Video: Promotional film for Tree of Codes by Ruth Hogben.Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer Much has been written about the precocity and talent of Jonathan Safran Foer, whose debut novel Everything is Illuminated (2002) commanded a $500,000 advance and was released when its author was barely 25. Production images: Ravi Deepres and Joel Chester Fildes. Supported by the PRS Foundation for Music and MIF Commissioning Circle. Produced by Manchester International Festival, Paris Opera Ballet and Studio Wayne McGregor.Ĭommissioned by Manchester International Festival, Park Avenue Armory, FAENA ART, Paris Opera Ballet, Sadler's Wells and European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017. Since its premiere in 2015 at the Manchester International Festival, Tree of Codes has been performed by Company Wayne McGregor with soloists from Paris Opera Ballet in New York, Paris, London, Denmark, Australia, France and Hong Kong. McGregor examined Safran Foer’s book page by page, drawing on both the content and structure of the artwork to create a visceral, physical language for Tree of Codes while Eliasson’s visual concept for the work, a sequence of disorientating landscapes where the audience become a critical part of constructing the space, are a translation of the physical impact and visceral nature of reading Foer’s novel. Jamie xx’s musical compositions were also inspired by his own physical reaction to the novel, reflecting the rhythmic nature inherent in the words and spaces of Safran Foer's work. Throughout their three year creation in translating ‘Tree of Codes’ through dance, imagery and sound, McGregor, Eliasson and Jamie xx took Safran Foer’s artwork as their inspiration. These blurred and disorientating worlds provided a powerful point of departure for our collaboration on stage – where constellations of light, shadows, bodies, objects and sound dance at the edges of darkness' - Wayne McGregor Its post apocalyptic narrative and reinvention of the process of reading itself catapults your imagination into bracing liminal states. 'Safran Foer's ‘Tree of Codes’ is an immersive sculptural work that brilliantly hovers between words and spaces, surfaces and layers, pasts and futures. The work was inspired by and created in response to Jonathan Safran Foer's ‘Tree of Codes’, an artwork in the form of a book carved from Safran Foer’s favourite novel, Bruno Schulz’s ‘The Street of Crocodiles’.

In 2015, Wayne McGregor collaborated with visual artist Olafur Eliasson and Mercury Prize-winning producer and composer Jamie xx to create Tree of Codes , an evening-length contemporary ballet commissioned by the Manchester International Festival.

'A TRULY COLLABORATIVE PROCESS LIES BEHIND THE EXTRAORDINARY ARTISTIC TRIUMPH OF THIS CONTEMPORARY BALLET'

Safran of foer codes