Silent Echo

Dutch siblings Imre and Marne van Opstal are among the rising stars of the European dance scene. For the Hessisches Staatsballett, they created I’m Afraid to Forget Your Smile for six dancers, incorporating choral voices to explore the act of letting go as a transitional state of surrender to loss. The work captures a fleeting moment—so tangible yet so ephemeral—that time itself seems to stand still.

Following distinguished performing careers with Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) 1 & 2 and the Batsheva Dance Company, the van Opstal siblings launched their promising choreographic career at NDT in 2016. Since then, they have created works regularly for the renowned Dutch company as well as for dance companies across Europe.

Choreography: Imre & Marne van Opstal
Set and Lighting Design: Tom Visser
Dramaturgy: Lucas Herrmann
Musical Rehearsal Director: Daniel Lett

Dancers: Ramon John, Peng Chen, Masayoshi Katori, Luke Watson, Sayaka Kado, Mei-Yun Lu, Bridget Lee, Daniela Castro Hechavarría, Anthony Michael Pucci, Marcos Novais, Enzo Boffa, Benjamin Wilson, Alessio Pirrone

World Premiere:
Darmstadt – 17 September 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Staatstheater Darmstadt, Grand Hall

Wiesbaden Premiere:
28 October 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Grand Hall

Trailer: De-Da Productions

Unlike most of his creations, music was the starting point for this work by the exceptional choreographer Marco Goecke. In his duet Midnight Raga, whose title refers to the tradition of classical Indian music, the score by Ravi Shankar serves as the creative foundation.

Although the work draws inspiration from Indian and Oriental aesthetics—reflected, among other things, in the dancers’ rich blue silk costumes—Goecke’s unmistakable signature movement language, with its tense, rapid, and highly expressive quality, remains ever present.

Following its world premiere in 2017 at Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT 2), this choreography, originally created specifically for two dancers, is given a new embodiment in its revival by the Hessian State Ballet.

In The Mass Ornament, Spanish choreographer Fran Díaz reflects on an idea from Siegfried Kracauer’s 1963 essay collection The Mass Ornament. Using the example of the Tiller Girls, the famous revue troupe of the 1920s, the philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School describes the rationalization of bodies as a socio-economic expression of mass production.

Díaz translates this concept into the present day, employing a wide range of choreographic formations to explore the relationship between the individual and the collective. Set to the relentless music of Henryk Górecki’s Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra, Op. 40, together with an additional composition by Tom Foskett-Barnes, the work unfolds in three distinct sections.

Precision, awareness, and physical exhaustion define the choreography’s portrayal of self-sacrifice in service of the whole. Yet amid the obsession with conformity, a kiss occasionally emerges as a final bastion of humanity.