PRESS RELEASE | Monday 26 August

The opera Innocence, directed by prolific Australian director Simon Stone; Club Amour performed by legendary German dance company Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal; and Australian Dance Theatre’s 60th anniversary show A Quiet Language are the first ticketed shows to be announced for the 2025 Adelaide Festival.

Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Brett Sheehy AO said: “The three productions in our avant-launch are each extraordinary artistic achievements. I want to thank former artistic directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy for securing Innocence. I remember with awe Simon’s brilliant, genre-breaking realisation of The Cherry Orchard for my 2014 Melbourne Theatre Company season, before he began his stellar international career, and my own introduction to Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal was at the 1982 Adelaide Festival. Considered by many to be Pina’s masterwork, Café Müller is a pivotal creation in dance history, and to have it accompanied by two of the finest works by Boris Charmatz gives us an holistic dance experience as outstanding as any previously seen at an Australian festival, and I thank my predecessor Ruth Mackenzie CBE for inviting this production. Finally, we have ADT’s A Quiet Language, with both its founding and current directors in conversation collaborating on a singular dance event like no other, created by this magnificent South Australian-born, international company.”

Last seen at Adelaide Festival in 2018 with his sell-out theatre production Thyestes, Simon Stone’s new opera Innocence, with a musical score by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and book by Finnish novelist Sofi Oksanen, makes its exclusive Australian debut after its premiere season at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and subsequent seasons at London’s Royal Opera House, Dutch National Opera and San Francisco Opera. Following its Adelaide Festival season, the opera will have its New York premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.

Set in Helsinki, Innocence takes place at a wedding reception: initially a joyous occasion, a fill-in waitress recognises the groom as the brother of the perpetrator of a school shooting, over a decade ago…in which her teenage daughter was a victim. Whilst it’s been kept secret from the bride, it is gradually revealed to be not the only thing the groom’s family has been hiding.

Confirmed principals include Australia’s own Teddy Tahu Rhodes and international opera singers Sean Panikkar, Jenny Carlstedt, Tuomas Pursio and Claire de Sevigne. The action takes place on a multi-level, rotating set which allows the action to jump between both locations and points in time.

The score is performed by Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Clément Mao-Takacs, and sung by a combined chorus of 32 Adelaide Chamber Singers and State Opera South Australia Chorus members in an astonishing nine different languages, at various times: English, Finnish, Czech, Romanian, French, Swedish, German, Spanish and Greek, with English surtitles.

After sell-out Adelaide Festival seasons of The Rite of Spring/common ground[s] (2022) and Nelken (2016), Pina Bausch’s legendary Tanztheater Wuppertal returns to Adelaide with Club Amour, uniting two icons of the dance world – Pina Bausch, “high priestess of dance” (The Guardian), and Boris Charmatz, one of the pioneers of French conceptual dance and the current artistic director of Tanztheater Wuppertal – for a triptych of groundbreaking works dedicated to love and desire.

Pina Bausch’s Café Müller, one of the most influential dance pieces of the 20th century, combines her trademark brilliance with the operatic sound of Henry Purcell’s arias. It is paired with two works from Boris Charmatz’s repertoire, both of which will be experienced by audiences standing on the Festival Theatre stage. In Aatt enen tionon, his radical first choreographic work from 1996, dancers are isolated over three elevated platforms, while in herses, duo, two dancers are tangled closely together, their exposed bodies never leaving one another. The striking choreography of all three works is expertly performed by some of the world’s best dancers from Tanztheater Wuppertal.

In Australian Dance Theatre’s 60th year, the world premiere of Artistic Director Daniel Riley’s A Quiet Language creates a continuum between this iconic company’s game-changing beginnings and bold collective future. Against a backdrop of social upheaval and protest, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM founded Australian Dance Theatre (Australia’s oldest continuing contemporary dance company) to expand the horizons of contemporary dance. Now, the company fearlessly interrogates its legacy in a work that sees the company step backwards and forwards, exploring the history of Australian dance as it is held in the body and written across the country upon which we tread, and transmuting the rebellious energy of the company’s early days into an electric new era.

Daniel Riley said: “We're incredibly excited to be launching into our 60th anniversary year at the 2025 Adelaide Festival. A Quiet Language takes inspiration from the founding spirit of the company, and the fearlessness of our founding Artistic Director Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM. This is a work that celebrates our ongoing connection to identity, culture and country here on Kaurna Yerta. We can't wait to tell a story that is deeply connected to time and place, at a festival that means so much to South Australian audiences.” 

Minister for Arts Andrea Michaels said: “Innocence, Club Amour and A Quiet Language are testament to Adelaide Festival’s reputation for incredible storytelling through the power of performance and the Malinauskas Government is delighted to be strong supporters of our state’s premier festival. We have dedicated an additional $2.3 million to Adelaide Festival for three years to bring outstanding international performances to South Australia including the opera, Innocence, as it makes its Australian debut here in Adelaide as part of the festival. This will premiere alongside A Quiet Language from Adelaide’s own Australian Dance Theatre – well-known as one of the world’s best dance companies – as they celebrate 60 years and Club Amour by Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal as they return exclusively to SA for an unmissable 2025 Adelaide Festival!”

A Quiet Language will be performed at the Odeon Theatre from 26 February – 5 March 2025
Innocence will be performed at the Festival Theatre from 28 February – 5 March 2025
Club Amour will be performed at the Festival Theatre from 10 – 16 March 2025

Image credit: Innocence set, 2023, photographer Tristram Kenton; Café Müller dancers, 2023, photographer Oliver Look and image courtesy of Berliner Festspiele; Zoe Wozniak, 2024, photography credit Emmaline Zanelli