Inquiet

First time in Norway 

”I wish I had your lens to look through. The context you use to make sense of all the senselessness.” 

This is how Inquiet addresses the dancers’ parents’ generation directly – and all of us. The French title means worried, and in this work choreographer Alan Lucien Øyen explores unease, anxiety and emotional numbness in the face of the pace and pressure of modern society. 

The reception following the world premiere in France in 2024 was glowing, when the Norwegian National Ballet was invited to perform as part of European Ballets of the 21st Century at La Filature. Now, at last, Inquiet gets its Norwegian premiere. 

Examining dystopia 

Øyen repeatedly returns to a fundamental artistic impulse: to set motion to the stress of our time. To convey the sensation that everything is accelerating, that impressions flow without pause, and that human connection becomes increasingly fragile in a digital, fragmented reality. 

Inquiet is composed of excerpts from several of Øyen’s earlier works, here placed in an entirely new context – where dance, text, music and scenography merge in his distinctive and recognisable style. 

The multidisciplinary artist Alan Øyen 

The Norwegian National Ballet’s resident choreographer is in demand worldwide. As a director, choreographer and playwright, Alan Lucien Øyen is award-winning and widely recognised as one of the most compelling voices in Norwegian and international performing arts. “Alan Lucien Øyen’s art is impossible to ignore,” Bergensavisen wrote in 2025. 

Øyen creates dance and theatre in dozens of countries, and here in Bjørvika he has previously been behind major productions such as The Hamlet Complex and Nothing Personal – staged on two of the largest moving stage constructions ever built by the Opera House. 

In Inquiet, the Main Stage is filled by nine dancers from the Norwegian National Ballet, dressed in costumes by Ingrid Nylander, performing in a lighting design by Martin Flack, with a scenographic element by Olav Myrtvedt.