danceviewtimes

John Neumeier's new "Liliom"

December 4, 2011
“Liliom” (John Neumeier)
Hamburg Ballet
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
December 4

by Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler

Originally billed  a ´suburban legend´ when it was first performed in Budapest in 1909,  Ferenc Molnar´s “Liliom” became a world hit when it was taken up by many theatres around the globe. In 1945 its stage version was adapted by Richard Rodgers and Oskar Hammerstein as a musical under the title “Carousel”, contiuing its success story in various stage and film versions. As a ballet it materialized when Christopher Wheeldon choreographed it as “Carousel (A Dance)” for a New York City Ballet gala in 20002, scoring  an instant hit which was taken into the company´s regular repertory, with stellar performances by Alexandra Ansanelli and Benjamin Millepied.

Neumeier choreographs Stravinsky´s “Apollon musagète” and “Orpheus”

Trying to bolster up up two ballets into a full-length Trilogy
John Neumeier choreographs Stravinsky´s “Apollon musagète” and “Orpheus”
Hamburg Ballet
Baden-Baden Festsouelhaus
Baden-Baden Germany
October 14. 2011
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler
 
When John Neumeier planned his "Orpheus“ two years ago, it was the first time that a ballet was to be specially created for Roberto Bolle, star-dancer based in La Scala di Milano, and a highly respected guest with many companies abroad, among many  others the Paris Opéra, London´s Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. He had been acclaimed in all the prince roles, from  “Giselle” via the Petipas through their contemporary descendents, fathered by Ashton, MacMillan and Nureyev, plus some  of their relatives from bourgeios stock. among them Balanchine, Petit and other representatives of the higher ranks of the international ballet gentry.

Balanchine, Forsythe, Kylián and Spoerli open the new season

"4 Choreographies"
Zurich Ballet
Zurich Opera House
Zurich, Switzerland
September 2, 2011
 
by  Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler
 
"4 Choreographies” announced  the advertisement for the opening of the Zurich Ballet´of the 2011/12 season.  Hardly very appetizing fare, it seemed. And yet an ambitious start, its four authors including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Jiri Kylián  and Heinz Spoerli, artistic director and chief-choreographer of the company.

And there was more to it. For Balanchine, the master, and Forsythe, than a strapping teenager who had just started his carrer as  a dancer of the Stuttgart Ballet,  had been the first colleagues who Spoerli had invited to Basle, Switzerland, his home-town where he had been appointed ballet director in 1973, then a youngster of 33 years, after his apprentice years in Basle, Cologne, Winnipeg, Montréal  and Geneve.

A Giant Mahlerian Puzzle

In his “Purgatorio” John Neumeier has tackled the composer´s Tenth Symphony
 
Hamburg Ballet
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
July 3, 2011
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright by Horst Koegler
 
With  "Purgatorio“ as his newest creation, John Neumeier opened the 37th Hamburg Ballet Days on June 26. It registers as Opus 14 in his catalogue of ballets based upon music by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Neumeier started it in 1970, then the 28 years old artistic director of the Frankfurt Ballet, with “Rondo”, his balletic interpretation of Mahler's  song ´Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen´ (´I have lost track of the world´) from 1901.

 Since then Neumeier has pursued his survey of the Mahlerian symphonies and lieder cycles, arriving now at the composer´s  Tenth Symphony, which Mahler left unfinished at the time of his death. This was later arranged as a performing version of Mahler´s draft by Deryck Cooke. Its 3rd movement, an Allegretto moderato, is entitled ´Purgatorio´ after the second station of Dante´s ´Divina comedia´, its purgatory reflecting the betrayal of a close friend. In the context of the symphony it refers to Mahler´s discovery of the adultery of his wife Alma (1879-1964), an amateur composer herself, with the architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969).

Return of the Prodigal King

John Neumeier´s “Illusions – like Swan Lake”
 Bavarian State Ballet
 Bavarian State Opera
 Munich, Germany
 April 28, 2011
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler
 
So he has returned, resurrected just in time for the 125th anniversary of  his death, to his Munich residence, to open the Ballet Festival 2011: Ludwig II (1845-86), King of Bavaria, in John Neumeier´s “Illusions – like Swan Lake”, premiered as the first of his docu-epics in Hamburg 1976. Outside of Bavaria best known through Visconti´s 1972 film about the unhappy monarch, builder of those fairy-tale castles which are today the country´s biggest tourist attraction, benefactor of Richard Wagner  and the Bayreuth Festival, victim of his frustrated homosexual inclinations and of his death under never revealed circumstances in Lake Starnberg near Munich.

