Greta: Let’s start with the glitter of F*cking Future by Marco da Silva Ferreira. It was at the perfect venue, Les Grandes Locos – an industrial complex turned event space. Picture the scene: outdoors, audience on four sides, neon-green lasers slicing the air, smoke machines, chain-mail costumes. Let the games begin!

Dmitrijus: Is it about the messed-up future we’re heading towards, or the one we’ll end up wrecking ourselves?

Greta: I think it’s about the future we must avoid – a call to embrace difference and ‘keep on dreaming’. Ultimately, I don’t think the piece is heavy on meaning.

Dmitrijus: A memorable piece, for sure. Visually striking, rhythmically tight, glittering and joyful. It’s fabulously entertaining – the kind of work that headlines festivals without needing promotion.

Greta: I love its energy, the unapologetic commitment to spectacle, the pounding soundtrack, the celebration of diversity. Yes, it has too many ideas and too many endings – I still don’t know why, after climbing up through the audience and disappearing, they return down the other side and continue – but if it draws new audiences to contemporary dance, I’m all for it.

Dmitrijus: It reminds me of Carcaça – again, multiple endings. And is it just me, or does the choreographer stand out too much? It’s as if he gave one set of instructions to the cast and kept another for himself, performing, flirting, daring us to look away. The accompanying text still troubles me: audiences expect it to frame what they see, but when words and movement don’t align, the gap shows. Artists should be aware of the effect of their words; here, the words sound deep but are not realised on stage. Still, I admire how Marco erases the stage’s borders – his work breathes in open, raw spaces such as this, where energy can spill out.

Greta: Let’s go to a piece we saw on a traditional stage at Maison de la Danse, Christian Rizzo’s À l’ombre d’un vaste détail, hors tempête. Rizzo loves to play with the space between light and dark, and here the seven dancers weave between each other on a dimly lit stage, entering the light like moving sculptures, as they come together and disperse. The movement and the mise-en-scène is beautiful but I feel the choreographic pace lacks contrast, it falls victim to its own coherence. Again, there’s a gap between words and staging: the translated text (fragments of writing by Celia Houdart) on the backdrop is distracting to the point where I start playing games with myself, trying to outpace the French-to-English translation.

Dmitrijus: I agree, it’s undeniably beautiful. But don’t you feel as though you’re inside the home of a housewife whose place is spotless, fragrant, perfectly arranged? It’s impeccably executed, yet somehow dull. Even the English translation doesn’t bring me any closer to understanding: the language sounds lovely, but whatever it tries to convey feels distant, not meant for me. The text neither deepens nor supports the dance; I get lost among fragments of a story that never quite takes shape. It’s like eating dessert through plastic wrap – beautiful, tempting, but tasteless. I leave the theatre unsure of what I’ve just seen, though at least I entered a meditative space.

Speaking of taste – how did you feel about l’Heure du thé, presented by Rebecca Journo as part of the New Voices programme?

Greta: Despite its bland title (‘teatime’), it’s surprisingly engaging. The jerky, idiosyncratic movement style reminds me of silent movies, especially Chaplin, though at times it feels robotic, even futuristic. The precision of the three dancers, moving in sync to a soundscape of creaking hinges and breaking glass, is impressive.

Dmitrijus: I don’t think we need to go back to Chaplin – just look at today’s world. Those twitchy, self-aware movements recall young people glued to their screens, endlessly posing for the perfect angle. The performance hits like a jump scare – scrolling through cat videos and suddenly seeing the ghost from The Ring. The eerie gestures and mix of puppetry, circus, and mime feel genuinely fresh. I love the ending – flickering lights, morphing faces – it echoes the work of Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, whose expressions always fascinate me.

Greta: Don’t you think the few strong ideas in the piece lose momentum later on?

Dmitrijus: Maybe, but for me every viewer is free – even invited – to create their own story. The faces of those three women are all distinct; in each one I find a different kind of pain, a different kind of truth.

Greta: After all that restraint, Jan Martens turns up the volume – and the heartbeat. I love the absurdity of eight dancers jumping in sync in The Dog Days Are Over 2.0, shouting random numbers for seventy minutes. It’s monotonous, relentless, yet captivating and humorous. Almost meditative by the end – until those drops of sweat land on us in the front row.

