Twilight

Premiered on July 17, 2025 a the Salle Garnier, Opera de Monte Carlo by Les Ballets de Monte Carlo

Twilight is a new dance performance that invites the audience into a world of layered perspectives, subtle contrasts, and ephemeral beauty. Created by choreographer Lukas Timulak and designer Peter Biľak, the piece explores how personal experience shapes perception—how two people can look at the same world and see something entirely different.
At the heart of Twilight are two bespoke lighting instruments—sculptural, minimal, but never fully revealed. These lights simulate the movement of the sun with real geographic specificity. One light traces the path of the sun over Monaco, the city in which the performance takes place. The other follows the solar motion of The Hague, Netherlands—home to both Timulak and Biľak. Though synchronised in the same physical space, the lights represent two distant realities, subtly diverging over time. While the sun sets over Monaco, the sun above The Hague continues its path across the sky. What one audience sees as dusk may still shine brightly elsewhere.
These overlapping solar movements become a metaphor for the unseen differences that shape our lived experiences—differences in geography, culture, and perspective. The performance asks: how can we perceive what is beyond our immediate view? How do we acknowledge the simultaneous existence of multiple truths, of parallel lives unfolding elsewhere? Art becomes the bridge, offering a space where such simultaneity can be made visible, poetic, and moving.
Accompanying this visual and choreographic journey is a newly commissioned original score by Academy Award-winning composer Volker Bertelmann / Hauschka. Known for his richly textured and emotionally resonant music, Hauschka brings a sonic landscape that mirrors the dualities of the piece—light and shadow, motion and stillness, presence and absence. His prepared piano composition does not merely accompany the dance; it shapes the atmosphere, guiding the audience through shifting moods and invisible connections between places and moments in time.
Costume designer Annemarije van Harten contributes to the world of Twilight with layered garments in natural tones that echo the organic rhythms of the work and reflect its themes of transformation and subtle variation.
Augmenting the stage are live-streamed projections from both Monaco and The Hague. Two real-time video feeds, pointed skyward, reveal the subtle dissonance in light and atmosphere between the locations. What cannot be observed directly from one place becomes visible to the audience, reminding us that what seems like the end of something in one location is the continuation of life elsewhere.
Twilight is conceived as a site-specific experience, rooted in time and location. Each performance is unique, shaped by the natural rhythm of the sun and the shifting atmosphere of the moment. No two viewings are the same. Just as the world is in constant flux, Twilight embraces change, impermanence, and the beauty of the fleeting moment. Through choreography, light, sound, and time, Twilight gently reminds us that there is always more than one way to see the world.

Choreography: Lukáš Timulak
Set design: Peter Biľak
Music: Volker Bertelmann / Hauschka
Costume design: Annemarije van Harten
Light design: Samuel Thery
Assistant to the choreographer: Gaëtan Morlotti

with the dancers of Les Ballets de Monte Carlo under the artistic direction of Jean-Christophe Maillot

Candela Ebbesen
Ekaterina Mamrenko
Kathryn Mcdonald
Ashley Krauhaus

Jaat Benoot
Ige Cornelis
Daniele Delvecchio
Kizuki Matsuyama

photos by Peter Biľak

photos by Alice Blangero