Tracks from Manners Faber composer Nils Frahm have been choreographed for shows at the National Theatre of Brno and Theater Ulm.
Frahm’s 16-minute track Toilet Brushes – More features as part of Kafka at the Janáček Theatre – a full-length work exploring the life of the Czech author, choreographed by Markéta Pimek Habalová; Frahm’s music appears alongside works from Phillip Glass, Caroline Shaw, Max Richter, and Alfred Schnittke. The work, which premiered in October 2025 and is in rep until June 2026, pivots between an autobiographical account of the author’s life and the extraordinary and bizarre worlds of his fiction, including The Trial, The Castle, and Metamorphosis. Watch a trailer for the show here.
The junior company of the Ballet of the National Theatre Brno - Ballet NdB2 - previously danced Toilet Brushes in Carolina Isach’s 2024 piece Distant Instant, which appeared at the Royal Ballet’s 2025 Next Generation Festival; the work is inspired by Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid modernity’. The track also appeared in February 2024 at the Royal Ballet as part of Joshua Junker’s critically-acclaimed Never Known, part of their Festival of New Choreography.
In Germany, Frahms’ 8-minute track Says, from 2014 album Spaces, appears this spring at Theater Ulm as part of Annett Göhre’s Für immer – one of a series of short pieces in a programme of dance duets titled Step For Two, exploring the myriad forms of bonds and connections between people that can be realised through movement. The track sees arpeggiated synthesizer lines stack up and gain incrementally in intensity over the course of its runtime; Pitchfork wrote that it “bridges both simple and complex urges, beginning in spare stabs of piano and ending with beautifully labyrinthian loops. It’s so easy to get lost in its glassy structures that the audience applause at the end feels like a rude interruption—a bump back down to reality after being so thoroughly transported.
His appeared as part of Distant Instant with the Brno National Theatre Ballet at the Royal Ballet’s 2025 Next Generation Festival, choreographed by Carolina Isach; it is currently in rep at the Kafka Theatre in Brno with further performances in spring and summer 2026.
Frahm’s music has been a frequent inspiration for choreographers. Toilet Brushes also appeared in February 2024 at the Royal Ballet as part of Joshua Junker’s critically-acclaimed Never Known, part of their Festival of New Choreography. In 2023 it was used for Ingrid Silva’s dance film Above, which saw the Brazilian dancer move around the HVAC utilities humming 800 feet above New York City atop Renzo Piano’s New York Times Building, wearing a custom paper sculpture by French artist Pauline Loctin; Above was directed by Jacob Krupnick with cinematography by Soren Nielsen.
In 2022 Andie Ndlovu choreographed Frahm's Human Range for Washington Ballet for six live performances, as part of NEXTsteps, their annual festival of new choreography; in 2021 Ndlovu also choregraphed Frahm's Says for the same company for his show Something Human, as part of Create in Place.