Dmitrijus: Counting always fascinates me. You feel like you’re presented with an enigma: why dance? Why shout numbers? Perhaps there’s no answer, but that’s what keeps you watching. I like how they remain individuals yet utterly dependent on one another. By the end, they start to mimic each other. Sometimes we forget that dance isn’t only physical; it transforms perception. But for me, this isn’t groundbreaking. Watching it feels like witnessing modern life itself – a relentless to-do list in motion.

Greta: But it was groundbreaking in 2014. That debut marked a breakthrough for Martens, and the piece toured worldwide. Because of that, it was widely influential and maybe that’s why it doesn’t seem as fresh or original any more.

Dmitrijus: It feels like they’re forever warming up for a competition that never comes. The counting scrambles both our sense of order and theirs, until they start smiling at their own missteps – a kind of mental warfare, a contemporary rave. In the end, they shout the choreographer’s cues – ‘hop-hop, down and up, switch, switch’ – like a bootcamp. Are they teaching each other, or us? I never cracked their counting system, or the reason for it. Maybe that’s the point. Or maybe I’m just bad at maths.

Greta: You’re overanalysing. The numbers aren’t the point – the absurdity is. The piece is sharp and direct. It makes me reflect on what audiences expect from dance and how far we are willing to watch performers go for our entertainment. In that sense it is still relevant.

Greta: After all that intensity, the final works of the week are a complete change of pace, a breath of fresh air.

Dmitrijus: A beautiful way to close the evening with Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company’s double bill. Easy to watch, easy to experience – and for once, I’m not chasing meaning. Everything I need is right there.

Greta: What strikes me most in William Forsythe’s Undertainment is the harmony between concept, movement and dramaturgy. It feels balanced, precise, yet alive – quietly confident, needing no proof, just existence, each dancer taking a moment while the others observe. I love how it plays with silence – no need to shout its meaning. The subtle sounds of breathing, humming, finger-clicking are enough.

Dmitrijus: You can sense ballet’s influence – in the dancers’ grounding, precision, and their ease in breaking the rules they clearly know. Their fluid connection feels like a conversation through proximity. Watching such precision makes you wonder if they ever collide – or if that’s just for us mortals.

Greta: Absolutely. I leave floating on its clarity. And now that Forsythe has retired, it’s fascinating to see what Ioannis Mandafounis brings to this ensemble.

Mandafounis’s Lisa begins with one dancer, a ramp and a piano; as more dancers join, relationships form and fracture. It sometimes feels a bit like a Broadway musical – storytelling with balletic grace and live piano accompaniment. The entire ensemble is flawless.

Dmitrijus: There’s effortless mastery – fluid transitions, simple costumes, clear space. Every movement feels emotionally charged. It makes me wonder how much is choreographed and how much is instinct. It’s spontaneous, as if we watch them think and feel in real time – where structure meets soul. It reminds me of (La)Horde’s Room with a View – but where that was explosive, Lisa is intimate: warm, fragile, quietly destructive, like a smile trembling before tears.

Greta: That’s Mandafounis’s technique – ‘live choreography’ – where he gives the dancers the freedom to enter and exit at will. I’m not sure I understand the drama of the ending: arguments grow, chaos erupts, and one dancer grabs a microphone, shouting unintelligible words as snow (or rain or maybe ash?) falls from above. What do you make of that? And who is Lisa? Does it matter?

Dmitrijus: The deeper you sink into the story, the clearer it becomes that the shouts aren’t chaos but a warning – a premonition of tragedy. And that final snowfall? Likely a homage to the Jewish-Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. Are we watching grief being choreographed, loss disguised as joy? I still see the dancer in tears, wondering how much of herself she gives away. Greta, when was the last time you saw a piece that follows a story to the end – yet still leaves you speechless?

Greta: Maybe that’s the magic of this Biennale – after so many stories, ideas and emotions, you leave not with answers, but with the feeling that dance can still surprise you.

For a different view on these performances at Lyon Dance Biennale, see the review by Springback editor Sanjoy Roy at The Guardian.