Machines write books, paint images, compose music. In 2026, that is no longer the future — it is your everyday life. ODILE asks the question behind it — not on a talk show, but on a stage. And you can be part of it from the very beginning.
Artificial intelligence is being negotiated everywhere right now: in boardrooms, in parliaments, in school committees, at kitchen tables. Mostly it's about efficiency, jobs, risks — about numbers. What almost nobody is seriously investigating: What does this technology do to the most human thing about us — our creativity?
The question is no longer whether machines can create. They do, every day, millions of times. The real question is: What becomes of human creation when it gets company? Competition? A counterpart? Nobody knows. And that is exactly why someone has to try it — publicly, radically, with full commitment.
“The question is no longer whether machines are creative. But what becomes of us when they are.”
ODILE is dance theatre built on the oldest double image in stage history: Odette and Odile, the white and the black swan — two figures, one body, almost impossible to tell apart. With us, they dance again. Except that this time, one choreography comes from a human life and the other from a machine.
The same dancers, the same stage, the same musical world. One half of the evening was choreographed by Brigitte — with 25 years of stage experience. The other by an AI, guided by intention instead of command.
The programme won't tell you. You watch, feel, compare — and decide for yourself where you recognise the human. Or whether you do at all.
Only after the curtain falls is the answer revealed. What remains is perhaps the most honest answer to the question of human and machine that a stage can give — experienced, not claimed.
That is the dream: a work that doesn't comment on this era of upheaval, but embodies it. Developed in Cologne, documented from day one, made for stages far beyond.
Choreographer, dancer and movement director — more than 25 years on major stages, in theatre, film and television, between Cologne and Berlin. She brings what no machine possesses: a life lived in the language of movement. And the courage to put it publicly at stake.
Futurist and entrepreneur, for 25 years with the think tank gannaca at the intersection of people, organisations and machines — across 55 countries. He doesn't talk about AI, he works with it daily, all the way into the production of this project.
Of course we're applying for public funding — those applications are already under way. But the honest maths looks like this: a cultural funding application takes months until a decision and often half a year until payout. Corporate sponsors need committees, budget rounds, fiscal years. AI moves in weeks. If we wait until the institutions are ready, others will answer the question — or worse: nobody will.
So we're reversing the order. The first €10,000 don't come from a jury, but from a hundred people who know us — or who sense that something is being created here that they'll want to have seen from the start. No anonymous crowdfunding on a platform, but a direct circle. A hundred people, a hundred euros on average: that's how we begin. Not someday. Now.
ODILE is not non-profit, not pro bono, not philanthropy. We are building a work that must sustain itself economically in the medium term — through performances, licences, the film. And yes: both of us want and need to earn money with it eventually, otherwise we can't keep it running. So you are not donating. You are buying real value and making a production possible to which we have long committed our own time, our own money and our names. We believe this honesty is exactly what this subject deserves.
Every package includes all benefits of the smaller ones. You pay once — and permanently belong to those who were there early.
Freely choosable from €100 to €10,000 — you automatically receive all benefits of the highest tier reached. From €2,500, let's talk: that's where the partner packages begin.
All prices incl. statutory VAT. The terms of sale and the cancellation policy apply (German).
One evening in Cologne, a curtain will open, and nobody in the audience will know whether a human or a machine is speaking. You will be able to say: I made this possible.
Payment takes place on a secured payment page. Your contracting party is gannaca GmbH & Co. KG, Habsburgerring 3, 50674 Cologne, Germany. Price incl. statutory VAT.