La Mer

Following the success of Anima Obscura, Nanine Linning and her international artistic team return with another overwhelming total experience. La Mer is a visually rich and emotionally charged multimedia performance about both the beauty and the fragility of our oceans.

This new production is inspired by Claude Debussy’s monumental and iconic La Mer (1905) and his choral work Sirènes. With a cast of 25 dancers, Linning contrasts the naïve romantic vision of the sea from Deb

ussy’s era with the stark reality of today, shaped by rising sea levels and pollution. La Mer invites audiences to reflect on their own relationship with the natural world. The result is an immersive hybrid of dance, music, couture, and video art that resonates on both a physical and intellectual level.

The cinematic music of Yannis Kyriakides offers a contemporary counterpart to Debussy’s beloved symphony. His sound compositions, written for the phenomenal soprano Barbara Hannigan, incorporate the latest hydrophone recordings from the deepest parts of the ocean. These recordings reveal that what was once thought to be one of the quietest places on Earth is, in fact, teeming with life and sound.

The digital scenography by media artist Heleen Blanken, together with more than eighty sustainable costumes created by Japanese haute couture designer Yuima Nakazato, transforms the stage into a mysterious and fluid world where beauty and threat exist side by side.