Trajal Harrell, Zürich Dance Ensemble: The Köln Concert

Before The Köln Concert is played, we first hear four songs by another artist: the Canadian musician Joni Mitchell. She opens the evening, setting the stage for the music of Keith Jarrett and for the seven dancers of the dance ensemble. Trajal Harrell's Köln Concert seeks a way for people to meet despite different languages, different world views, different identities. 

The shared experience of people, of tender and strong people disclosing their vulnerability, dancing, functions as a reminder of the need to stay close, to have respect, and never to forget that there are many stories of people who are hardly ever heard or seen; people pushed into the shadows, the lonely, the addicted, the abandoned, the homeless, the sad, who defy their abandonment proudly and in beauty. It is to them that this evening belongs. No language needed, no special effects - only music and dance.

"The masterpiece of the art of improvisation becomes in Harrell's sense the master class of a mourning community. Although Joni Mitchell is Jarrett's opening act, her voice sounds as clear as a bell and like an angel. But later and with Jarrett, the choreography becomes melancholic, earth, and also heartbreakingly sentimental. It is a farewell to everything that was once an intact body - and a healthy relationship between bodies". (NZZ)

"[Harrell] has made a career of working black boxes and proscenium stages alike for maximum effect… The theater is his House." (Artforum)

"[Harrell's] unique combination of Black queer movement and high modernist dance offers hope that some artists will not just make it through this moment of crisis, but come out stronger." (frieze)

The Köln Concert was named Best Dance Performances of 2023 by The New York Times. After its premiere it has toured extensively at the main dance venues of Europe and the US.

Trajal Harrell

The American choreographer Trajal Harrell gained global recognition with his series of works Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church and is now a regular guest on the international dance and visual arts circuit. This visit is the second time Harrell’s work has been presented at the Side Step Festival: the 2013 edition featured both the group work (M)IMOSA and the solo Antigone Jr.

The unique style of Trajal Harrell’s works is a result not just of the unusual way in which he combines dance languages that might seem very distant from each other, such as voguing, postmodern dance and butoh, but also and above all of the fragility and humour that pervade all his work. Aesthetically, his pieces are always an homage to the people standing on stage. He clothes them in carefully selected fabrics, draws major inspiration from developments in haute couture (which he sometimes uses on stage directly), and his highly personal style of movement turns his performers into unusual and autonomous beings. He also performs in most of his pieces himself. 

In recent years, Harrell’s work has not just been increasingly adopted in the visual arts world; he has also directed a succession of powerful pieces for the theatre. These include for example his reworking of Sophocles’ Antigone, the free adaptation he developed of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and with Maggie The Cat a new look on Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

From 2019 until summer 2024 Trajal Harrell was in-house director at Schauspielhaus Zürich, where he directed a dance company. With this company he has staged The Köln Concert, Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow, Deathbed, The House of Bernarda Alba, The Romeo and Tambourines in Zürich. Trajal Harrell is currently based in Zurich and is artistic director of the newly-founded Zürich Dance Ensemble.

Trajal Harrell has been named Dancer of the Year (tanz magazin). In 2024 Harrell was awarded the Silver Lion at the Biennale Danza in Venice, led by Wayne MacGregor.