La Mer

The sea takes care of us. It lives in the air you breathe, in the ground beneath your feet, in everything that grows. And yet, we are slowly losing it.Rising temperatures, microplastics, oil spills and oxygen-depleted “dead zones” are damaging the ocean and everything within it. The sea rebels by flowing where it never reached before, crashing over us or retreating altogether.

In La Mer, Nanine Linning gives the ocean a voice and a body. One that moves, breathes and confronts us. The dancers embody a living ecosystem with the sea as its source. Humanity appears not only as the cause of destruction, but also as the one carrying its consequences.

Inspired by Claude Debussy’s composition La Mer (1905), Linning exposes the tension between past and present. Where the sea once symbolized romance and mystery, it now reveals its raw reality. Through a fusion of dance, music, fashion and video art, a physical language of tension and surrender unfolds, with 25 dancers making the ocean’s power and fragility deeply tangible.

During the premiere performances at the Nieuwe Luxor Theater, you experience the production with live music. Under the direction of Barbara Hannigan, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the voices of Laurens Collegium merge into a single immersive world. As one of today’s most versatile and celebrated performing artists, Hannigan conducts, sings and moves within the choreography herself, a true pioneer in her field.