»What is Human Civilization Without Respect?«

In a world marked by growing uncertainty, we fight for what we believe in. It’s a time of intense conviction, but nobody is listening anymore.

We speak to each other with our headphones on - and if we listen, it’s through third-party podcasts curating our every opinion. With our eyes locked onto our personal propaganda machines, finetuned by our very own thoughts and actions, we confirm our deepest fears and co-author nightmares in a network of others.

We’re screaming to the choir and singing to deaf ears - it’s a moment of incredible polarization. But who is right, and who is wrong, when there is no middle ground?

Sophocles’ three-thousand-year-old »Antigone« is a debate for our time. Human dignity and humility are at stake in a struggle for the respect for human laws. What is human civilization without respect? Without the dignity of others? Those who follow global politics may soon find out.

With a phenomenal cast - some of the most acclaimed dancers from Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, joined by dancers from my own company, winter guests - I’m thrilled to explore Antigone through their extraordinary physicality and theatricality. Our »Antigone« is not a staging of Sophocles’ text, but a radical reimagining of a timeless tragedy through the physical poetry of Tanztheater, merged with spoken word and contemporary dance.

More than a retelling, it is a rediscovery of the play’s ideas - in movements, words and situation. We search for a deeply human expression that confronts the unresolved dilemmas of the play: Duty, dignity, morality and the complexity of power.

Through howling wind and screaming birds, through desperate grief and violent tyranny, the scenes from the play hurl their importance back at our present-day dilemmas. In a time when what is wrong is deemed evil and what is right is written off as sanctimonious, where is God in all this chaos? Rooted in the legacy of Tanztheater we aim for a highly physical and emotionally charged performance language to match the scale of this infinitely important story.

I can’t imagine a better group of dancers to embody the contradictions at the heart of »Antigone« – expressing the struggle beyond what words can hold.

- Alan Lucien Øyen