“May B” – a legend, an event. The piece premiered back in 1981 and is the most performed dance piece in France. An absolute classic of modernism, it is still performed all over the world. “May B” has made dance history with 772 performances in 48 countries to date. The piece established the world fame of Maguy Marin, the Grande Dame of contemporary dance in France. The euro-scene Leipzig has already shown “May B” once in 1999, then in coupling with the quintet “Quoi qu’il en soit” (“Be that as it may”, premiered in 1999).

Waiting – no one has brought it to the stage as well as the Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906-89), best known for his play “En attendant Godot” (“Waiting for Godot,” Paris 1953). Maguy Marin translates Beckett’s existentialism into movement, the waiting in the void, the hesitation and hope, the brief, usually futile comfort of community. A group of lonely souls, an oddball panopticon of dusty old men and clochards shuffles grunting into nowhere, constantly hoping for a destination in their endless wanderings. For all the absurdity of their existence, there is a weightless serenity about the archetypal figures.

Maguy Marin was born in 1951 in Toulouse. She received her training at Maurice Béjart’s Mudra School in Brussels from 1970 and was a dancer in his world famous “Ballet du XXe siècle”. In 1981 she founded her own company in France and directed the Centres chorégraphiques nationals from 1985 in Créteil near Paris and from 1998 in Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon. Since 2015, she has been working at the RAMDAM art center in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon. She created about 50 works since 1976. In 2016, she received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Dance Biennale.