"Les Inconsolés" “Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me! / Full many a game I will play there with thee”, thus the Erl king lures the child that dies in his father’s arms in Goethe’s tragic ballad. Frenchman Alain Buffard derives his brilliant piece “Les inconsolés” from these verses, featuring the much-cited threat by the Erl king: “I love thee, I’m charm’d by thy beauty, dear boy; / And if thou’rt unwilling, then force I’ll employ.” Buffard’s piece tells the story of the force of an early trauma and its recurring images and hallucinations filled with razor-sharp, inextinguishable contradictoriness. Accompanied by music from Schubert and Throbbing Gristle, the three dancers – including Buffard himself – play teenagers as well as adults, conformists as well as rebels, victims as well as perpetrators. Winner of the 2005 Grand Prize of the French Critics’ Association!