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la vie viennoise

After a slow spell in 2007 Choreolab is back with a vengeance, just short months ago we all trekked out to St Polten to see the Choreolab 2008 and we've just been to Baden and back twice this week. I'm dreaming of not having to lug all my camera gear to the ends of the earth again, but the stage in Baden is very good and well-suited to the scale of Choreolab. The town is also very pretty.

town of Baden

Jubilaums Stadttheater Baden

This year is the ten year anniversary of what has become a marvelous tradition in the Vienna State Opera Ballet. Choreolab for the uninitiated is an annual event at which dancers from the Staatsoper can put on their own choreography. Other dancers volunteer to fill the parts and the Balletclub of Vienna under the direction of Ingeborg Tichy-Luger organises the venue and marketing. It is difficult to say enough about the dedication and inspiriation of choreolab founder Tichy-Luger. Let no one underestimate the work and will involved in bringing such an event to life once, let alone to its ten year anniversery.

Ingeborg Tichy Luger

This year, choreolab featured nine choreographers. I suspect ten were planned and one got lost on the way. No matter. The nine young choreographers together put on a substantial evening, divided into two acts and lasting almost two hours with intermission. Some brought major works and some minor works, but all were under fifteen minutes.

Let's approach the works in order.

To Ella - Choreographer Samuel Columbo

Samuel Columbet to ella 2

The Ella in question is Ella Fitzgerald to whose music the choreography is composed. Here we see several couples flirt and love in elegant cocktail ambience. The dancers are dressed in extraordinarily simple and attractive costumes, like the dresses from an Alfred Hitchcock film. Blue with white buttons and belts.

Bernhard Blauel Iliana Chivarova

The feeling is casual and light. While one would be hard pressed to find much depth here, like Sunday brunch, To Ella charms and delights. The dancers enjoy the occasion to flaunt their good looks and some high kicks and everyone enjoys him and herself both on stage and in the audience.

To Ella could become a longer piece with a story between the couples. But it's just fine as it is.

Elena Li in to Ella

Samuel Columbo is French and has been in Vienna for five years.

...and then she looked up - Choreographer Marie-Claire D'Lyse

Rafaella Santanna

Mademoiselle D'Lyse must win the prize for the most exquisite name in Australia. She has the charm to match. This is her first creation for the stage since her arrival in Austria nine years ago.

Ketevan Papava Flavia Soares

d'Lyse's piece is almost too easy to watch - four beautiful girls seeking themselves in grey and blue bodysuits, under dramatic lighting and to the dulcet tones of Imogen Heap. Even a little bit precious until one reads the program notes, it's a dancer's own biography:

the story is about a girl who...is completely oblivious and blind to the political, religious and all global issues that are facing us today. Three wise ones represent the collective conscience of society telling her, almost begging her to lookup and realise what's going on in the world while she is dancing around and looking down all the time.

Fine, somewhat Lermontovian, even maudlin you say. Well I say, at least she's telling a real story which is important to her about the awakening of conscience. The story is told with simplicity and elegance.

Rafaella Santanna Ketevan Papava

Her casting is spectacular, with three Brazilian beauties, Rafaella Sant'anna, Taina Ferreira and Flavia Soares perfect in the role of the three graces of wisdom. Ketevan Papava sensitively handles the protagonist's spiritual growth in cool and measured dance.

Rafaella Santanna Ketevan Papava Flavia Soares Taina Ferreira

I'm very curious to see what Marie-Claire D'Lyse creates next. Will she be able to push her boundaries harder or will she remain lost in the beautiful? I could live with either result. Stay tuned for more news....

kuda - Choreographer Tin Kos

Tin Kos

"a lost type doesn't know is what direction he should go."

Well, Tin Kos is all of nineteen years old and clearly is wondering what he should do. Probably dance. Here he jumps around, does some break dance moves and runs away to the music of the saian supa crew. If any single item didn't belong in the program this was it. For all his charm and his ready smile, Tin Kos is just not ready to share the stage with the other choreographers. kuda is nothing more than a romp around the stage.

