(for italian version here)
From August 20th, a month of theatre, music, dance and performance art shows in Bochum for the Ruhr Triennale 2026, which opens with the fantasy musical Rebel Rebel by artistic director Ivo Van Hove, who also directed Bowie’s Lazarus.
“David Bowie was one of the greatest visionary artists of our time.”
(Ivo Van Hove)
The third edition of the Ruhr Triennale, a festival of theater, dance, music, and performing arts, is in the starting blocks, opening its doors on August 20th in the coal-mining German city of Bochum with the musical Rebel Rebel by Ivo Van Hove, director of David Bowie’s Lazarus 10 years ago (which later came to Italy under the direction of Walter Malosti and starring Manuel Agnelli). Today, Van Hove returns to work on the songs of the Blond Duke in a new musical theater piece written by himself, but which appears to be inspired by Bowie’s unfinished theatrical projects from fifty years ago in the mid-1970s (the photos below are taken from rehearsals for the show).
The festival will then last a month until September 20, hosting 119 events, including 30 original productions, 5 world premieres (HERE is the complete program), among which we highlight: Emily – No Prisoner Be (21/08-23/08), a musical theater show aimed at bringing Emily Dickinson’s poems to life, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato (pictured below, Ed.) and the award-winning string trio Time for Three.
So, from 29 to 31/08 the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker(who was in MILANoLTRE in 1987 with Rosas danst Rosas) presents Brel, a bridge between dance theatre and the chanson d’auteur of her great compatriot Jacques (also photo below).
Again, from September 3rd to 11th, Marina Abramović will stage her imposing and bold four-hour performance, Balkan Erotic Epic, (which was partially staged at Hangar Bicocca in 2006). This immersive experience draws on ancient Balkan myths and Abramović’s performative language, in which the audience moves freely through 13 ever-evolving scenes, featuring performers, songs, movement, and feverish ritual moments.
There will be space for concerts, from Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (The Bulgarian State Radio Television Choir, on stage on 5 and 6 September) to The Cute Community Radio: a radio station, community space and hybrid platform dedicated to the pop culture of Bochum’s diaspora and migrant communities. In our jointly organised club nights, Down The Rabbit Hole, we invite you to join us for fun-filled club nights, where we can dance and celebrate multiple perspectives (pictured below is the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, the festival venue).
As for Posthuman, we’ll be reviewing the musical Rebel Rebel: as the synopsis we have states, the plot revolves around “a degraded society, where gangs of violent youths terrorize the cities. Interpersonal relationships are forbidden. Alienation and isolation are imposed by law. A young couple resists and creates their own utopia: humanity is stronger than any repressive regime. Only because they love each other can they win.” The festival assures us that this is an original work by Van Hove and not a “continuation of the work already done with Bowie,” however – as the Velvet Goldmine website also well documents – it’s hard to resist the temptation to think that the artistic director of the Ruhr Triennale didn’t somehow have in mind the failed project of a rock opera based on George Orwell’s 1984 with influences from Burroughs’s Wild Boys, blocked by Orwell’s widow with the refusal of the rights to the great dystopian novel, whose songs later flowed into the 1974 album Diamond Dogs (below are two more moments from the show’s rehearsals, Editor’s note).
In fact, Bowie courted musical theatre several times in his career: even the unfinished Outside pentalogy (from which our anthology S.O.S also derives) according to the singer was supposed to land on stage under the direction of the now late Bob Wilson, and even that came to nothing (below a theatrical-performative still from the clip of The Hearts Filthy Lesson, single from 1. Outside, Editor’s note).
With musical direction and arrangements by Henry Hey, former keyboardist on the album The Next Day, then musical director of Lazarus, and choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (leader of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève) for the 10 gang-dancers who will surround the sole actor-singer Daniel Donskoy, in the role of their Gang Leader, which of the ideas mentioned above will actually have found their way into the plot written by Van Hove?
Peek through the shutters of the Temperance Building, our report by early September.
Mario G