Avignon,
on tour

The irony of the digital age: moments after an announcement orders the opening-night audience of «Wiener Festwochen» to switch off their mobile phones, Trajal Harrell comes on stage and asks people to take them out again and play the music video to Elton John and Dua Lipa’s Cold Heart. The video, says the performer, always makes him happy, and this is the feeling he wants to convey with his latest piece, Music Music. In the seventh instalment of Milo Rau’s series Histoire(s) du Théâtre, Harrell, who has often explored dance history in his works, digs into his own archive through the lens of music. From Henry Purcell’s Music for a while to Solange’s Don’t you wait, he picks tracks from his previous choreographies—often group works—, and reinterprets them as solo numbers. There are other ...