With a Strong Whiff of Japanese Perfume

The 36th Hamburg Ballet Days highlighted the ballets choreographed originally by Maurice Béjart and John Neumeier for The Tokyo Ballet

“Images of Asia by Béjart” (“Bugaku” and “The Kabuki Suite”)
and “Flowing Worlds” by  John Neumeier (“Seven Haiku of the Moon” and “Seasons –The Colors of Time”)
The Tokyo Ballet and Hamburg Ballet
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
June 23 and 24, 2010

by Horst Koegler
copyright 2010 by Horst Koegler

  When John Neumeier took up his new job as artistic director and chief-choreographer of the ailing ballet company at the Hamburg opera house for the 1973/74 season, he was, at thirty-one, just one of the Anglo-Americans exploring the possibilities of the German post-World War II dance scene, following in the footsteps of Todd Bolender in Cologne, Alan Carter in Munich, Walter Gore in Frankfurt and Sonia Arova in Hamburg.

A born Milwaukeean, he had grown up in his home-town, studied at the theatre-department of its Marquett University, trained with Stone-Camryn in Chicago, debuted as a dancer with Sibyl Shearer of Winnetka County, and then sent with a scholarship to polish up his technique at the London Royal Ballet School, which he continued during the summer vacations with Vera Volkova in Copenhagen. Back in London, he was recruited by Marcia Haydée and Ray Barra for the fledgeling new company which John Cranko had started to build up at the Stuttgart opera house in Germany. Joining the troupe in 1963 as a corps dancer he quickly rose to soloist status and started to choreograph for the workshop performances of the Noverre Society, and also for the regular repertory. He was picked up in 1969 as ballet-master at the Frankfurt opera house, at 27 Germany's youngest head of a ballet company, from where his reputation as one of the most talented youngsters spread; he had already been engaged as a guest with the Harkness Ballet and  the Scottish Theatre Ballet before he transferred to Hamburg.

Now 68, he ranks as the continent's senior ballet-chief and as Hamburg Ballett Intendant (the highest position of  the German theatre system  - the equivalent of the Anglo-American General Manager plus Artistic Director), reigning over a vast imperium, with the splendidly equipped Hamburg Ballet Center housing the school and the rehearsel studios as its heart, from where numerous local institutions and activities are fed like the opera-house, the museum with the comprehensive Neumeier collections, the Foundation, the library and archive plus the research activities with various institutes of the city´s university. Thus its net of social connections and involvement with Hamburg´s cultural scene by far transgresses the appropriate ambitions of competing cities like London, Paris. St. Petersburg, Copenhagen or New York. 

  I wonder whether John Neumeier ever dreamed of creating something of such magnitude when he first came as a corps de ballet dancer to New York as a member of the Stuttgart Ballet on its first tour to the States in 1969, proclaimed by Clive Barnes as the ´German Ballet Miracle´. Anyway if he looked back now at the end of the 36th Hamburg Ballet Days, the annual fortnight ballet stagione of the season´s achievements, he certainly would admit that he would never have been able to create something on that scale, if he had stayed at home in the States. Especially after the very mixed experiences just a couple of  days before, when the new production of his “Lady of the Camellias” by the American Ballet Theater had bowed at the Met and received a severe pounding by the majority of the New York critics (though obviously not by the audience which flocked to see  ts performances).

But then Neumeier has proved a hard nut to crack for Manhattan´s critics since he he first created his “Hamlet Connotations” for ABT, starring Baryshnikov, Kirkland, Haydée and Bruhn as protagonists back in 1976. This contrasts markedly with the reception his ballets, whether performed by his own Hamburg company or reproduced  by companies all over the globe, have enjoyed by most of the critics as well as by audiences in, say, in St. Petersburg or Moscow, in Tokyo or Beijing, let alone in Paris, Milan, Vienna  or  Copenhagen. But then this is a phenomenon which deserves a special in depth enquiry, as many  pieces created by European choreographers like Kylián, van Manen, Béjart or Eifman – or, for that matter Neumeier – have been given a rather cold shouldered reception by American critics – as has been reciprocally the case with many American creations by, say, John Butler, Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon or Lucinda Childs, rapturously received at their home premiere, to be considered over here as American trash.

