The Art of Being Human
© Marcus Lieberenz
Moving Experience
- Visual concept
- Alexander Polzin
- Choreographer
- Sommer Ulrickson
- Director of Phantasm
- Laurence Dreyfus
‘This mesmeric show was physically daring, liberating all ideas of gender and inviting acceptance of difference... The impact was provocative and ethereal’
The Guardian
The Art of Being Human is an exploration of how it feels to be alive and to exist among others, in relationships that are perfectly expressed through the polyphony of Early Music – its dissonances and harmonies – and reflected in the movement of dancers’ bodies, in a performance that offers profound insights into the very meaning of life.
Laurence Dreyfus and ensemble Phantasm perform English consort music of the 16th and 17th centuries on stage, with sculpture by Alexander Polzin creating the landscape against which five dancers move, choreographed by Sommer Ulrickson.
The work was commissioned by Pierre Boulez Saal, with the world premiere given there in 2023, followed by a performance at Snape Maltings. It will be performed at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg in March 2025.
‘The agreement was that we would all test our individual boundaries in order to make something together – quite literally the art of being human’