Tin Kos leaps

I'm no great fan of child prodigies, especially if they are not prodigies. I hope this is not a direction which will be developed at Choreolab (ballet school pupils as choreographers).

It looks like with dedication and work, Tin Kos will be a good enough dancer. In spite of his inexperience, he did not offend in a role in Samuel Colombo's To Ella.

Everlasting Pictures - Choreographer Dan Datcu

Rebecca Horner Kiyoko Hashimoto Kimoto Masayu
Alice Firenze Alexis Forabasco

At choreolab 08, the revelation was Romanian choreographer Dan Datcu who danced a striking duet with the powerful Rebecca Horner. This year, Dan Datcu took himself out of the production and added four other dancers to his reflective and moving work with Ms. Horner.

Kimoto Masayu Rebecca Horner Alexis Forabasco

The longer and more involved piece included even more ambitious lifts and between meandering couplings and triplings. His dancers seemed to put themselves into the work. Alice Firenze was fire and Rebecca Horner was ice, to whom the others gravitate and fall away.

Alice Firenze Alexis Forabasco flight

Alexis Forabasco struck a particularly strong note with his dramatic and craggy features.

arabesque Alexis Forabasco

The choice of music was powerful. Giovanni Solima's ambient melodic thoughts. The lighting was low and subtle as well, with muted tones to match the deep emotions.

Alexis Forabasco Kimoto Masayu Kimoto Masayu

Dan Datcu has a way with movement which goes beyond facile or pretty. He can directly communicate emotion through movement. He was the only one of the choreographers to work extensively with both air and ground.

Kiyoko Hashimoto Alexis Forabasco Kimoto Masayu Alice Firenze

"facing life and knowing what it is - loving it for what it is and giving it away at the end." Same tagline as last year, but this year filled out with some depth.

Dan Datcu everlasting pictures

drei unbekannte (three strangers) - Choreographer Valery Kaydanovsky

Alexis Forabasco 2

Very stylish. Black clad men with white face and dark clown makeup. In the end,Three Strangers seemed more an exercise in style than an attempt to solve a substantial problem. As I spend a lot of time lambasting the choreographers at Tanzquartier for trying to solve substantial problems without any style (or horrible style), perhaps I should Valery Kaydanovsky some slack here.

Richard Szabo Alexis Forabasco Valeriy Kaydanovskiy 3

Basically, Kaydanovsky's piece survives on the very strong stage presence of Alexis Forabasco here. Forabasco breathes as if born for the role as the mean stranger, holding the audience in his hand the entire time. We dread his next cruel gesture, wonder what he will do next. At some level Forabasco's charisma here is camped up. He should consider harnessing this power for more traditional roles as well.

Richard Szabo Alexis Forabasco Valeriy Kaydanovskiy mooning

This is Valery Kaydanovsky's first work as a choreographer. I am curious to see where his next work. Choreolab has a tradition of developing stylistic choreographers. Nicki Adler created many of his early works here.

Broken Wings - Choreographer Vesna Orlic

broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 2

Vesna Orlic's Broken Wings is a strange bird. Orlic reprises with Russian Ekaterina Davydova who was so good as the cool younger woman in Buenos Aires Hora Cero in Choreolab 06. Orlic pairs Volksoper dancer Davydova with Samuel Columbet, choreographer of the first piece tonight.

broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 6

Columbet is expected to wear a tutu here and is a strangely androgynous swan. A very difficult role for a man to carry off credibly - broken wings is deadly serious, no silly version of Swan Lake for men. But Columbet surprises with the power, consistency and focus of his dancing. He doesn't struggle with the Orlic's difficult lifts. Davydova is not much smaller than he is - the benefits of upper body training while you are in the corps-de-ballet hopefully will not be lost on the other men in Staatsoper. Be ready when your time comes.

broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 4

The piece is more difficult to evaluate. I saw it twice. The first evening it didn't seem to work, the second evening better. The biggest issue was the cold performance of Davydova. She just doesn't seem to give much emotionally on stage. There are parts where her icy princess persona is an asset this isn't one of them.

Orlic was trying to tackle big issues here:

In the beginning was Paradise. Clear water, green trees and the song of love birds. Then came the fifth and more dangerous rider of the Apocalypse and laid waste to civilisation. The birds wings were broken and love was banne from their thoughts.

