Light of Passage

A grand, brutal ensemble work 

When the Norwegian National Ballet performed the three-act work Light of Passage for sold-out houses in Oslo and Paris in 2023 and 2024, audiences and critics alike were left shaken and exhilarated. Now, Crystal Pite’s painfully relevant masterpiece returns to the Main Stage at the Oslo Opera House.

On rare occasions, a performance comes close to being complete

SIDSEL PAPE, AFTENPOSTEN (2023) 

Flight Pattern was Crystal Pite’s first work for The Royal Ballet in London, making her the first woman in 18 years to choreograph for the company’s main stage when the piece premiered in 2017. The monumental one-act work was met with widespread critical acclaim and received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. 

Drawing on Flight Pattern, Pite later developed the work into a full-length evening, comprising the second act, Covenant, and the third act, Passage.

Fearless and compassionate to Górecki 

Light of Passage is set to Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, a work often associated with the Holocaust that explores themes of motherhood and family separation. Pite gives these themes renewed meaning in a choreography that shifts from the vast perspective of displaced communities to an intimate focus on individual lives. 

The large ensemble moves as a single body, row upon row, densely packed, before one despairing couple steps out of the crowd in a searing pas de deux. 

A refugee crisis is also a child crisis: every five seconds, another child is forced to flee. The second act takes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as its point of departure, while the third act portrays the ultimate passage we all must make – from life to death. 

“This is the story of our time,” says choreographer Crystal Pite. The stage fills with dancers from the Norwegian National Ballet, joined by children and older performers. Through the symphony’s three movements, they guide us through the passages of life and humanity.