Mirage by Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa

Mirage

Creation by Damien Jalet et Kohei Nawa

Creation for the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève
World premiere

Coproduction with Kampnagel-Hambourg, Festspielhaus St. Pölten, Charleroi Danse, Centro de Danza Matadero-Madrid

6, 7 and 9 May 2025 – 8PM
11 May 2025 – 3PM

Cast

Concept and Choreography Damien Jalet
Concept and Scenography Kohei Nawa
Music Thomas Bangalter
Lighting Designer Kunihiko Morinaga
Costumes Designer Kunihiko Morinaga
Costumes designing Assistant Anna Sato
Choreography Advisor Aimilios Arapoglou

Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève

About

With Mirage, Damien Jalet offers his very first creation for the Ballet du Grand Théâtre, where he has been an associate artist since 2022. Mirage also constitutes the fourth chapter of his collaboration with Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa. After VESSEL (2016), Mist (2022) and Planet[wanderer] (2021, 2023 at GTG), they continue their exploration of nature in perpetual metamorphosis of living things, merging their respective disciplines and confronting the human body with different materials.

Inspired by the phenomenon of mirages and Fata Morgana – optical illusions linked to specific meteorological conditions, caused by light being distorted as it passes through different- temperature layers of air – Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa depict humanity wandering in a metaphorical desert in search of itself.

Through a series of unpredictable transformations inspired by different mythologies, climatology, botany and entomology, as well as Hayagawari – a Japanese kabuki theatre technique in which performers suddenly transform during a performance –, the piece peels back the performers, layer after layer, exploring an endless variety of physical and emotional states.

Sometimes evoking the spectres of a civilization at the edge of a dry well, sometimes crossed with the dazzling colours and sensuality of tropical nature, Mirage passes through like a moving, fluctuating, waking dream of atmospheric phenomena.

Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa will offer a hallucinatory, sensual, meditative and visceral quest for the human essence, beyond the veil of appearances.