„Dance Me – Music by Leonard Cohen“ (engl. version)
The Transformation of Leonard Cohen’s Songs into Dance
– by Christof Graf/Cohenpedia (photos: christof grag)
The „Ballets Jazz Montréal“ at the Cologne Philharmonic Hall
With „Dance Me – Music by Leonard Cohen“, Ballets Jazz Montréal will bring an extraordinary interplay of dance, music, light, video and theatre to the Cologne Philharmonic in August 2026. The production, which premiered in Montréal in 2017 and was personally approved by Leonard Cohen during his lifetime, does not attempt to retell the life of the Canadian singer-songwriter. Instead, she translates his themes – love, desire, loneliness, old age, loss, spirituality and death – into movement. The evening was conceived by Louis Robitaille, the dramaturgy and direction are by Éric Jean; it was choreographed by Andonis Foniadakis, Annabelle López Ochoa and Ihsan Rustem.
This is precisely where the great strength of „Dance Me“ lies: Cohen is not illustrated, but interpreted physically. The non-stop production, which lasts around 75 to 80 minutes, is divided into five major phases of life or „seasons“. The 16 musical stations do not form a classical plot, but rather a mosaic of human experiences. For the Cologne version, the following order is documented: „Here It Is“, „Lover, Lover, Lover“, „Dance Me to the End of Love“, „Boogie Street“, „Steer Your Way“, „Everybody Knows“, „Tower of Song“, „So Long, Marianne“, „A Thousand Kisses Deep“, „Suzanne“, „Famous Blue Raincoat“, „Treaty“, „First We Take Manhattan“, „It Seemed the Better Way“, „Hallelujah“ and „Treaty Reprise“.
Leonasrd Cohen’s songs do not live from exuberance, but from that peculiar heaviness that arises when a person talks about love and already thinks about death. Cohen’s great themes were desire and its failure, faith and its loss, the beauty of the body and its transience. To make a ballet evening out of this, of all things, could easily lead to decorative melancholy or sentimental admiration. Ballets Jazz Montréal almost completely avoids this danger in „Dance Me – Music by Leonard Cohen“. In the Cologne Philharmonic, Cohen’s music is not illustrated, but physically questioned. The evening does not ask: What does „Hallelujah“ look like? But: What happens to a body that loves, doubts, ages, remembers and finally has to let go? – Therein lies the intelligence of this production. Louis Robitaille conceived „Dance Me“, Éric Jean is responsible for dramaturgy and direction, the choreographies are by Andonis Foniadakis, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Ihsan Rustem. Cohen had agreed to the project during his lifetime. The result is neither a musical nor a biography, neither a classical narrative ballet nor a mere greatest hits revue. It is more of a choreographic requiem – but one that celebrates the body before it tells of its finiteness.
„Here It Is“ already sets the tone. Bodies emerge from the darkness, at first less as figures than as apparitions. The movement is tentative, almost ritualistic. The result is that state of limbo that Cohen knew so well: between this world and the hereafter, certainty and doubt. The dancers do not seem to simply enter a stage; they are born, as it were, into a world.
With „Lover, Lover, Lover“ comes desire. The bodies find each other without finding each other permanently. Grasp hands, partners are held, lifted and let go again. Love does not appear here as a harmonious final state, but as a permanent movement towards another person.
The eponymous „Dance Me to the End of Love“ makes it the center of the evening. The title has long since become a romantic commonplace, but the choreography gives it back its uncanniness. „To the end of love“ also means: to the end. Dance becomes a promise that already knows its own transience. Partner work has a great tenderness, but no security. One body catches the other; the next moment he might lose it.
Maybe you can hardly get closer to Cohen physically.
„Boogie Street“ shows that „Dance Me“ does not remain in this elegiac mood. The movement becomes edgier, more secular, almost nervous. The private opens up to the street, to society, to the disorder of life. „Steer Your Way“ intensifies this perspective, before „Everybody Knows“ forms one of the strongest social moments of the evening. Cohen’s bitter „Everybody knows“ is, after all, the opposite of naïve indignation: everyone knows, and yet everything goes on.
This is exactly what the choreography finds in the group. The dancers suddenly function like parts of a system. Movements are repeated, bodies arrange themselves, detach themselves and are recaptured. Individuality and conformity clash. Here, man is not only a lover, but a social being – involved in a world whose mendacity he sees through at the same time.
„Tower of Song“ then allows air. Cohen’s self-irony, without which his pathos could become unbearable, finds a more playful physical form. The dancers show attitude, rhythm, almost coquetry. That’s dramaturgically clever. For an evening that treated Cohen exclusively as the high priest of melancholy would suppress precisely the wit with which this man repeatedly undermined his own gloom.
With „So Long, Marianne“, intimacy returns. Zoey Anderson’s singing changes the relationship between body and music. Suddenly, the voice is no longer just a recording above the dance room, but comes from a person who is himself part of this room. This makes farewell more immediate. „So Long, Marianne“ is not staged as a big separation drama. That’s exactly what makes it moving. Some relationships don’t end with a bang. They become memories. It is oneof the most touching moments of the evening. At that moment, the boundary between dance and concert is deliberately abolished. This gives „So Long, Marianne“ a special intimacy: the dance partially recedes and the voice itself becomes the emotional body of the piece. Farewell is not portrayed as a dramatic collapse, but as an ambivalent state between grief, remembrance and gratitude.
„A Thousand Kisses Deep“ pushes this thought further into the dreamlike. The choreography loosens its contours. The dancers fall, float, disappear into each other. The kiss has long since ceased to be a concrete gesture here. It is a memory of intimacy – something that remains stored in the body even though the moment itself has disappeared.
