Alainpaul and its costumes take to the stage with Drift Wood at the Paris Opera

On the event of the Contrastes programme, offered from December 1 to 31, 2025 at the Opéra nationwide de Paris, Alainpaul unveils its first collaboration with choreographers Imre and Marne van Opstal. Their new piece, Drift Wood, affords a perfect canvas for exploring the relationship between physique, materials, and narrative, an area the place costumes turn into integral to motion.

Inspired by the picture of driftwood, formed by time and carried by the currents, Alainpaul’s costumes give bodily type to the rigidity at the coronary heart of the piece: that which each opposes and binds acutely aware humanity to instinctive nature. Poised between fragility and resistance, the silhouettes transfer like a second pores and skin, moulding to the dancers’ actions. This give attention to texture and building renders, in visible phrases, the contradictions that course via Drift Wood, the place our bodies oscillate between self-control and impulse.

“A moment of fulfilment”

Conceived as a poetic diorama, the piece unfolds inside a panorama formed by the parts: sound, picture, and motion interweave to discover vulnerability, connection, and ambiguity. In this floating world, the costumes play a central position. Rooted in Alainpaul’s signature sculptural readability and fluidity, they amplify the emotional language imagined by the Van Opstal duo. For the home, this collaboration marks a strong return to the stage, the place clothes reconnects with its major origin: gesture.

“Collaborating with Imre and Marne, as well as with the Opéra national de Paris’s exceptional atelier, was an immense honour,” stated Alain Paul, the home’s founder. “These are the first Alainpaul costumes created for a contemporary ballet, and we are deeply grateful for the trust placed in us for Drift Wood. We have forged a genuine dialogue between movement and the construction of the costumes. Having grown up in the world of dance, this project represents a moment of fulfilment and a profound way of uniting my two worlds.”

Alainpaul, a model impressed by choreography

This creation types a part of Contrastes, a programme that brings collectively three choreographic worlds: two main works by Trisha Brown, the entry into the repertoire of David Dawson’s Anima Animus, and Drift Wood, the Van Opstals’ first piece for the Paris Opera. Together, these works discover the tensions and oppositions operating via dance right now, from minimalist radicalism to sculptural energy.

Founded on a choreographic method to clothes, the home Alainpaul has, from the outset, drawn on the vocabulary of choreographers comparable to Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham. Its items, with their experimental traces and sculptural silhouettes, reinterpret the dancer’s wardrobe inside a timeless, city aesthetic. With Drift Wood, this ambition takes on a brand new dimension: that of a garment totally animated by motion.