A piece not lightly conceived nor lightly made. But what we saw on stage was not at the majesty of the conception.

broken wings Samuel Columbet Ekaterina Davydov 2

I had a chance to hear from the choreographer some of the story behind the piece. The all black background was not at all what she wanted. She was looking for a white floor and sky blue walls. This was supposed to be heaven and not dying swans. In a vote among the choreographers for a dark or light stage and floor, Orlic and Columbet, d'Lyse were voted down by the other choreographers.

Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet Vesna Orlic

In Baden, broken wings was deeply flawed - like a broken Dying Swan. With an emotionally resonant ballerina and with a lighter décor I could imagine the piece as very powerful.

Tea for Two - choreographer Florian Hurler

Josefine Tyler lies languid waiting for life to start

Florian Hurler's Tea for Two felts more than a little self-indulgent. A bored girl lies in her bedroom waiting for life to happen: the sugar sweet Josefine Tyler in white. An older woman dances sophisticated steps at the back: charismatic Gabriele Haslinger. Sweet Josephine spies Gabriele, they shadow dance a little and then sit down to enjoy a luscious (post-coital) cigarette.

Josefine Tyler Gabriele Haslinger discover

Josefine Tyler Gabriele Haslinger in love

I am trying to think of something more to say about Tea for Two. A poignant story of sexual awakening and friendship with an older person who opened the world to the young lover. Frankly the story would fly better on two men than on two women. Even then there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the story. Alas the staging was maudlin, the dancing facile, the cigarette smoking cliché and superfluous (if you need cigarettes for effect on stage you are on crutches before you start).

Gabriele Haslinger Josefine Tyler smoke together
The older woman has symbolically passed on the gift of tobacco
to her young friend: mentors like that we can live without

As a life-long antismoker, perhaps I am not the best person to judge Tea for Two. Unlike most of the work this evening, Tea for Two did not benefit from a second viewing.

Cut - choreographer Eno Peci

Eno Peci cut

Like Kaydanovsky's Three Strangers, Cut is exercise in style. Eno Peci is one of the stronger male dancers in Staatsoper and just hitting his prime. This year Staatoper ballet director Harangozo named Peci a lead dancer after his fine work in Roman Petit's Die Fledermaus.

Mihail Sosnovschi Eno Peci

Peci's Cut begins with eight spot lights turned on the audience half blinding us. The dancers dance among the spots, leaving us to detect silhouettes and poses but not to be able to clearly register the individual dancers. The photos you see here are clearer than what the naked eye saw.

kimoto masayu mihail sosnovschi kioyoka hashimoto

Peci gathered a strong group of dancers around himself. Mihail Sosnovschi and Kiyoka Hashimoto particularly shine here. At first is Cut all seems somewhat casual and improvised. But a second viewing revealed that for the most part Cut is tightly choreographed. The music is also a strange collage of Johann Sebastian Back and Thomas Newman.

Kiyoka Hashimoto Eno Peci 2

Unlike the preceding piece, Cut is professional work. Peci seems to be relying on the strength of his dancers - including himself - to communicate. He says the piece is "without words: abstract and modern". As a proof of concept it works.

Kimoto Masayu Kiyoka Hashimoto

Peci here shows his professionalism and showmanship. You could rely on him to choreography your music video or a piece of your opera. He'd find a way to make you and the dancers you choose look good. Whether the creative flame in him is strong enough for richly imagined productions remains to be seen. Cut is Peci's first work. As an étude, there is little to criticise.

Mihail Sosnovschi

Iguazu - choreographer Karina Sarkissova

Karina Sarkissova's Iguazu

Choreolab veteran Karina Sarkissova's piece iguazu was chosen to close the evening. If she doesn't hold the title yet, Ms. Sarkissova is certainly about to become the most prolific choreolab choreographer of all time. This is her fourth piece in three choreolabs. But art is more about quality and not quantity.

