their linked representations on the personal growth and struggle of the character, who’s trying to find their place between acceptance and otherness. Rocking in between conforming and rejecting, pride and ridicule, going from one end of the spectrum to the other trying to find a pose that’s made for them, slowly breaking under its weight.

Geh nicht in den Wald, im Wald ist der Wald explores the topic of exclusion. It becomes an idea about the power of prejudices as well as about the fears that are triggered by the unfamiliar or new things. At what point does one speak of exclusion? How does one fight it? What mechanisms promote it? The piece is exploring exclusion by means of dance and language. How and why do we exclude others, and how can this be embodied in the movement of dancers? Using body weight to examine opposites within the human body, through spatial experiments. How do we move both inside and outside the norm? How do we move when we feel trapped or are forced to do something?

The Queer Festival Heidelberg started in 2009 as the first festival of its kind in Germany. The festival is a platform for queer culture, a queer community event and a celebration of diversity and tolerance. From the beginnings at a weekend in Heidelberg's Karlstorbahnhof with two concerts, a party night and a reading, it went steadily uphill. Meanwhile, the duration of the festival has grown to one month. Every year around 10,000 people come to experience the mix of concerts, art, performance, readings, cinema and discussion events. The Queer Festival is organized by Queer Play e.V. and the Karlstorbahnhof. Since 2021, the Queer Festival has been sponsored by the city of Heidelberg as part of the "Rainbow City Heidelberg".

La Aveis a dance theatre piece that aims to investigate how we can denaturalize our western two-dimensional gender construction. By looking at gender systems all around the world and looking at different variables the construction is linked to, La Ave re-integrates gender to a multidimensional concept.

The Inhabitants is a site specific work created by Iván Pérez and was first performed in 2016 at Operastate Festival in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. In September 2018, the Dance Theatre Heidelberg had its debut with the work.

The piece portrays a future scenario in which twelve inhabitants have taken possession of their environment during decades of isolation. As first visitors, the audience find themselves in the role of the intruders. They can observe closely how a new culture evolved from the inhabitant's interaction with their surroundings. They adapt to the conditions, but they also change and shape their world creatively. As part of the performance, the dancers relate to the audience directly, blurring the lines between otherness and proximity.

For the 2016 edition of his great masked ball in Versailles, Kamel Ouali was directly inspired by the poetry of "Beauty and the Beast" by Jean Cocteau", between fairy tale and fantasy. Each year, the choreographer wants to renew the theme of his big masked ball, launched for the first time in 2011.

Artistic Director, choreography: Mehdi Kerkouche
Directed by Jean-Yves Ricci, in collaboration with Stefan Mucchielli
Copyright CANAL + 2014