Benjamin Millepied presents at the 41st edition of the Romaeuropa Festival SUMMERLAND, his new piece created in collaboration with French singer-songwriter November Ultra. One of the most influential choreographers in contemporary dance, former principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, former artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet, and founder of L.A. Dance Project and the Paris Dance Project (an international platform dedicated to the creation and dissemination of contemporary dance), Millepied gives form in SUMMERLAND to the delicate, timeless universe of the French singer-songwriter and producer November Ultra, whose sound-hovering between bedroom pop, R&B, folk, and electronic music—becomes living material for choreography. In a luminous, minimal stage space inspired by the infinite horizons of James Turrell, voice, light, and movement merge into a poetic substance. The singer appears as a living muse, a radiant centre around which moments of intimacy gradually open into spaces of communion. The title refers to the small Californian town of Summerland, a symbol of light, memory, and imagination, transformed into a metaphor for a place suspended between the real and the possible. The performance unfolds as a sensory and tangible landscape: the audience perceives the dancers’ breath, the vibrations of live music, and the interplay of light, entering an immersive experience in which dance and music jointly create a softer, more poetic, and more intense vision of the world.