Held for the 36th continuous year, the Hamburg Ballet Days 2010 lasted from June 13 through 27, offering 13 performances by the Hamburg Ballet and its school, including two guest-stints by The Tokyo Ballet – all of them given to enthusiastic capacity audiences at Hamburg´s opera-house with its 1674 seats. It is amazing how Neumeier has built up his knowledgeable and even sophisticated public during these two generations – but then he undertakes lots of introductory lecture demonstrations in special matinees and school appearances before every new venture.

 The 2010 programme offered three performances of his new “Floating Worlds” programme, double-billing his two ballets created in 1989 amd 2000 for The Tokyo Ballet, “Seven Haiku of the Moon” and “Seasons – The Colors of Time” respectively, followed by works  given during the course of the 2009/10 season: “Sylvia”, “Hommage aux Ballets Russes” (consisting of  Balanchine´s  “Prodigal Son”, his own “Le Pavillon d´Armide`and “Sacre du printemps” in the reconstructed Nijinsky version by Millicent Hodson),  succeded by his own staging of “Daphnis and Chloe” sharing a triple-bill with his “Afternoon of a Faune” and his “Le Sacre”,  his full-length “Orpheus”, “Illusions like “Swan Lake”, and “A Streetcar Named Desire”, plus two performances of The Tokyo Ballet with “Images of Asia by Béjart” (consisting of  “Bugaku” and “The Kabuki Suite”) and the final Gala with pieces from the Hamburg repertory plus exccerpts with guests from the Tokyo Ballet, the Berlin State ballet and the National Ballet of China. After which the Hamburg Ballet departed for performances in Italy at the Spoleto Festival and at Ravenna.

The accent was this year clearly on Japan and the influence of its traditional theatre forms on Western ballet, Differences between the Béjart and the Neumeier contributions could hardly have been more striking. The Béjart double-bill of 1986  (“The Kabuki”)  and 1989  (“Bugaku”) vintage, offered  wild erotic revue mixes of traditional and contemporary styles. forcefully projected from the athletically trained Tokyo dancers. “Bugaku” even used the same music by Toshiro Mayuzumi which he wrote for Balanchine´s likewise named ballet of 1963 with Allegra Kent and Edward Villella as protagonists, its formal ceremonies  with two to be married almost nude couples flanked by four American football quaterbacks in full  amour-clad outfits to suggest the clash between still historically oriented  and modern  Americanized cultures.  And the same happens in the fully told story of a feud  between  warring clans, in which one of its Princes gets beheaded, partly danced on point in what I am tempted to call refined traditional classical kimono style against the marching  booted cohorts of dishonoured samurai, of which all 47 finally commit Seppuku, i.e. collective suicide in an orgy of bloody machismo, staged by Béjart with all his customary male ferocity. While I have to admit the theatrical furor thus effected, I had the feeling that I was confronted with a production  in what might be termed Folies Nipponaise style. If the direction of The Tokyo Ballet, which still lists Béjart as Artistic Director Emeritus, ever considers “The Kabuki” to be filmed as a musical in 3D  dimension as “The 47 Samurai” they should look for a director in the manner of Busby Berkeley or Cecil B. de Mille – it could well inaugurate a Japanese equivalent of the Indian Bollywood epics (especially if its cast could be augmented by the adding of a couple of Sumo wrestlers).    

If the Béjart pieces are all stuffed with Japanese pop pageantry, Neumeier´s two new acquisitions for the Hamburg repertory are oriented by introspective purity and clarity rather than striving for theatrical  effects. In fact they stand strangely apart from his customary repertory of by now some 140 creations. He combines them under the common title “Floating  Worlds”, listing them as two Japan inspired ballets with choreography, set, costumes and lights by John Neumeier. It should be remembered, though, that one of his first creations, listed as number 4 in his catalogue of works, was created early in 1966 for the Stuttgart Noverre Society: “Haiku”, a beautiful molded pas de trois to Debussy music for three dancers, of which  Marianne Kruuse is still active, heading the Hamburg Ballet School as vice-director. Thus the “Seven Haiku of the Moon”, which opens the new programme, may be seen as the head of the bridge, which he has tried  to build not only as  an attempt of  approaching Eastern and Western cultures  - but also to bridge his beginnings with his serene maturity, arrived at during almost half a century of  artistic creativity.

