From The Festival d’Avignon: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui And Damien Jalet: Babel 7.16

Presented in the famous Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet have joined forces with visual artist Antony Gormley to create Babel 7.16, a dance performance that explores language and its relationship with nationhood, identity and religion.

Taking the tale of The Tower of Babel as its starting point, Gormley’s five huge 3-dimensional frames hint at a nameless intersection in a faceless city near the borders that define a no man’s land. We watch as the action flows from private to public, intimacy to extroversion, and the individual to the collective.

Filmed for the first time and in 4K Ultra High Definition Babel 7.16 features two dancers sharing with humour their legacies. By inviting all the dancers that have made Babel a reference in the world of choreography the two Belgian artists – one Flemish and one Francophone, from a country at once divided and united – have put the concept of masses, of history and of territory in the Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes, where the walls continue telling stories of prerogatives and of the unchanging nature of power and of religion, yet also exalt and welcome life in all its complexities.

A production of Heliox in cooperation with Unitel.