Reviews

Gala forces audience expectations to the fore, and blurs the lines between failure and success in performance as it suggests that theater is community, both onstage and off.

 Roslyn Sulcas, dance critic for The New York Times

Bel's focus is not on how to dance, but on the power relationships hidden behind dance—between choreographers and dancers, between professional dancers and amateur dancers, between dancers and theater... And how theater, as a mechanism, produces these performance subjects.

Wang Mengfan, choreographer

This could be my favorite dance performance after Pina Bausch's Kontakthof! 

Cheng Yuemin, playwright and theatre critic

The dance "epistemology" of Gala is not original to Jérôme Bel, but what makes it special is that is is "this one". The 20 people on the stage realized the "presence" of this moment, and here, in "structural improvisation"; in other words, the 20 dancers on the stage of Jixiang Theater in the autumn of 2023 vividly "dance in the moment", and we, as the audience, also personally experienced this "sense of presence". I saw "every" person on the stage of Jixiang Theater.

Mu Yu, professor at Beijing Dance Academy and dance commentator

I have seen many dance performances, but never one as pure, happy and touching as when I watched this work! This is a grand gala that tolerates different people, as well as people and their bodies!

Wang Run, Beijing Daily reporter

About Gala

Gala is a work created in 2015 by the famous French choreographer Jérôme Bel. It offers a different approach to dance. In this collective art form, Jérôme Bel’s project brings together dance professionals and amateurs of diverse backgrounds. A mixed-ability cast of eighteen locals will step onto the stage in their own costumes , express their own dance with different body status. It is a work bold and avant-garde, embracing freedom and inclusiveness, allowing everyone to find their own platform. The different acts never call on us to pass judgement, but they reveal the way in which each person’s cultural repertoire involves them in a singular relationship with that desire for something else that dance is, redefining the aesthetics of dance art.

Credits

Conception: Jérôme Bel

Cast: Chen Xiangyue, Gao Shan, Huang Xiulong, Huang Zhihao, Li Zi'an, Liu Jiankui, Ma Tianyi, Qi Yue, Shen Xuyu, Wang Jiangyao, Wang Qing'er, Wu Ziying, Yan Weixu, Yang Ruiting, Yang Zixuan, Yun Huanhuan, Zhang Chi, Zhao Qi, Zhu Lu

Assistant: Maxime Kurvers

Assistants in charge of the restaging: Xiao Jing, Chen Xindi, Henrique Neves

Producer: Ge Huichao

Stage Manager: Wang Xinyu

Lighting Operator: Wang Shuzhen

Sound Operator: Tian Yulin

Executive Producer: Wang Ziwen

Casting Coordinator: Zhang Shiman

Costumes: the dancers

Production: R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris) Artistic

Advice/Executive Direction: Rebecca Lasselin

Production Manager: Sandro Grando

Technical Advice: Gilles Gentner

Coproductions: Coproductions: Dance Umbrella (London), TheaterWorks Singapore/72-13, KunstenFestivaldesArts (Brussels), Tanzquartier Wien, Nanterre-Amandiers centre dramatique national, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Theater Chur (Chur) and TAK Theater Liechtenstein (Schaan) - TanzPlan Ost, Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), La Commune centre dramatique national d'Aubervilliers, Tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf), House on Fire with the support of the European Union cultural program 

R.B. Jérôme Bel is supported by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d'Ile-de-France, French Ministry for Culture.

With the support of: CND Centre national de la danse (Pantin) and Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) in the framework of Studiolab for providing studio spaces.

Thanks to: the partners and participants of the Dance and voice workshops, NL Architects and Les rendez-vous d'ailleurs. 

Jérôme Bel is associated artist to Le Quartz (Brest), Centre national de la danse (Pantin) and Comédie CDN de Normandie.

For ecological reasons, R.B. Jérôme Bel company doesn't travel by plane anymore.

About Jérôme Bel

Jérôme Bel is a famous French choreographer. He has been invited to contemporary art biennials and museums (Tate Modern, MoMA, Documenta 13, the Louvre…), where he has put on performances and shown films. Among them Veronique Doisneau and Shirtology are in the collections of the Musée National d'Art Moderne-Centre Pompidou. Jérôme Bel is regularly invited to give lectures at universities (Waseda, UCLA, Stanford…). 

In 2005, Jérôme Bel received a Bessie Award for the performances of The show must go on given in New York. Three years later, with Pichet Klunchun, he won the Routes Princesse Margriet Award for Cultural Diversity (European Cultural Foundation) for the production of Pichet Klunchun and myself. Disabled Theater was chosen in 2013 for the Theatertreffen in Berlin and won the Swiss "present-day dance creation" prize.

About BODY ON&ON

BODY ON&ON is a contemporary, cultural and artistic programming and producing organisation taking the body as its basis. With the philosophy of "everything starts from the body", BODY ON&ON is deeply committed to the field of arts and public welfare. Since its inception in 2019, BODY ON&ON has initiated projects such as the Body Interview Project, Luminous Festival (the first inclusive arts festival in China), Touch Contact Improvisation Festival, Body Nomad Project, UK-China Disability Arts Forum, "Access for Change" Platform and Contemporary Body Workshop to stimulate intellectual, sensory and conscious body fields, dedicated to exploring the body's contemporary energy and the social value of the arts, and jointly promoting individual growth and social inclusion.