And then „Suzanne“. Hardly any other character in Cohen is more overlaid with projections. The production resists the temptation to turn it into a small love drama. Rather, Suzanne remains what she has always been in Cohen’s song: at once a woman and an imagination, physically close and mentally unattainable. Dance makes this unavailability visible. Closeness does not mean possession.
„Famous Blue Raincoat“ is consequently one of the most melancholic moments. Relationships are no longer the present, but history. Movements begin as if they wanted to repeat an encounter that is long gone. The dancers reach each other and miss each other at the same time. The space between two bodies suddenly becomes more important than the bodies themselves.
In „Treaty“, this becomes the desire for reconciliation. Cohen has always understood the love relationship as a form of negotiation: between freedom and commitment, guilt and forgiveness, body and mind. The choreography finds balancing acts for this. One carries the weight of the other. One gives way so that the other can stand. It’s a nice image for any serious relationship: balance is not something you own. It must be produced continuously.
Then „First We Take Manhattan“ breaks into this evening.
The dancers transform. Where vulnerability previously prevailed, power, precision and attack suddenly rule. The group does not march, and yet their movement has something of a conquest machine. Power becomes physical. Ambition becomes rhythm. The dance virtuosity of the ensemble is particularly evident here – jumps, rapid changes of direction and complex formations possess an almost aggressive elegance.
It would be easy to be seduced by this technical brilliance. But the choreography counters it with a bitter undertone. Whoever conquers Manhattan has by no means conquered himself.
„It Seemed the Better Way“ then seems like the disillusionment of an old man. The movement is losing its demonstrative gesture. She becomes smaller, more concentrated. It is precisely this reduction that is strong. The late Cohen no longer speaks with the self-assurance of a young lover. He speaks as someone who has learned that neither religion, nor love, nor art provide definitive answers.
Then comes the play that should actually be unsalvageable: „Hallelujah“.
Too many casting shows, weddings, funerals and pathetic cover versions have turned Cohen’s contradictory song into a universal wallpaper of emotions. Ballets Jazz Montréal fortunately resists the temptation to add even more pathos to it. Zoey Anderson and DaMond LeMonte Garner sing while the choreography takes a back seat.
This is the right decision.
Because Cohen’s „Hallelujah“ was never the song of unbroken redemption. It’s about failure and about being able to say a hallelujah anyway. Of faith after the loss of certainty. Of love after disappointment. Of beauty, although you know that it will pass.
The bodies on stage don’t have to prove anything anymore. They are simply there.
The concluding „Treaty Reprise“ therefore does not lead the evening to a triumphant end. It leads him back to the desire for understanding. Perhaps in the end there is no victory, but only the possibility of making peace with the other – and with oneself.
The ensemble carries this idea with impressive physical presence. The cast released for 2026 includes Zoey Anderson, Gustavo Barros, Millie Brinck-Dubuc, Yosmell Calderon Mejias, Marcel Cavaliere, Kyle Davis, Jasmine Heart Cruz, Shanna Irwin Calderon, Miu Kato, DaMond LeMonte Garner, Zack Preece, Madelaine Salhany, and Silje Vereide; Troy Atamanuk is listed as Intern. Yosmell Calderon Mejias in particular possesses that self-evident stage authority in which technical safety is no longer visible as technology. Anderson and Garner, on the other hand, expand the expressive possibilities of the ensemble as singing dancers.
But it would be wrong to cut individual stars out of this evening. Its real main character is the community of bodies. Again and again, couples, trios and groups emerge, only to dissolve again. A person steps forward and disappears again into the crowd. This suits Cohen: the individual desperately craves uniqueness and yet knows that his elementary experiences – love, jealousy, loss, old age and death – are shared by millions of others.
„Dance Me“ also has great aesthetic coherence. Darkness, backlighting, projections and reduced costumes create a space that is less a scene than a landscape of consciousness. Sometimes you see shadows rather than people. Sometimes a body seems to emerge from the darkness only for seconds.
Transience can hardly be staged more beautifully.
Nevertheless, the evening is not entirely without objections. Sixteen musical stations in just under eighty minutes create an enormous density. Not every choreographic idea gets the time it deserves. Some motifs – falling, catching, circling, separating – recur so frequently that poetic repetition occasionally becomes choreographic convention. And at times the visual beauty of the evening is so complete that you wish there was a crack in this perfection: something ugly, unwieldy, really disturbing.
Because Cohen was not only elegantly melancholic. It could be obscene, political, bitter and cruel. „Dance Me“ occasionally loves his Cohen a little too much.
But that is an objection to an extraordinarily successful evening. It is crucial that Ballets Jazz Montréal does not approach the music in a submissive way. The choreographers do not illustrate Saint Leonard. They take his thoughts and expose them to another art form.
In the process, something remarkable happens: you start to hear Cohen’s music differently because you have seen it.
The body proves to be perhaps the most suitable instrument for these songs. Because everything Cohen wrote about ultimately happens to him: We desire with the body. We touch and are touched. We carry others and drop them. We age. We lose. And at some point, the very body that experienced all this disappears.
That’s why this evening is called „Dance Me to the End of Love“ and not just „Dance with Me“.
Dance me to the end.
This is a request and a declaration of love, but also a consciousness of death. Ballets Jazz Montréal understands this small difference. And it is from this that production gains its real greatness.
In the end, there is no big choreographic exclamation mark. What remains is something much more Cohen-like: a doubt, a memory, perhaps a kind of consolation. The last word does not belong to certainty, but to reconciliation.
And somewhere between a fallen body, an outstretched hand and a final „Hallelujah“, one understands what this evening is capable of at the best moment: he does not dance to Leonard Cohen.
