Skip to Content

Arts Intel Report

Ballet Preljocaj: Requiem(s)

A moment from Requiem(s).

May 6–9, 2026
La Seine Musicale, Île Seguin, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, France

The dizzyingly eclectic choreographer Angelin Preljocaj always commits to whatever genre he’s taking up or puzzle he’s working out. But he’s strongest at his extremes: at the mundane and the sacred, at the uneven rhythms of chance that John Cage and Merce Cunningham cultivated, on one side, and God-driven destiny, on the other. Requiem(s) joins these two ends. Under sepulcher lighting and to a mixed-tape accompaniment that swerves from Mozart to Messiaen, the episodic dance lays out “the mosaic of feelings after a loss,” Preljocaj has said. The 19 dancers cluster to form an altar or semaphore—like congregants. They hover over limp bodies to roll them over as if in loam. They dance inchoate feelings or burst into patterns of joyful remembrance. At its 2024 premiere, critics seemed awed. With this short reprise, Requiem(s) returns to Paris, then travels to Saint-Etienne and, in Germany, to Ludwigshafen. —Apollinaire Scherr

© Didier PHILISPART