Skid and Thr(o)ugh both draw inspiration from the dangerous ritual that occurs at the Japanese Onbashira festival, when men ride tree-trunks down the side of a mountain. Both works feature an unending interplay of appearances, disappearances and conflicts. The notion of danger is omnipresent, particularly in Thr(o)ugh, which was created just months after the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, which Damien Jalet witnessed first hand on rue de Charonne. In the more calm and dream-like Skid, the dancers move to Christian Fennesz’s acoustic-electro remix of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies. They are caught up in virtuosic movements of surrender and resistance, acceleration and deceleration, on a stage where stillness is quite simply impossible.

Joëlle Gayot for the Théâtre national de Bretagne.