Dance Me

With his unmistakable voice and poetic language, Leonard Cohen created music that continues to resonate to this day. With “Dance Me – Music by Leonard Cohen,” you experience his songs in a powerful dance production by Ballets Jazz Montréal – a tribute personally approved by Cohen during his lifetime.  
As part of the Cologne Summer Festival, the production will be presented at the Kölner Philharmonie from August 4 to 9.

The performance is based on 16 songs written between 1967 and 2016, including Suzanne, So Long, Marianne, Dance Me to the End of Love, and Hallelujah. Classics and later, more introspective pieces come together in a multi-layered stage work full of emotion and visual intensity – with Montréal as its cultural resonance.

Andonis Foniadakis, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Ihsan Rustem blend modern jazz, neoclassical, and contemporary dance into a fluid movement language. Powerful ensemble scenes meet intimate moments, enhanced by video projections, lighting design, and live vocals from selected dancers. The result is an intense evening of music, movement, and imagery – a moving encounter with the work of Leonard Cohen.