Nachtträume

Marcos Morau’s Nachtträume was the Zurich ballet event of 2022. Critics praised the evening as a «danced Panopticon and ambitious Gesamtkunstwerk made up of dance, text, music, and impressive images», while audiences sprang to their feet in applause at the end of every performance.

Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau, who has led his «La Veronal» company in Barcelona since 2005, has made a name for himself with surreal productions. He has been a welcome guest at all the renowned international dance festivals. Nachtträume was his debut appearance with the Ballett Zürich. The starting point for his new creation is Der grüne Tisch, a legendary dance piece by Kurt Jooss from 1932, in which the German choreographer depicted the First World War as a dance of death. Dancers appear as figures at the mercy of unnamed authorities. Assembled at the «green table», they wield a power that simultaneously decides the fate of millions, while denying individuals their destiny.

Ninety years after Jooss, Morau addresses today’s power structures in the face of new global emergencies in Nachtträume. The marionette-like dancers seem to wriggle as if in a spider's web of their own creation. In a mixture of explosiveness, furor and despair, Marcos Morau and the Ballett Zürich succeed in creating a profound analysis of the present, in which power and vanity, resentment and greed for profit, social Darwinism and economic primacy all too often have a stranglehold on us.
The piece is a nightmarish, 90-minute journey into the realms of power, powerlessness and mindless allegiance. In dark, cool, black-and-white images, Marcos Morau’s Nachtträume evokes memories of the silent film era and the rise of National Socialism, with frightening parallels to the current political world situation. In the dream world conjured up by an enigmatic queen, in which the ensemble of dancers seems almost to intertwine, destruction and hope lie close together.

On June 17, 2023 the official ticket sale for the season 23/24 starts. Friends, subscribers, and shareholders can take advantage of their advance purchase rights one week earlier.