ChiIL Live Shows On Our Radar
Harris Theater Presents
THE INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE OF
Akram Khan’s Creature
English National Ballet
February 24-26, 2022
I'll be out to catch opening night of this highly anticipated international premiere on February 24th, so check back soon for my full review. Following the pivotal impact of Dust and Giselle, Akram Khan returns to English National Ballet for his third collaboration with the company.
In a dilapidated former Arctic research station, the Creature has been conscripted by a military brigade into a bold new experimental programme. He is being tested for his mental and physical ability to adapt to extreme cold, isolation and homesickness; vital qualities in mankind’s proposed colonisation of the ‘final frontiers’ on earth and beyond.
Creature is an unearthly tale of exploitation and human frontiers inspired by Georg Büchner’s expressionist classic Woyzeck, with shadows of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Drawing on themes of abandonment, isolation and the fragility of the mind, Creature is the tale of an outsider and the search for belonging.
“The outcast, the stranger, have been a common theme in my work”, says Khan. “In Creature, I am looking further into the areas related to the sense of abandonment, rage and loss.”
Jeffrey Cirio in Creature by Akram Khan © Ambra Vernuccio
Khan is joined by a brilliant creative team of Academy Award-winning designer Tim Yip, composer and sound designer Vincenzo Lamagna, lighting designer Michael Hulls and dramaturg Ruth Little.
A co-production between English National Ballet and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen Co-Producer: Sadler’s Wells, London Production Partner: The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater
This engagement will include live music performed by Harris Theater Resident Company Chicago Philharmonic Society.
Tickets and more information here.
