The Court (2026)

The Court is a sensory and groundbreaking experience that invites the
audience into a seductive parallel universe where the power games of the
past and the desires of the present collide.

Inspired by sociologist Avery Gordon’s idea that we are always living side
by side with the ghosts of the past, The Court explores Western dance
history as a form of dystopian speculative fiction. The production takes us
into a space where what we thought was forgotten is still vibrating
beneath the surface. Resonating on the Baroque era’s court parties,
where dance was political propaganda and an aristocratic demonstration
of power, The Court wrenches history out of its familiar forms. It blends Louis XIV’s spectacular court ballets with contemporary dance aesthetics, rhythms
and physical expression in a work that challenges, seduces and disrupts.
The result is a timeless, absurd and deeply physical experience, taking
Baroque dances, social rituals, desires and fictions from the past and
present, and weaving them together in new forms.

The Court is not a production that you ‘see’ – it’s a world that you enter, at
your own pace. For more than three hours, the audience can freely come
in and out of the room, choosing how they want to follow the nine
performers’ constantly changing choreographic landscape. This is an
invitation to lose yourself a little, to feel history physically, and to imagine
an unknown future.

The Court is the culmination of the multi-year project Rehearsing the Not
Yet, a collaboration between choreographers Ingri Fiksdal and Louis Schou-Hansen, and Marie Nerland’s curatorial project Volt.