WORLD PREMIERE
Pontus Lidberg has made rapid strides in his career. The Swedish choreographer, dancer, and director has created over forty works for the most important dance companies in the world in just fifteen years: New York City Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, SemperOper Ballett Dresden, Martha Graham Dance Company, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Royal Swedish Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Beijing Dance Theatre, BalletBoyz, Morphoses, as well as for his own company, Pontus Lidberg Dance, founded in Stockholm in 2003 and now based in New York. Also an award-winning filmmaker – notably for The Rain and especially Labyrinth Within, featuring Wendy Whelan, Principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, with a score by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang – Lidberg has been the artistic director of the Danish Dance Theater since April 2018. Following a traditional training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, Lidberg earned an MFA in Contemporary Performing Arts from the University of Gothenburg. His works combine Nordic aesthetics and theatricality, with continuous movement where groups transform and explore the depths of the psyche. He has been described by international critics as “a master of the quietly unsettling.” This will surely be reaffirmed in his new project SIREN, featuring seven dancers selected from his “two” companies, which Oriente Occidente hosts for its world premiere.
Franz Schubert's Sonata No. 18 and an original composition by Stefan Levin provide the music for SIREN, which draws inspiration from the Homeric suggestion of the Sirens’ song—enchanting sea creatures who lured sailors to their deaths with their beautiful voices. Only Odysseus managed to resist them by plugging his companions’ ears with wax and having himself tied to the ship's mast so he could hear their song. The mythological reference leads the artist and his dramaturg Adrian Guo Silver (also a collaborator with Bill T. Jones and Martha Clarke) to explore Odysseus’s unquenchable desire and the Sirens’ song as a source of creative impulse. The work does not directly reference the myth nor tell any specific story but is inspired by themes of desire, creativity, and, unexpectedly, solitude.
lidberg.se
danskdanseteater.dk
