In Argentinian restaurant, various people meet who at first sight appear to have little in common. A judge on his lunch break weighs his carrots pedantically, an American tourist tries to ask a chicken for permission before she eats it, the waiters suddenly and unexpectantly faint, and a customer spends hours trying to check in his suitcase before ultimately being defeated by bureaucracy. Absurd and surreal encounters are interwoven into a virtuoso discourse about justice, right and wrong and mankind’s idea of being able to determine the fate of others in a fair manner. Demis Volpi has chosen a play by Julio Cortázar as the source for his first narrative ballet as the company’s new principal choreographer, an astute work that provides a parable not only in its original context, the military dictatorship in Argentina under J. R. Videla, but also for today’s society.

The writer Cortázar regarded the intervention of the incomprehensible in our real world as the only way of making reality plausible. Familiar situations drifting into something more surreal or even at times threatening offers promising material for a multifaceted choreographic realisation. read less