Portraits of Falling by Adi Boutros

Portraits of Falling

Trapped in an endless cycle of challenging physical situations, the six dancers in Portraits of Falling climb over one another, scale and collapse, building impressive and fragile human structures onstage. The dancers’ virtuoso bodies keep the audience alert before an unceasing stream of images: solidarity and violence, tenderness and cruelty, attraction and repulsion. Moments of intimacy instantly become disturbing images 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 cyclical nature of our humanity, in which fragility is not an endpoint but a turning point, and the life force continues to pulse.

“A masterclass in virtuosity”
— Ran Brown, Haaretz

Following sweeping success in Europe and at the Israel Festival, Portraits of Falling, the new work by Adi Boutrous, arrives in Tel Aviv.

Choreography and Soundtrack Design: Adi Boutrous
Dancers: Ido Barak, Neshama Bazer, Naomi Ben David, Adi Boutrous, Stav Struz Boutrous, Uri Diker
Dramaturgy: Yael Venezia
Lighting Design: Ofer Laufer
Costume Design: Stav Struz Boutrous
Technical Manager: Assaf Ashkenazi

Co-production: Théâtre de la Ville–Paris | Israel Festival | MART Foundation
Artist Residency: Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse | Montpellier Danse + CCN Occitanie, with the support of the Fondation BNP Paribas
Production: Adi Boutrous Performing Arts
International Relations: Drôles de Dames

Portraits of Falling was produced with the support of the Mifal HaPais Council for Culture and the Arts and with the support of the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, Tel Aviv (R.A.).

World Premiere: February 4, 2026, Théâtre de la Ville / des Abbesses — Paris
Website: www.adiboutrous.com

About Adi Boutrous

Adi Boutrous is a choreographer, dancer, and soundtrack designer. He is one of the leading voices of the new generation of contemporary dance in Israel and on the international scene. His works have been commissioned and presented at major venues and institutions in Europe and Israel, including leading festivals and dance centers in France and Germany.

His first work, What Really Annoys Me, won him first prize at Gvanim in Dance 2013. In 2022, he received the Minister of Culture and Sport’s Dance Award, and in 2026 he was announced as the recipient of the Rosenblum Performing Arts Award in the category of Promising Artist.

Boutrous’s works express the complexity of power relations and struggle. The combination that makes up his identity—Arab-Christian-Israeli—creates, almost inevitably, a condition of friction and encounter. At a time when identity is often the creator’s calling card, Boutrous, for whom “the other” exists within him, engages in a complex relationship—not with the essence of his multifaceted identity, but with its public exposure.

At the same time, his identity carries a movement that seeks to expand boundaries, build bridges, and chart a shared destiny for every human being—central aspects of his work.

Alongside his choreographic practice, Adi is a record collector and selector. The kinds of music he collects and plays cross genres, eras, and geographical borders: music from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, and European classical music. As part of this aspect of his practice, Adi holds performative listening events that create spaces for shared listening. His ongoing, years-long process of collecting and discovering music filters into his dance works, giving the soundtrack a substantive role in the structure of the dance, its interaction with the images, and the creation of a sense of time.