“Dance and celebration at their most exuberant — precisely what Philip Berlin’s mermaid character so beautifully embodied. ” — SCENEBLOG
“The dancers looked like graceful gazelles (..)This evening was an atmospheric celebration of dance and the collective forces that brought it to life.
— ISCENE
“Beautiful and explosive (..)The dancers truly mastered Cunningham’s technique”
— CULTURETIME
Danish Dance Theatre proudly presents LE SCÉNARIO, an exciting work choreographed by the compelling new voice in Nordic contemporary dance. Swedish Philip Berlin. It premiered at the dance festival Aarhus Summer Dance and later at Copenhagen Summer Dance under the open sky in front of the Royal Danish Opera in august 2026.
Le Scénario is a dance performance that celebrates the climax as a state of being: the soaring leaps, vibrating energy and a playful gleam in the eye. It fuses raw post-punk with a playful sense of humour, while drawing threads back to the freedom of modern dance of the 1960s and 1970s with references to Merce Cunningham and Michael Clark, among others. The costumes flirt with both Renaissance menswear and contemporary queer aesthetics, creating a visual language that is at once historical and insistently present.
The performance unfolds as a sustained crescendo and plays with the idea of the finale as a format where energy, sound, light and movement build relentlessly and crash over the audience. It is intense, sensuous and physical – an experience felt throughout the body. The focus rests on the instant when the body leaves the ground. The dancers launch themselves through space in large, powerful jumps – like leaping deers at full speed, unpredictable and full of life.
Behind its exuberance lies Berlin’s meticulous practice: an extraordinary attention to detail and a deep devotion to mastering technique without losing sight of the work’s conceptual foundations. The result is an intensely physical encounter—precise and disciplined, yet playful and wild.
CREDITS
CHOREOGRAPHY Philip Berlin
DANCERS Jessica Lyall, Lukas Hartvig-Møller, Bradley Waller, Yi Shao Li, Carlos Luis Blanco Ramos, Lola Potiron, Matilde Stefanini, Reiko Ohta, Luigi Nardone, Grace O’Brien. TBD.
COSTUMES AND SCENOGRAPHY Daniel Åkerström Steen
COMPOSITION Yoann Durant
CHOREOGRAPHIC ASSISTANCE Louise Dahl og Anna Grip
MUSIC Molchat Doma, Dirty Beaches and Suicide
PHOTOS Jubal Batissti and Bradley Waller
VIDEO Jubal Battisti
