Cover ‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen (Photo: courtesy of Mats Bäcker and the Hong Kong Arts Festival)
‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen (Photo: courtesy of Mats Bäcker and the Hong Kong Arts Festival)
1 / 1
Did Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’, written 3,000 years ago, predict today’s conflicted world? Alan Lucien Øyen’s striking new adaptation, staged in Hong Kong this month, suggests it might have
You would certainly be surprised if you expected a faithful retelling of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. Norwegian choreographer and writer Alan Lucien Øyen’s contemporary version, which is running at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from March 6 to 7 as part of this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival, reimagines the ancient story through a modern lens of poetry, movement, and digital consciousness.
The familiar elements remain: the clash between siblings, the heroine’s tragic defiance, Creon’s remorse. Yet Øyen blends dance, prose, poetry, music and theatre, using these classical figures as archetypes for everyone: politicians, human rights defenders, women, anyone navigating modern conflict. As Øyen notes in a festival interview, “All the elements of the story are there [but the narrative has been] blown apart.”
Øyen has staged Antigone twice before—first in Norway, in a darkly, relatively faithful adaptation set in a funeral home, and then a dance-based version for Rome’s Antigone Festival in the summer of 2025. “I understand why everyone wants to stage it now, given the world we live in,” he says. “The play is about someone wanting to bury someone—about human dignity.”
Don’t miss: You can now “attend” an Opéra national de Paris opera at Devialet’s latest Macau pop-up
Above ‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen (Photo: courtesy of Mats Bäcker and the Hong Kong Arts Festival)
‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen (Photo: courtesy of Mats Bäcker and the Hong Kong Arts Festival)
1 / 1
This Hong Kong version involves nine dancers, including four from the iconic Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, the esteemed company founded by the late German choreographer renowned for her fusion of movement, speech and theatrical play. Øyen’s Antigone may share Sophocles’ name, but not his solemn tone. It unfolds as a two‑and‑a‑half‑hour series of vignettes on power, violence against women, loss, and alienation in the digital age. Its contemporary resonance lies in how utterly human these themes remain—the same questions of dignity, justice and moral struggle addressed 3,000 years ago.
The opening shocks: a woman appears hanging from the ceiling. With no props or costumes to locate her, two figures step into the light—one blind, the other guiding him—describing visions of hunger, war and despair. It’s a disorienting moment, both ancient and immediate.
Next comes a scene where two men introduce themselves as brothers. They dance in graceful unison, then violently entwine, suffocating one another. “I can’t breathe,” one gasps, echoing the Black Lives Matter movement and its plea for justice amid systemic violence.
Read more: ‘Dream in the Peony Pavilion’: China’s greatest love story revived in contemporary dance
Above ‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen (Photo: courtesy of Mats Bäcker and the Hong Kong Arts Festival)
‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen (Photo: courtesy of Mats Bäcker and the Hong Kong Arts Festival)
1 / 1
Later, a woman stands at a microphone while another performer calls out names of famous women: Malala Yousafzai, Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears and more. The speaker counters each name with the condemnation those women endured: censorship, ridicule, erasure. The rhythm becomes almost musical, a litany of collective memory and suffering.
Despite the heaviness of the topics, Øyen threads moments of humour and tenderness. In one touching scene, an elderly woman converses with an eloquent friend about music and memory, until the audience gradually realises the “friend” is an AI avatar. Her warmth and vulnerability sharpen the mechanical precision of the machine’s perfectly crafted replies, highlighting the human need for companionship even when it comes from code.
The production’s genius lies in its minimalist, abstract staging, which both contrasts with—and heightens—the brutality of human nature. The final image lingers long after the lights fade: Tanztheater’s dancer Fernando Suels Mendoza picking up petals from a plucked rose and painstakingly taping them back onto its stem. It remains beautiful, yet irrevocably broken. It is a fragile emblem of a world scarred by violence but still yearning for wholeness.
Øyen’s Antigone is a haunting tour de force that leaves audiences questioning whether humanity has outgrown Creon’s cruelty—or simply learned to rephrase it.
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
