What if we saw our current-day thinking, actions and conflicts through the eyes of Sophocles? At a time when the distinction between true and false, good and evil, is being lost to radicalisation, Alan Lucien Øyen looks to Sophocles’ tragedy as a vital means to define our civilisation and its values. Dignity, ethics and responsibility are at the heart of this retelling of the conflict between Antigone and Creon. With this work, the Norwegian choreographer, acclaimed for his productions with Wuppertal and the Opéra de Paris, provides dream roles for three eminent disciples of Pina Bausch: Nazareth Panadero, Héléna Pikon and Julie Shanahan. Here violent tyranny and desperate misery are juxtaposed with the light of compassion.

Thomas Hahn