Programmes A and B were each enriched by an original contemporary creation, a direction the company has increasingly explored over the past decade through collaborations with figures such as Ek, Foniadakis and Duato. For Programme A, Hofesh Shechter contributed a decidedly “Shechterian” piece: “The Cave,” conceived in collaboration with Danil Simkin. The dancers move to a pounding techno rhythm in a kind of underground, club-like atmosphere. Although the audience was encouraged to dance and take part in the performance, the gloomy, dark sonorities and disarticulated steps hardly invited participation. The company, however, excelled—demonstrating formidable modernity and adaptability.

“We the People,” a recent creation by Jamar Roberts (2024)—a former Alvin Ailey dancer and resident choreographer—infuses Programme B with contemporary urgency. The music by Rhiannon Giddens, rearranged by Gabe Witcher without vocals, carries a haunting, folk-inflected rhythm that draws the spectator into its pulse. Featuring fourteen dancers, all dressed in denim, the work’s central theme is the power of people: protest, lament, and the force that emerges when individuals cohere into a community. Divided into four sections, each begins with a soloist or a small group dancing in silence, creating a sense of poetry and suspension: it is the dancers’ bodies, breath, and stomping that dictate rhythm and emotion. When the music enters and the ensemble reunites, the effect becomes electrifying, and a striking contrast emerges between the sprightly, almost carefree nature of the score and the serious, rebellious, confrontational expressions of the dancers. The sound of feet hitting the floor and hands clapping against thighs becomes part of the score. Marzia Memoli delivers a remarkable solo—fast, virtuosic, razor-sharp. Lloyd Knight is equally compelling as he enters alone, beginning almost like a street-dance battle before spiralling into a desperate rebellion against an unseen enemy who traps and ultimately defeats him, despite his cry for mercy.

Rightly featured on both evenings, the brand-new creation “Désir” (2025)—conceived by Virginie Mécène, extraordinary dancer and ballet master of the Graham technique—is a true gem. Mécène created it for Aurélie Dupont, former étoile of the Paris Opéra Ballet, who here expresses her passion and lifelong fascination for Martha Graham’s universe and technique. Inspired by a 1926 photograph of Graham performing a solo of the same name, now lost, Mécène has recreated the piece with passion and refinement, set to a hammering, minimalist piano score. Dupont brings it to life with her natural elegance and glamour. The piece begins and ends with Dupont raising her interlaced wrists toward the sky in an act of prayer—and indeed Mécène describes it as a hymn to femininity and desire. While the red stretch costume and the music recall Lamentation, the choreography speaks with its own voice: mature, inventive, faithful to Graham’s spirit yet full of freshness. In her red elastic dress, Dupont sculpts the air with horizontal arm movements—a kind of fractured, edgy third arabesque, forearms and hands directed backwards, elbows bent. A single top light isolates her, tightening the space around her. It is a beautiful cameo, one that the French public greets with particular warmth, as Dupont is widely regarded as a living monument of French dance.