First Times Only Happen Once

There’s something about seeing a piece for the first time – before the reviews, before the tour, before anyone knows exactly what to expect. Ruhrtriennale 2025 offers that moment: five world premieres across the festival for those who want to experience work that unfolds live for the first time, right here.

The route starts with I Did It My Way, and not just because it opens the festival. This is the kind of performance that shakes loose songs lodged in our collective memory. It follows a couple whose life stretches between personal stories and social upheaval. Staged in Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, this one resonates, literally. You can catch the piece later in the festival, but the opening night energy? That’s hard to repeat.

The second weekend, Duisburg’s Kraftzentrale is transformed. Oracle, directed by Łukasz Twarkowski, makes its world premiere – a sprawling, cinematic theatre experience about Alan Turing, AI, and the emotional spaces in between. The performers move between decades – 1940s swing dances, coded wartime secrets, and questions that land squarely in our present. Live cameras, sound, and architecture turn the industrial space into something alive, layered, and charged.

Gen Z Don’t Cry digs into generational questions – but don’t expect clichés. The entire audience wears headphones, 3D sound surrounds you, and the performance breaks open the uncertainties, fears, and defiance that often make young people seem like a mystery. It’s not just for Gen Z – it’s a way in for everyone curious about how this generation navigates the world.

If movement is your entry point, Sharon Eyal’s latest creation Delay the Sadness remains partly under wraps – as usual – but her work is known for its hypnotic energy. Her dancers hold the stage with such precision that looking away isn’t really an option. People say: “You can’t stop watching.” They’re not wrong.

The festival’s final world premiere brings everything to a close with scale and force. Guernica Guernica makes Jahrhunderthalle Bochum a massive arena – towering grandstands, mass choreography, no spoken words. You don’t need prior knowledge of Picasso’s painting to feel its weight. History, spectatorship, and the role of the crowd converge here, in a space that itself carries the echoes of Germany’s industrial and political past. You sit inside the performance. You become part of the image.

Premieres like these only happen once – and only happen like this, here. The Ruhrtriennale tour through its new works isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about choosing to experience a piece at the moment of its arrival, before it travels, before it changes, before it belongs to everyone else.