Jerome Robbins and Heinz Spoerli share Zurich´s new Double-Bill

“In the Night” and “Song of the Earth”
 Zurich Ballet
 Zurich Opera House
 Zurich, Switzerland
 April 2, 2011
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler
 
 In the final premiere of his 15th and penultimate season as artistic director and chief-choreographer of the Zurich Ballet, Heinz Spoerli has double-billed Jerome Robbins´ Chopin based  “In the Night” with his own creation of  Gustav Mahler´s “Song of the Earth”. It is a programme which could be billed “Les Adieux”. For if the Robbbins materialized like some sort of after-thought to his preceding “Dances at a Gathering” – Spoerli´s creation of Mahler´s Lieder Symphony ends with the altist´s last words  ´Ewig, ewig, ewig…´  (Always, always, always…´),  sounding  like  the never ending echo of farewells in the night.

“Romeo and Juliet” evacuated by Peter Breuer from Verona to Salzburg

"Romeo and Juliet"
Salzburg Ballet
Salzburg Municipal Theatre
Salzburg, Austria
February 17,  2011
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler
 
 
Dancewise, Salzburg is a difficult town. On the one hand, it belongs, with Bayreuth and Edinburgh, to the premier league of international festivals, but this refers only to its opera and concert programmes, with ballet and dance functioning occasionally as an adjunct, so that – some eternity ago – the appearance of Béjart´s  then historical Ballet of the 20th century (with Boulez conducting Stravinsky´s “Les Noces and “Sacre du printemps”) and Hamburg Ballet with Neumeier´s “Matthew Passion” and the Mozart-“Requiem” are remembered as highlights.

Chopin, Our Contemporary

“Dances at a Gathering” and “The Concert”
Hamburg Ballet
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
January 13 and 14, 2011

by Horst Koegler
copyright 2011 by Horst Koegler
 
It is marked as a red letter day in my calendar: Sunday, 22 June 1969, two performances of the New York City Ballet in Monte Carlo: Balanchine's “Jewels” in the matinee. and in the evening John Cliffords's  “Tchaikovsky Suite” (later renamed “Tchaikovsky Suite No. 2”), followed by Balachine's “Apollo” and Robbins´ ”Dances at a Gathering”, exactly one month after its official  premiere on 22 May 1969 at New York´s State Theatre -- with Edward Villella, Patricia McBride, Violette Verdy, Sara Leland and Kay Mazzo, Anthony Blum, John Clifford, Roberto Maiorano, and John Prinz plus Gordon Boelner at the piano. It struck me immediately as one of the world wonders of ballet -- which it has done ever again since the half century that has passed in between, whenever I happened to chance upon it, either in performances of the New York original, at the Royal Ballet (notably so when it was danced by Anthony Dowell or Rudolf Nureyev, Antoinette Sibley, Lynn Seymour and Michael Coleman). So it made me completely happy when it entered the Stuttgart repertory in November 2002.

Stuttgart´s Gauthier Dance Company presents “Out of the Box”

A New Platform  for Youg Choreographers to Flex their Muscles
Stuttgart's Gauthier Dance Company presents  “Out of the Box”
Gauthier Dance Company
Theaterhaus
Stuttgart, Germany
December 18, 2010
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright by Horst Koegler
 
No, he is no relative of the famous French Romanticist, no distant uncle – and no Romanticist whatsoever, though he is a native of  Montreal from French/Canada – and by he way: he spells his family name with an h in the middle: Eric Gauthier, of 1977 vintage. He studied at the National Ballet School in Toronto, danced for two seasons with the National Ballet of Canada and came with Reid Anderson to Stuttgart in 1997, where he soon became known as a youngster for all seasons, a born Joker, though he never danced the part in Cranko´s eponymous ballet, but through all the stock roles of the repertoty from Cranko through Forsythe.

Like Water Lilies on an Édouard Manet Pont

Martin Schläpfer choreographs Schubert´s “Trout Quintet”
plus Balanchine´s “Four Temperaments” and Mats Ek´s “Aluminium”
Ballet on the Rhine
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf Opera-House. Germany
December 11, 2010
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright by Horst Koegler

 After Zurich´s start of the 2010 season with Heinz Spoerli´s "Death and the Maiden”, set to Schubert's string quartet in d-minor, D 810, Düsseldorf followed suit with Martin Schläpfer's “Trout  Quintet”, choreographed to Schubert´s quintet in A major, D 667. A coincidence? Both choreographers are Swiss, Spoerli of 1940 vintage, Schläpfer born in 1959; both belong to the fraternity of Balanchine impregnated neoclassicists; and both are motivated by music running through their arteries. Schläpfer, is now in his second season as ballet director of the Dusseldorf company, while Spoerli reigns in Zurich since 1996. Both are experienced choreographers of chamber-music works. Spoerli did the  superb “Lettres intimes” to Janacek´s eponymous string quartet last season, while Schläpfer choreographed a gem of a ballet to Ligeti´s string quartet (when he was still in charge of the Mainz company) in 2005. Both pieces could not be more different – but both succeed in their unique way.