Thomas Bangalter : Mirage – Ballet for 16 Dancers
If idle hands are the devil’s workshop, what fate does that spell for DJs and producers who step away from the home turf they helped tend? For each member of legendary electronica duo Daft Punk, that answer has differed greatly. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo seemed the more introverted of the pair, and his rare public presence as a collaborator and performer since their final separation in 2021 follows suit. Thomas Bangalter, however, has grabbed attention a bit more frequently since then—with B2B sets alongside Fred again.., yes, but also by diving into soundtrack development for stage, screen, and art installations.
Bangalter’s newest release is Mirage – Ballet for 16 Dancers, a score for a modern dance performance that debuted in 2025 at Geneva’s Ballet du Grand Théâtre. Mirage is the fourth collaboration in 10 years between Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet and Japanese visual artist Kōhei Nawa. These productions explore metamorphosis, and this latest installment rests on physical responses to different materials and climates. Instead of composing music for an orchestra or other ensemble to play live, Bangalter constructed Mirage – Ballet for 16 Dancers in the studio, recording eight movements to be piped in for the dancers.
This was an itch Bangalter originally scratched for the 2002 art film Irréversible, with music full of the squishy, heavily-flanged sounds that earned him and de Homem-Christo their French touch bonafides. His soundtrack projects this decade frequently shifted among contexts and styles: Spanish-influenced acoustic guitar, self-taught traditional classical, hours-long electronic pastiche for fashionable multimedia. But while Mirage isn’t even Bangalter’s first experience with music for ballet, it’s certainly his most abstract and confrontational work.
A few elements envelop the entirety of his score. It holds long sections of randomized, glitched high-end notes. Tuned, echoing percussion opens and closes Mirage. Drones suggesting low woodwinds and vacuum cleaners slowly overlap it; singular, bone-shaking peals of bass underpin it. Bangalter arpeggiates both the lightest of handmade synth tones and the kind of sounds that could have been lifted from warped library-music vinyl. And while there are patterns and rhythms to latch onto at points, his purposely flowing sequencing feels largely formless and beatless.
Isolated from any visuals of Jalet and Kōhei’s choreography and stagecraft, this feels tough to dance to even within avant garde circles. (For what it’s worth, it actually seems to work.) It’s definitely not meant to dance to like we’re used to in the Daft Punk universe, and it’s kind of a challenging entry even for the experimental genre. Mirage – Ballet for 16 Dancers finds Thomas Bangalter delving into electroacoustics and ambient music that pretty much moves him in a straight line directly away from the mainstream reputation he’s built.
Label: Erato
Year: 2026
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