
The Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève
2023-2024 Season
The season of the Geneva Ballet Company, under Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s artistic direction, echoes the season’s theme “Power Games” by featuring the elemental, planetary and feminine forces at play in the contemplative power of movement and its avatars, which are the power of dance.
Discover the new programming now!
About
In 1962, the Grand Théâtre de Genève acquired a permanent ballet company, made up of 22 artists, offering two original choreographic creations per season. Collaborating with choreographers of international renown, over the course of its performances, it has built a worldwide reputation for itself. Today, whilst the premieres are always held in Geneva, the Geneva Ballet frequently performs outside Switzerland (France, Italy, United States, Russia, Australia, China, Brazil, South Africa…). From the 22–23 Season, the Ballet is under the management of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
How much we have in common
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Geneva Ballet Director
The Ballet is already family; its performers have danced my work: Loin, Fall and they rehearsed Exhibition up to the point of the second lockdown. As the new director, I want to give its dancers the opportunity to show themselves as full human beings on stage instead of just people who are very good at moving around.
I believe in artists who understand the deep-rooted relationships between all the arts, so inviting choreographers like Fouad Boussouf and also especially Damien Jalet is a way to show my desire to reveal analogies between us as artists, letting us honour the interconnection between music, the visual arts and choreography. In collaboration with visual artists, such as Ugo Rondinone or Antony Gormley this season, choreography finds an innovating visual voice. I love to work with live music especially created for my shows: the arts become one, they support one another. The living artists are part of my extended family, which opens limitless possibilities.
My intention with the company is to create new pieces and share my existing repertory of larger scale works in which a big group of dancers can be featured together as one coherent whole. We’ve been so isolated from each other these last years that seeing humans come together and stand as a community can bring us comfort, it can remind us we are part of a bigger picture. Pieces like Noetic, which we are bringing to La Bâtie at the beginning of the season, or Sutra as Guest Ballet programme, are a reflection on these interconnections.
I am always on the lookout for the elements that can show us how much we have in common as human beings, how much we differ. Are these really differences or rather choices? Sometimes we are different because we have to make our choices; I wanted to become an interpreter and did a really rewarding first year at the Antwerp Translators and Interpreters Institute. But I couldn’t at the same time follow my desire to be a performing artist. I had to let go of something. Nevertheless, the spirit of the interpreter still resides in me as a performer and a designer of performance, and it will never leave me.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a globally celebrated figure like few others in dance today: a brilliant auteur-choreographer, with roughly a hundred shows under his belt, touring all around the planet, and former artistic director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders (2015-22). The Belgian-Moroccan’s choreographic oeuvre overflows with memorable productions, some of which originated in Geneva (Loin, 2005) and others on great stages and video sets all over the world (Puz/zle at the Avignon Festival in 2012, to name but one). For Marina Abramović’s maiden voyage as scenographer, and with Damien Jalet as co-creator, Cherkaoui’s whirling, shadowy and darkly mechanical interpretation of Ravel’s Bolero for the Paris Opera Ballet was a sensation at the Palais Garnier in 2013 and remains one of his most iconic pieces. The trio reformed for Pelléas et Mélisande in 2018 at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen; a production which was reprised and live streamed in Geneva. From dancer colleagues to creative partners, Cherkaoui and Jalet form a unique artistic bond: it is only logical that Damien Jalet should join Cherkaoui and the Geneva Ballet as an associate artist, with several works of his featuring in this season and the following. Cherkaoui shares some thoughts about his vision for his new mandate as artistic director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève with us.
Dancers
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Yumi Aizawa |
Céline Alain |
Valentino Bertolini |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Adelson Carlos |
Zoé Charpentier |
Quintin Cianci |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Oscar Comesaña Salgueiro |
Diana Dias Duarte |
Armando Gonzalez Besa |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Da Young Kim |
Ricardo Macedo |
Emilie Meeus |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Sara Ouwendyk |
Tiffany Pacheco |
Juan Perez Cardona |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Mohana Rapin |
Luca Scaduto |
Sara Shigenari |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Geoffrey Van Dyck |
Nahuel Vega |
Madeline Wong |
The Company
Director of the Ballet
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Company Executive Manager
Florent Mollet
Deputy Assistant
Vitorio Casarin
Administrative Coordinator
Léa Caufin
Ballet Masters
Aurélie Gaillard
Angela Lee Rebelo
Pascal Marty
Manuel Renard
Pianists
Elena Braito
Antonio Costa
Serafima Demianova
BALLET TECHNIQUE
Technical director of the ballet
Rudy Parra
Lighting manager
Sébastien Babel
Stage Manager
Alexandre Ramos
Medical service
Dr Silvia Bonfanti
Dr Victoria Duthon
(Hirslanden Clinique La Colline)
Physiotherapists
Anne Catherine Froton
Thomas Meister
Thomas Richter
Massage therapists
Imane Chabbouh
Cyrille Harreau
Marc Hwang
Kim Schifferli
On tour
Find out the GTG Ballet’s tour dates.
Indosuez Wealth Management is partner of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève
#WeArtGTG
All the GTG world. Here, there, everywhere.