From warehouse raves and underground clubs to major stages and opera houses around the world, Ori Lichtik has moved freely between different musical worlds. Playing at parties, techno, industrial, hip hop and new wave all converged in live drumming sets. In his early DJ days, Ori experimented with different genres, mixing and creating mash-ups of different extremes — tango with industrial music, orchestral music with field recordings from the African continent. Parallel to these sets, he started making original music, alone and in band collaborations such as Schwartzer Kinder.

Ori’s collaboration with Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar began with Bertolina (2006), the first piece he composed for them. Their collaboration went on to produce notable works for the stage such as Killer Pig (2009), House (2011) and OCD Love (2015). In these pieces, sound does not simply accompany movement — it generates it: driving bodies, shaping space and transforming the stage. Their work together reached major dance and opera companies including Batsheva Dance Company, Nederlands Dans Theater, Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet and Staatsballett Berlin.

Further collaborations for the stage with performing arts companies include Noa Shadur’s Brut (2023), Yang Zhen’s Burning Marches (2024), and Circa, for whom Ori composed music for Wolf (2024), Humans 2.0 (2021) and Peepshow (Club Remix) (2023). When working with moving bodies, Ori uses sound as a physical force — instinctive, hypnotic and constantly evolving.

Parallel to his work for the stage, Ori plays in the band AVAQ with Gidon Schocken and Yuval (Yogg) Goren. AVAQ’s music has also crossed into performance, notably in Noa Shadur’s Brut, created and performed with original member Yaron Sobel.

In his process, Ori draws deep inspiration from simply playing and experimenting, whether in the studio or elsewhere. Raw, instinctive, uncomposed sounds and authentic rhythms become the materials out of which he unearths original music. Drawing from tribal ceremonies, raves, contemporary performance and composition, Ori’s music moves freely across different musical languages. Natural sounds, unexpected objects and electronic textures become part of the same sonic world. Electronic music, drums, field recordings and found sounds come together in a distinctive musical language shaped by groove, movement and an instinctive approach to sound — raw, organic and unconstrained by genre.