SYMPHONY NO. 2
“Under the Trees’ Voices”

Dawson created his first new ballet for the Stuttgart Ballet, “Symphony No.2 “Under the Trees’ Voices” in 2024. The catalyst for this special new work was the eponymous piece of music by Ezio Bosso, in which Dawson hears a dense emotional narrative that floats on the rhythms of a beating heart, passionate but full longing and melancholy. With this work, he reaches for an energy comparable to that found in nature or a sacred space while sending 14 dancers on a journey to five new worlds in portraits of hope, love, grief, and life. “Emotional physicality is what matters to me.

We can feel a force there that is stronger than us, that comforts and helps us to rise above the darker side of life – and we dance this feeling,” says Dawson. With this work he confronts the idea of beauty itself, and what that may mean, how it can have a healing value, or a way to bring light into a world that seems to be growing darker, “It is my response to our current time. It’s a picture of this moment, this encounter: the dancers meeting me, and myself meeting them, for the first time, now. It’s a collision of our energies. The work is a product of our exchange. It is a very pure creation.”