Tanztriennale: Counter Balance and a ballet-hip hop fusion

Oper Stabile, Hamburg State Opera
June 21, 2026

The Counter Balance presentations at Hamburg’s new Tanztriennale dance festival were the culmination of residencies that aimed to provide space and give an opportunity for conventional dance canons to be challenged through collaborative, cross genre exploration. Applicants could only apply as a pair, with each residency lasting several weeks between March and June 2026 at various locations throughout Germany. Each outcome was limited to 30 minutes.

Reiko Ohta comes from a disciplined ballet background in Japan, while Joseph Simon has his roots in hip hop. In Routines, they deconstruct elements of hip hop, house and ballet, essentially presenting a playground where ballet is presented as a dance subculture. As the couple challenge and play with attitudes and aesthetics, the work doesn’t just bring the different dance forms together, however. It blends and fuses them.

Presented in the intimate setting of the Hamburg State Opera’s black box Oper Stabile, Routines opens not with dance as such, but with the couple building an archway, however. Perhaps a portal through which the different dance genres can meet. The dance begins with a choreographic quotation from the opening moments George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations. But almost immediately, one senses that bodies want to do something else. The basic shape of the choreography remains, but things become twisted, bent, off-balance.

A second section starts with hip hop but as ballet finds its way in, edges become increasingly blurred to the point of almost vanishing. The dance forms talk to each other. Links start to appear everywhere. Time and again, one morphs seamlessly into the other. A classical pirouette develops easily into a head spin, for example.

But this meeting of styles is not only about dance. Jimmi Jo Hueting’s terrific musical arrangement fused quotes from Tchaikovsky Suite No.3 (of course), Chopin’s Les Sylphides and Délibes’ Coppelia with ‘Tears’ from Giorgio Moroder’s 1972 album, Son of My Father, and new sounds.

Routines is massively interesting. It highlights the fact that classical ballet, for all it has an image with some of being stuck in the past, is an art form that is and always has been open to change and development. It’s a piece that could easily be developed into something longer. It certainly deserves to be seen more widely.

But where it really wins is that it’s fun. It’s a celebration, not only of dance but of personal partnership. There was a clear sense that Ohta and Simon were guiding each other, and enjoying doing it. The final minutes are especially visibly joyful, in faces as well as bodies.

In IN-tension, Lau Sin Yi and germain (Germain Zamb) brought together krump, waacking and flamenco, three dance forms that developed out of adversity. It was again thought-provoking and appealing, although here the dance styles did not so much come together into something new as sit side-by-side.

Among memorable moments were her zapateado matching his barefoot footwork, and a scene in which incredibly rapid arm movement was not only perfectly reflected in the music, but gave the impression of the two dancers having a conversation.

But while the meeting felt less organic, less natural, there was enough to suggest that the shared values for the dance styles, the distinct dance backgrounds of the couple, could come together in some sort of new language. It’s just not quite there yet.