The individual haikus, based on historical poetic texts, which are first declamated in Japanese language, while their German translation is projected in overtitles at the upper stage-frame, are danced to chamber music pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and Arvo Pärt, its combination of text and movement resulting in a sort of dialogue, without ever trying to literally illustrate the texts then to meditate on them  by reflecting, maybe, the thoughts of the dancers practising the traditional Japanese custom of ´moon viewing`. They are listed as The Moon - a man in a boat, gazing at the moon, crossing a river while seven couples dance contrasting remembrances of his past, with a corps of 14 dancers reflecting the play of the waves under the nightly firmament. Based on the extended neoclassical vocabulary, there  are hardly any direct quotations  from the traditional forms of the Japanese theatre, but they emerge as floating images, its groupings being inspired  by the in Japan very popular woodcuts,  suggesting the passing of time, incredibly beautiful to look at and performed at my June 23 performance by Kazuo Kimura plus  Yukari Saito and Naoki Takagishi as guests from the Tokyo Ballet together with their Hamburg colleagues (normally the three protagonists are the Hamburg principals Thiago Bordin, Joelle Boulogne and Alexandre Riabko). It´s all hauntingly poetic and lyrical, a gem of a ballet, crafted and polished by a contemporary choreographic descendent of St. Petersburg´s Fabergé – very strange and distant. With the music fitting its continuous flow of  graceful movements perfectly.

  The following “Seasons – the Colors of Time”  after the interval tells the story of a Man traveling through the seasons of his soul, Lloyd Riggins, Hamburg´s  number one character principal and dancing acteur émine, who performs him with all the wisdom of his maturity. It starts with the Prologue – Winter – Departure, when he, in modern outfit with a bowler hat, a bit looking like a tramp from a Charly Chaplin film, transgresses the stage diagonally in slow motion movements, He is joined by Himself in other Seasons – a trio of younger chaps, performed by Dario Franconi, Thomas Stuhrmann and Alexandr Trusch, and accompanied by The Time, a memento mori figure, strongly profiled by Carsten Jung, one of Hamburg´s principals, and The Memory, representing the various types of women he has encountered during the course of his life  - Anna Polikarpova, Hamburg´s quintessential actress of maternal graces, who doesn´t  betray her St. Petersburg  schooling. The music comes from Schubert´s great lieder cyclus “Winterreise”, but in the modern version of Hans Zender, to which it returns time and again, with further loans from Debussy, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Verdi and the Japanese Minoru Miki – but there are long moments of absolute stillness when the whole proceedings come to a standstill – and yet one has the feeling of a continuous flow of time. From there he surfs through Spring, Summer, has a great pas de deux in the Interlude with The Time, before Homecoming during Autumn, when he returns, with the Drummer leading him on his path to death in the arms of  Polikapova, who represents here now the Madonna dolorosa.  The dancers are clad in soft, billowing costumes, emerging from boxes which are distributed in various patterns all over the stage, while the subtly changing lights suggest the passing of different phases of life. Seasonal changings and the passing of time are more sketched than literally defined and a great rest spreads from the stage, filling the huge auditory – and our souls while we watch the  haunting scenes enfolding on the stage, performed by Hamburg´s exquisite dancers.

It is perhaps this wonderfully soothing great balmy rest, which one perceives as the quintessential Japanese quality of the ballet, its act of pouring our hearts and minds from all their daily worries and pains. Anyway we left the house after these “Floating Times” in a state of elated awareness of the beauty of life in spite of the troubles which are our daily experience. And how often can one state this after the visit of a theatre performance!”

Photos, all by Holger Badekow, from top:
Anna Polikarpova and Lloyd Riggins in John Neumeier's "The Colors of Time."
Alexandre Riabko, Joelle Boulogne, Thiago Bordin in John Neumeier's "Seven Haiku of the Moon."
Yuka Oishi, Lloyd Riggins and Ensemble in "The Colors of Time."
Alexandre Riabko, Joelle Boulogne, Thiago Bordin in John Neumeier's "Seven Haiku of the Moon."
Anna Polikarpova and Lloyd Riggins in John Neumeier's "The Colors of Time."