Mixed-Composer Ballet / Dance-Theatre Work
Shine a Light**
A one-act ballet / dance-theatre work by Sol León and Paul Lightfoot for Nederlands Dans Theater 1, moving through a dark theatrical world of nightmare, recollection, and the unstable passage between dream and waking.
World Premiere
Premiered on 10 May 2012 at the Lucent Danstheater / Dr. Anton Philipszaal, The Hague. Created for Nederlands Dans Theater 1 as part of the program Move to Move.
Music
A mixed musical score by Max Richter and Lera Auerbach. The Auerbach source is Sogno di Stabat Mater; Richter sources include The Round Up, The Vel d’Hiv, Luminous, and Infra 1.
Stage World
A dance-theatre world of darkness, dream residue, and remembered fear. Critical and archival sources connect the work to nightmares, recollection, and the fragile threshold between sleeping and waking.
Creative Team
- Choreography Sol León and Paul Lightfoot.
- Music Max Richter and Lera Auerbach, including Auerbach’s Sogno di Stabat Mater.
- Company Nederlands Dans Theater 1 / NDT 1.
- Décor / Set Sol León and Paul Lightfoot.
- Costumes Joke Visser and Hermien Hollander.
- Lighting Design Tom Bevoort.
- Assistant to the Choreographers Stefan Żeromski.
- Production Photography Rahi Rezvani / Nederlands Dans Theater.
Work Information
Performers
- Silas HenriksenListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Brett ConwayListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Medhi WalerskiListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Valentina ScagliaListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Bastien ZorzettoListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Jamy MeekListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Dominic SantiaListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Rupert TookeyListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
- Ema YuasaListed in the Theater Encyclopedia production record.
Design and Atmosphere
- Light and Darkness The title turns light into an unstable theatrical force, present only because darkness surrounds it.
- Dream Logic The work has been described in relation to the nightmares of a little girl and the sounds dreams leave behind when recalled upon waking.
- Dance-Theatre León and Lightfoot’s dramatic language combines movement, atmosphere, design, and psychological image.
- Auerbach’s Register Sogno di Stabat Mater gives the score a darker spiritual and dramatic gravity.
The Work
Shine a Light belongs to the dark theatrical universe of Sol León and Paul Lightfoot: a world in which movement is inseparable from image, atmosphere, memory, and psychic pressure. Created for Nederlands Dans Theater 1, the ballet does not simply illuminate darkness; it stages light as something fragile, partial, and surrounded by the forces that threaten to extinguish it.
The work draws on a mixed musical score by Max Richter and Lera Auerbach. Auerbach’s Sogno di Stabat Mater brings a charged spiritual dimension to the theatrical field — not as an ornamental sound source, but as one of the work’s emotional and metaphysical registers. Against Richter’s cinematic fragments, Auerbach’s music deepens the sense of lament, recollection, and exposed interiority.
Archival and critical accounts connect the ballet to nightmares, the sounds of dreams, and the unstable threshold between sleeping and waking. In this sense, Shine a Light is not a narrative ballet in the conventional sense, but a choreography of psychic afterimage: bodies appearing inside a remembered darkness, carrying traces of fear, tenderness, and theatrical apparition.
With décor by León and Lightfoot, costumes by Joke Visser and Hermien Hollander, and lighting by Tom Bevoort, the work integrates choreography and stagecraft into a single visual organism. Light does not merely reveal the dance; it becomes part of the choreography’s moral and emotional structure.
** Catalogue marker: mixed-composer ballet / dance work including music by Lera Auerbach.
Online Materials
Preview, References and Production Sources
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PreviewVimeo
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ArchiveShine a Light — Nederlands Dans Theater Google Arts & Culture / NDT
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Production RecordTheater Encyclopedia Production Record Theater Encyclopedia / Theatercollectie
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ReviewMove to Move Review Theaterkrant
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Review / ContextNederlands Dans Theater on Film Fjord Review
A LIGHT Mixed-Composer Ballet
Materials and Rights
This is a mixed-composer ballet / dance-theatre work including music by Lera Auerbach. The score combines music by Max Richter and Lera Auerbach, including Auerbach’s Sogno di Stabat Mater. For any future staging, performance materials, images, or video, consult Nederlands Dans Theater and the relevant music publishers / rights holders.
