Moving through an endless cycle of challenging physical configurations, the six dancers in “Nature of a Fall” arrange themselves on top of one another, climbing and collapsing, building impressive and fragile human structures on stage. The dancers’ physical virtuoso presents the audience with a constant stream of portrayals: solidarity and violence, softness and cruelty, attraction and repulsion. Intimate moments instantly turn into disturbing depictions of loss and overwhelming collective power.
The work sketches a portrait of a world that struggles to stop, listen, or observe. Between collapse and recovery, it illuminates the cycles inherent to our humanity, where fragility is not an end but a turning point, and the pulse of life continues beating.
“A masterpiece of virtuosity”
Ran Brown, Haaretz
After great success in Europe and at the Israel Festival, Nature of a Fall, Adi Boutrous’ new work, arrives in Tel Aviv.
Choreography and soundtrack design: Adi Boutrous
Dancers: Ido Barak, Neshama Bazer, Naomi Ben David, Adi Boutrous, Stav Struz Boutrous, Uri Dicker
Light design: Ofer Laufer
Dramaturgy: Yael Venezia
Costume design: Stav Struz Boutrous
Technical director and sound engineer: Asaf Ashkenazy
Coproduction: Théâtre de la Ville – Paris | The Israel Festival | MART Foundation
Residence: Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse | Montpellier Danse + CCN Occitanie, with the support of the Fondation BNP Paribas
Production: Adi Boutrous Performing Arts
Diffusion: Drôles de Dames
Nature of a Fall was produced with the assistance of the Lottery Council for Culture and Art
The work was supported by The Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts
Website: www.adiboutrous.com
World premiere – 4 February 2026, Théâtre de la Ville des Abbesses – Paris
Adi Boutrous is a choreographer, dancer and soundtrack designer. He is a prominent voice in the new generation of contemporary dance, both in Israel and internationally. His works have been commissioned and presented on stages and at major institutions in Europe and Israel, including leading festivals and dance centers in France and Germany. His first work, “What Really Makes Me Mad” won first prize at the Shades of Dance 2013, in 2022 he won the Minister of Culture and Sport Prize for Dance, and in 2026 he was announced as the winner of the Rosenblum Prize for Performing Arts in the category of an artist with promising achievements.
Boutrous’s works express the intricacy of power dynamics and struggle. His multifaceted identity – Arab-Christian-Israeli – creates from the outset, almost inevitably, an experience of friction and intersection. In days when identity is multifaceted, Boutrous holds “the other” within him, managing a composite web of relationships – not with his own complex identity, but with its public-facing presentation. However, his identity carries a movement that strives to expand boundaries, build bridges, and chart a common human destiny regardless of geography – central aspects of his work.
In parallel with his choreography, Adi is a record collector and selector. The types of music he collects and plays cross genres, periods and geographical boundaries: music from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, and European classical music. As part of this channel of his activity, Adi holds performative listening events, in which spaces are created for the act of shared listening. The ongoing, multi-year process of collecting and discovering music permeates his dance works and gives the soundtrack an essential role in the structure of the dance, in the contact with the images and in the creation of a sense of time.
