Ballets to music by Janacek, Prokofiev and Glass
by Heinz Spoerli, Hans van Manen und Twyla Tharp
Zurich Opera House
Zurich, Switzerland
September 1, 2009
by Horst Koegler
copyright @ 2009 by Horst Koegler
As in former years, the Zurich Ballet opened the new season with a programme based mainly on chamber-music, for the General Manager of the opera-house puts great emphasis on having live music for the ballet-performances. Thus while the orchestra is still on holiday, individual members of it are given the chance to display their soloist gifts. Which they at least demonstrated this time in the first two pieces, Heinz Spoerli´s creation to Leos Janacek´s second string quartet and Hans van Manen´s Prokofiev piano-based “Sarcasms”, with Twyla Tharp´s “In the Upper Room” as the final item of the triple-bill blaring their nerve-wreckers from the loud-speakers.
In the past, we have had new Spoerlis set to music by Bach (the “Goldberg Variations” or, on two evenings, the six “Cello Suites”), or on other occasions music by Mozart, Brahms, Berio or Ligeti. In any case there was never any doubt, that Spoerli considered them the equivalent of the big blockbusters, which dominate the main repertory of the company, with all the classics (a new “Raymonda” is announced for October) as well as the usual Mahlers, Stravinskys, Prokofievs et al.
Even in this context the new Janacek stands out as something very special, spellbindingly as it is eperformed by four of the top-soloists of the Zurich opera-orchestra. It is one of the last works of the 74 year old composer, who did not survive to attend its first performance in 1928. It must be one of the most autobiographical compositions in the entire history of music – even more so than Richard Strauss´s notorious introduction to his “Rosenkavalier”. Janacek has given it the title “Listy duverne”, which means “Intimate Letters” – in Zurich performed as “Lettres intimes”. It is based upon the bulk of love letters which Janacek wrote to his beloved Kamila Stösservoa, a married woman, 36 years younger than himself (he was himself married at that time) – an ´amour fou´ of uproarious energy, never to be fulfilled on earth, and yet bursting of the overwhelming ardour and passion of a twenty years old youngster.
At 69 Spoerli is not so much younger than Janacek was in the last year of his life, so it is left to anybody´s guess, how much autobiography went into his choreography – which is very different from his former output, though it registers minutely the jagged cardiogram of the music´s fever chart. In fact it reflects its nervous course of exclamations, more a collection of abbreviatures than of connecting lines and structures, as if in a haste that time is running out to express what has never been formulated in the 74 years of his life so far. These are explosions of a tsumani of emotions, at times surfing the heights of ecstasy, and plunging from there into the abyss of bottomless despair, with spare moments of infinite lyricism, and even of folkloristic joy and boisterous humor, with distant military signals sounded (which add some Mahlerish touch – as Janacek hails from Moravia like Mahler, and which I associated with the greens and blues of Etti´s landscape projection - but then the ballet is set and costumed in modern timelessness). It is a disturbing piece of music as well as of choreography – a piece of haunting beauty, and of forlorn hopelessness.
As a ballet it is brimming with virility, and yet with an incredible tenderness – a self-portray of Janacek the man, still on his creative peaks. Perhaps Spoerli was afraid of portraying himself too realistically, for he has stated that it is a ballet ´about a man and his relationship with a woman. with five additional couples to mirror what happens between these two protagonists – but it is not Janacek´.
And he certainly is not Janacek. As she is not Stösslova. Both performers are newcomers to the Zurich company. He is Arsen Mehrabyn, coming from Neumeier´s Hamburg troup – one of the Armenian miracle boys which the school of Jerevan seems to turn out by the dozen, and who are today dancing in San Francisco, Hamburg, Munich and Zurich. He is a tall, tigerish dancer, with a fire in himself, of infinite grace and suppleness and a springy alertness. He is certainly a welcome addition to Zurich´s already strong contingent of Russian males. As is Aliya Tanykpayeva, strengthening the roster of Zurich´s rather exotic ensemble of females. She hails from Kasakhstan, a model of warm Russian motherhood, with a steely technique and jet of heartwarming care and pure lyricism.
And while Spoerli has centered his ballet on his Armenian newcomer, he is very different from Janacek – a born ´loner´, who opens the piece alone on the vast stage, while in the distant haze one glimpses a girl passing by, who ends it in as solitary a position, lying cying on the floor. He makes some desperate attempts to break through his isolation, and the girl tries to soothe his loneliness, as do the other couples, who invite him to their outings (with the boys just forming a jolly comradeship of maybe football chums), but it is in vain – he always recedes into his solitude, with his hand covering his face, as if not to see what happens around, and then staring into the auditory, obviously into nothingness. It is only for seconds, or so it seems, that he grapples the hand of the girl, dancing with her in wonderful harmony or in parallel movements, to withdraw immediately again into his forlornness.
But this is not what the music seems to tell us. Sun-drenched and life-enhancing, it tells of the exhilarating powers of love – even if it materializes only in tones and in the mind of the composer. And so while Spoerli follows minutely the contours of the notes on paper, he misses the communicative drive which is whipped up by the four instrumentalists. It is wonderful to watch its wealth of movement, so eloquently performed by the dancers, but I wish that Spoerli next choreographs something for his Armenian terpsichorean ambassador more in line with his youthful exuberance and ardour.
After this came van Manen´s “Sarcasms” of 1981 vintage, a tongue in the cheek duo for three, for the pianist Alexei Botvinov, who hammers out the Prokofiev with pounding relish, is as much part of the action as he is in Balanchine´s “Duo concertant” (van Manen lists Balanchine even as designer of the set and the costumes.) But its tone is vastly different from the Mazzo and Martins piece, for Stanislav Jermakov, the boy from Tallinn, is very much a youth of Estonia´s today generation of youngsters, very carefree and extremely macho, coming directly from a fitness studio, where he regularly trains the well concerted muscles of his lean body. But what he can do and is obviously proud to demonstrate ostentatiously, she knows perfectly to upstage him. She is Sarah-Jane Brodback, of Australian and Swiss origin, and this mixture of Down Under and Up Alpine works wonders, for she knows all the tricks from the balletic box of female titillations which she employs with cunning calculation, and when he still pretends not to yield to her erotic manoeuvres, she is not afraid to grab him at his crotch. It´s a trifle, but a trifle with a filling of sexy bubbles, and Brodback and Jermakov serve them like a vintage champagne.
Which is more than I can say of Tharp´s “In the Upper Room”, which we have just had recently in Mainz at Schläpfer´s company, and which he again has promised us as one his first programmes at Düsseldorf, where he just during these days starts his work as the company´s new artistic director. As much as I had enjoyed its lambasting boisterousness in Mainz recently, I found myself wincing when I was again confronted with this rambunctious orgy of energetic nothingness, drifting in and out of the fog, with these boys and girls in their sneakers, point shoes and stifelettes and their striped shirts looking to me like the inmates of Sing-Sing out for their morning jogging exercises. And if the Zurich dancers left no doubt that they thoroughly enjoyed Tharp´s bouncy quirks, and the girls in the auditory shrieked and yelled like attending a rock spectacle, I felt rather numbed by this relentless onslaught of banality.