TanzLuzern: HOPE

Luzerner Theater, Lucerne
November 22, 2025

TanzLuzern is a small contemporary dance company led by artistic director Wanda Puvogel, part of the Luzerner Theater, the oldest theatre in Central Switzerland, that also hosts opera and drama ensembles. The company has developed tremendously over the past few years. It presently consists of twelve dancers and one guest performer of nine nationalities and backgrounds. Nevertheless, they form a homogeneous group, but at the same time each dancer’s individual personality stamps the performances.

For their latest programme, HOPE, the company commissioned two pieces by young choreographers, both of whom have a special relationship with the company: Mthuthuzeli November and Phoebe Jewitt. Both works seek to contemplate the meaning of the evening’s title.

For November, returning to Luzern was special. In 2021, he created Umoya for the company, his first piece outside South Africa, his home county, and Great Britain, and at the very beginning of his career as a choreographer. In a recent interview, he described it as a groundbreaking experience, adding that, “Being here again feels like coming home,” and “Luzern is the place where I got to understand, who I am.”

November’s Oh Deer begins with a dancer in a leotard, wearing a deer head with big antlers. He moves around and in a blue circle, indicating a lake, to animal sounds. Costumes are by Bregie van Balen, sets by Laura Peloso.

Suddenly a group of twelve arrives. In the programme, it says that they are aliens in search of water, but I would not have guessed had I not read it. They explore the lake, go into it, take water up in their hands and let it run down their faces, play in it, and kick it up with splashing sounds. All to a mix of jazzy, animal-like and contemporary movements and squats. Suddenly there is a black out, the aliens disappear and the deer is alone again dancing to Aretha Franklin’s ‘You’ll Lose a Good Thing.’

The animal sounds, the splashing of water and the tunes in between, at times very beautiful, were composed by November but in an unusual way. He would sing a tune, ask a friend to play it on an instrument and then he would mix it, sometimes playing it backwards.

The dancers all mastered his style very well with Kany Michel Obenga standing out as the deer. It was very aesthetic and beautiful, but I still cannot see anything to indicate that the aliens would become hostile enemies in the fight for water.

Jewitt is, where November was back in 2021, at the beginning of her career as a choreographer. She knows TanzLuzern and the theatre well, having danced with the ensemble from 2019 to 2024. Now she is affiliated with the company as a guest artist. She also has her own project-based group, Pitt Company.

Her White Rabbit was inspired by Jefferson Airplane’s song of the same name and Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The first referring to drugs the second to a trip into a wondrous world. The rest of the music is a mix of songs from the 1960s by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nina Simone, Nancy Sinatra and Jimi Hendrix. As the music suggests, the piece is a trip into the world of that time.

The thirteen dancers enter through a hole in the backcloth (set by Laura Peloso), perhaps like Alice going down the rabbit hole. The programme book refers to them entering a time capsule. To me, it was strongly reminiscent of a disco. You enter, forget the time and leave again. The costumes, 1960s inspired by Bregie van Balen, reinforce this impression.

The first to appear is a woman who dances like a wooden doll, then stands on her head, moving her legs like a growing flower. The others enter and dance with high energy and jagged movements, then slow down, continuing with jumps that seem weightless. They exude an extreme intensity that makes the group look like many more than thirteen dancers. At one point they push chair-like boxes downstage. They sit in a line. When one breaks out, the others pull that person back. All the dancers excel in Jewitt’s style but it felt as if you had met a bunch of new individuals.

The playbill opened with a quote from Robert Redford, in which he says, “Hope … can be an active force to propel us forward.” But far from looking ahead, the two pieces seemed more like a nostalgic view back to a world where nature was still intact, and to the wild life of the 1960s with its sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Both pieces are aesthetically very pleasing with nothing that hurt, even just a little. But judging from the standing ovations both received, this is what the Luzern audience wants: light and beautiful entertainment that at least for a couple of hours lets us forget the raging wars and the horrendous goings on in the world, including the effects of the climate change.