Become ocean

The vast, surging waves of the ocean serve as a metaphor for transformation and continuity. Inspired by John Luther Adams’ Pulitzer Prize–winning composition Become Ocean (2014), the choreographic duo LEE\VAKULYA conjures the unstoppable motion of the tides in their new creation of the same name for Hessisches Staatsballett.

Adams’ orchestral masterpiece can be read as an allegory of the climate crisis, while at the same time offering a powerful meditation on depth, turbulence, uncanny silence, and ultimate calm. For LEE\VAKULYA, the work also expresses the beauty of life’s circularity. They are drawn to nature’s graceful balance—the force that gives life and, with its immense power, can also take it away—ultimately returning us to our origins.
Dance and music oscillate between harmony and dissonance, between the gentle, flowing delicacy of water and the intense, rock-splitting tension of ice.

LEE\VAKULYA are Taiwanese dancer and choreographer Chen-Wei Lee and Hungarian dancer and choreographer Zoltán Vakulya. Based in Brussels, the duo has been collaborating since 2016 and has emerged as one of the rising voices in the contemporary dance world. At Hessisches Staatsballett, their acclaimed duet Together Alone was presented in the Kammerspiele in 2022, followed in 2023 by the German premiere of Burnt [the eternal long now] at the Tanzfestival Rhein-Main in Wiesbaden.

Become Ocean is a joint commission with the National Theater and Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan.

The Hessisches Staatsorchester Wiesbaden performs the score.