Tree of codes at Opéra National De Paris - Palais Garnier

Created at the 2015 Manchester International Festival for the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet and Company Wayne McGregor, Tree of Codes possesses all the energy and vitality of a performance born of a collaboration between artists at the peak of their creativity – a collaboration, as so often in the past, born out of experimentation and common interest. Wayne McGregor draws inspiration from the novel by the American author Jonathan Safran Foer who chiselled his story from the pages of Bruno Schulz’s book, The Street of Crocodiles. He has turned to the talents of musician Jamie xx who has composed a score bordering on pop and electronica and entrusted the scenography to Olafur Eliasson, an artist internationally renowned for his monumental installations in London and New York. Carried by the sensorial music, the hypnotic interplay between mirrors and light reveals all the polysemy of the dancers’ movements, as if paring down the choreographer’s vocabulary as our gaze is literally brought into play.