Portner/
Kylian/
Balanchine

Incomparable Emma Portner 

“More Emma Portner, please!” wrote the international press after seeing the duet islands, created by the Norwegian National Ballet. Now, a new work is on its way: Some Girls Don’t Turn, where Portner re-imagines dance beyond the spectacle of man or woman. 

Portner herself writes this about the piece: “We are all angels, monsters, heroes, love, dust, systems, magic, and machinery. Feel that. Touch it. Flip it back and forth.” 

Canadian Portner has become a phenomenon and has created dance works for everything and everyone from Netflix, Apple and the Guggenheim Museum to Justin Bieber, Banks and Blood Orange. Now that she is returning to the Oslo Opera House, we can finally enter her incomparable dance universe once more – and this time, with 30 dancers from the Norwegian National Ballet on stage. 

More Emma Portner, please!

Lisa Boda / Dagens Nyheter

Reunion with Kylián’s universe 

Jiří Kylián’s masterpieces continue to inspire new generations of dancers and combine modernity with technique and beauty. When the Norwegian National Ballet takes to the stage with 27’52’’, one of his most characteristic works will be performed by dancers who know their Kylián, thanks to several decades of collaboration with the choreographer who has rejuvenated ballet as an art form.  

The duration of the work is exactly as the title implies and deals with the very same – time – a unit that, according to Kylián, “controls our lives without us even knowing how to define it”. 

Playful and Balanchinian to Mozart 

Mozart’s music has been praised as music embodied through dance. George Balanchine also believed this and was of the opinion that Mozart’s Divertimento No. 15 is among the best ever written in its genre. Balanchine’s danceable interpretation of the musical piece has been called an indisputable masterpiece.  He himself was a skilled pianist and he literally created the choreography from the rhythms, phrasing and colours in Mozart’s musical score. 

“See the music, hear the dance,” said Balanchine said – and when the National Ballet now performs the lively Divertimento No. 15 for the very first time, the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra will be combining the music and movements of the dancers.