Age of Content | Ballet National de Marseille—(LA)HORDE

A horde of dancers, choreographers, and visual artists that has gone viral. From the Parisian underground scene to the world’s biggest stadiums, and from 2013 to today, Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel, the collective known as (LA)HORDE, have become one of the most recognizable voices of the new era: in fashion, music, cinema, and theater. Madonna entrusted them with the creative direction of the choreography for the “Celebration Tour,” while Rosalía entrusted them with the “Lux Tour” and “Berghain” performance for the Brit Awards.

In “Age of Content,” the 16 dancers of the Ballet National de Marseille, which (LA)HORDE have directed since 2019, move through an alternative metaverse, somewhere between an aircraft hangar and a club. A real car invades the stage as if it has escaped from the universe of “Grand Theft Auto.” We find ourselves in the territory of a metaverse dance: poetic, political, post-punk, filled with club culture, video games, Instagram filters, TikTok references, jumpstyle, and action movie stunts.

A spectacular, post-postmodern, post-Barbie, and post-#MeToo choreographic epic about bodies encountering their possible versions: their avatars.

In “Age of Content,” the virtual is no longer a shift from IRL. Virtual has created deep layers of signs which we are more and more able to experience and inhabit alongside our IRL world. Our virtual identities permeate our IRL world by influencing our actions, social interactions, and desires.

“Age of Content” questions our physical and emotional responses to the abundance of content and simultaneous realities of our time.

From an initial cross through the reverse fourth wall, characters find their way to different layers of reality starting with a fight against other selves.

Throughout the show, the scenography acts as a portal from which parallel universes emerge crossed by individuals who clash, fight, defend, escape, embrace, desire, love, and celebrate together.

The dancers’ movements borrow from digital aesthetics combining simulated bodies and hypersensuality, from the uncanny familiarity of videogame avatars to viral TikTok moves. The choreographic compositions of these diffracted movements are confronted with the space of the stage where patterns from jazz and postmodern dance but also musicals are enacted and intertwined to create a doom-scroll effect.

In our work, the stage is always the place to question our online and offline environments. A safe but not sterile place. A place that has its own reality and where it is possible to collectively explore different embodiments while encountering conflict and desire, cohesion and dance.

This creation is a canvas that fuses dance and multimedia, inviting you to traverse the intricate tapestry of identity, media, and contemporary norms.

(LA)HORDE — Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, Arthur Hare