Swedish Gothenburg Opera Dance Company is not only the largest dance company in the Nordic region but is also one of the leading contemporary dance companies in Europe. With an impressive portfolio of groundbreaking works and collaborations with both celebrated and emerging choreographers, the company is focusing on creating exclusive works contributing to new expressions and emerging art forms. With Icelandic Artistic Director Katrina Hall at the creative helm, the company – currently comprising 38 dancers from several countries – is annually invited to perform in the main cultural capitals of the world.
Noetic is one of the many creations that the Gothenburg Opera Dance Company has produced in collaboration with renowned choreographers, emerging composers and artists from different areas worldwide, enriching its already extended history of avant-garde works. Created by multiple award winning choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Noetic gathers a distinguished team of talent, attracting renowned British sculptor and set designer Antony Gormley, Belgian fashion designer costumiers duo Les Hommes, and composer Szymon Brzóska.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is known for combining art forms, cultures and traditions. With roots in the cultures of Morocco and Central Europe, he has been artistically influenced over many years by working with famous Belgian dance company Les Ballets C de la B. His own dance company, Eastman, was recognised as European Cultural Ambassador in 2013.
One of the biggest names in the contemporary art world, Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for investigating the relationship of the human body with space in his sculptures, installations and public artworks. His works confront fundamental questions about where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley and Cherkaoui have collaborated upon three other projects; namely, Sutra, Babel and Zero Degrees. For Noetic, Gormley’s set design gives dancers the bodily extensions and constructive elements needed to create the architecture for individual and collective actions alike.
Noetic
In Noetic, two dozen dancers invade the stage smartly dressed in black and white by Les Hommes, while building, changing and deconstructing reality with style, ingenuity and classical gestures that are sometimes flowing, other times mechanical. A vortex of emotions is conveyed by the dancers, while they handle carbon fibre shapes conceived by Gormley.
The compass is set by the percussion sounds of traditional Japanese taiko drums, gradually evolving into a blend of orchestral passages, percussion and vocal solos composed by Antony Gormley’s frequent collaborator Szymon Brzóska. The harmonic and emotional music of Noetic has been specially composed for The Göteborg Opera Orchestra.
Merging fashion, design and contemporary dance, Noetic explores mind, body, space and humanity’s urge to control and escape its own rules – framing this study in an eclectic background of culture, elegance and perceptiveness. The creation explores our own instinctive need for structuring every detail of our existence, as well as our yearning to break free of defined rules and discover what lies beyond.
Noetic has been thrilling audiences around the globe since its premiere in 2014 – and now it is Macau’s time. A far-reaching production, Noetic is a unique show by one of the most daring contemporary dance companies of our time that is certain to fill the Grand Auditorium of the Macau Cultural Centre on 18th November. An unmissable opportunity for dance and stage arts lovers, Noetic enables audiences to simultaneously immerse themselves in a veritable cornucopia of art forms.
