- Approx. 2 hours 15 minutes without a break
- Interesting for people aged 12+
- Performed in English with German surtitles.
2+2 = 5 Big Brother is watching you
George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel ‹1984› is reimagined by Trio ACE—Alia Luque, Christoph Rufer, and Ellen Hofmann—as a powerful work of physical theater for Ballett Basel. In Oceania, where Big Brother sees all, independent thought is a crime and language becomes a tool of control. This striking work exposes the inner workings of totalitarianism: the manipulation of meaning, the restriction of movement, and the personal cost of defiance.
Urgent and immersive, this choreographic-literary hybrid—adapted specifically for the Ballett Basel ensemble—expands the boundaries between dance and theater, fiction and reality. Orwell’s themes of repression and resistance are vividly brought to life as movement, language, and ideology confront one another on stage.
‹Ballett Basel – Anders› (Ballett Basel – Different) defines the 2023–2025 period at Ballett Basel: a dedicated two-year mandate and initiative to further broaden the form and content of dance and choreography. ‹1984› is part of a series of original creations and adaptations that bring diverse perspectives and bold ideas to the stage. Each production is conceived as a world premiere, tailor-made for the ensemble, and previously unseen in Basel.
The 2024–2025 season explores a central theme: love. Or: «What’s love got to do with it?» In ‹1984›, love is both refuge and threat—a vulnerable emotional state that also becomes a political battleground, with devastating consequences.
Nobody—no body—is safe.
Mediathek
Every movement of the actors is choreographed down to their facial expressions. [...] The evening knows how to impress with this consistency and the ensemble's performance.
The play is «physical» in the sense that it shows how permanent control from above affects physical movements. [...] What works well is this mixture of ridiculousness that such a surveillance state also produces and the latent fear of making a wrong move.
Complete surveillance hovers over everything.
This impressive new version exposes the inner workings of totalitarianism. [...] It expands the boundaries between dance and theater, fiction and reality, is haunting and stirring.
It's a radical decision to strip the ballet dancers of their familiar language and turn them into physical theater actors. But it's the right decision. The result is that ‹1984› at Theater Basel will probably not be the most entertaining play of the year, but it will certainly be one of the most relevant.
Dates follow