The Upheaval

A new creation by choreographer Philippe Blanchard.

Dealing with crisis

Skånes Dansteater has together with choreographer Philippe Blanchard initiated an exploratory project with the title "The Upheaval". The project involves a deeper conversation about ecologically sustainable practices within the performing arts.

In a time when the climate emergency is accelerating, the project looks beyond emissions data and toward a critical reflection on the ethical dimensions of the performing arts methodologies, the infrastructures that sustain them and the symbolic economies surrounding them. The project questions not only what we produce, but how, why, and under what systems of value.

The project includes a dance work for summer 2026 with 6 dancers. In the process Philippe Blanchard and dramaturge and collaborator Maika Knoblich draw on the philosophical concept of opacity as articulated by the Martinique poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant. Rather than clinging to material origin, the dance work will invite visitors to discover the weave – a tapestry of relations, histories, and gestures.

Philippe, Maika, and the dancers explore if we can imagine artistic practices that embody this ethic of opacity – practices that do not seek to extract or explain, but to relate, resonate, and respond? Can dance, as a temporal, embodied art form, offer a way of thinking and creating that is ecologically adjusted, relationally grounded, and politically urgent?