Karina Sarkissova walking on men

Sarkissova continues to commit the same transgressions over and over again:

• overpowering the dance with music
• grandiloquence without depth, i.e. empty showiness
• trafficking in cliché without remorse
• selling nudity with a curious American prurience and prudery

Let's take her sins one by one. Musical grandiloquence: times three with fragments from Gustavo Santaolalla, Gaetano Donizetti and Inva Mulla-Tchako. To that potent mix, she added her own voice over beginning with a religious prayer addresses to "Our father". It turns out that Sarkissova meant her own father but that I would think she meant god gives an idea of the grandeur she is reaching for. Only in the film Titanic have I seen music to match Sarkissova's tendency to overwhelm her art with the soundtrack.

Irina Tsymbal carried like princess

Lack of depth. Here we have a woman on stage with a guitar with four men to do her every bidding, dance for her, carry her around on their hands, worship her and put her back on top of her alter. This very silly fantasy of a world enslaved to one's self was all set to fall flat on its narcissistic face. Then Irina Tsymbal showed up in the lead role. Sarkissova is getting better at both casting and coaching her dancers. Irina Tsymbal single handedly rescued Iguazu with her intensity and her evident pleasure in her male slaves. Absolutely compelling on stage and drop dead beautiful in the role.

Denys Chervychko Marat Davletshin Irina Tysmbal

The cliché. Tagline for Iguazu:

no one can predict the next moment. you can turn from hopeless to ecstatic just in one second because of one glance, when someone's eyes are talking to you...

How Sarkissova manages to  live her entire life as an ecstatic fifteen year old girl is a miracle. It's dangerous living like that. It ends in broken hearts and broken lives. What exactly this tagline has to do with what we saw on stage in Baden remains a mystery to me. Apart than it sounds good. Calculated effect again, but it does not seem reflected in the art.

Irina Tsymbal hits her stride in Iguazu

Nudity. Sarkissova has the strangest relationship to the female body. Once again she has her dancer nude, but with a flesh bra on. On one hand Sarkissova is almost entirely aesthetically dependent on the music and near nudity. On the other hand, she is unwilling to actually revel in the human form and show us what she is selling.

Particularly offensive this time (for those who are comfortable with the human body and take joy in its forms and don't find anything prurient about it) is that there was no reason for false nudity. Sarkissova could very easily have made just as sexy a costume without the heavy handed flesh bra. She just needed to put a little red bikini top on Tsymbal and she was off to the races.

Irina Tsymbal Marat Davletshin

In conversation with Ms. Sarkissova she has told me pretending to show us the human body is her explicit wish and nothing else will satisfy her than fake nudity. This prurient puritanism is so American and provincial and so very, very out of place in the middle of old Europe.

Irina Tsymbal surrounded on her own two feet

Basically iguazu for better or worse - perhaps better, I like the film myself - is like outtakes from Conan the Barbarian (the original with Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones). I can imagine Sarkissova on a good day choreographing the witch scene with the amazing Cassandra Gava.

Karina Sarkissova iguazu men

You can take the girl out of Moscow but you can't take Las Vegas out of the girl.

 
Irina Tsymbal - Conan Triumphant
Bathing in applause, her slaves before her

A resplendent Karina Sarkissova
bathes in applause of her own

In the end Iguazu is an undermanned Las Vegas number. Ending on iguazu is not an accurate reflection of the overall character and strength of the evening. On the other hand, where else would one put Sarkissova's work?

In fairness, I see quite a bit of development in Karina Sarkissova's work here. Iguaza is well cast. Working with a larger group this time which at least gives Sarkissova's grandiloquent and melodramatic conceptions a fighting chance at credibility. There is great commercial demand for choreographers who can put together solid flashy shows which pack houses, whether in Las Vegas revues or Paris's Folies Bergère. Much more than for subtle and complex and innovative leading edge dance, whether contemporary or classical.

Conclusion

So for those keeping track, overall score Choreolab 09:

• one masterpiece in progress: everlasting pictures, Dan Datcu
• two fine if not mainstage works by returning choreographers: Samuel Columbet, Vesna Orlic
• three promising debuts: Marie-Claire d'Lyse, Valery Kaydanovsky, Eno Peci
• some juvenilia not worth mentioning
• one Vegas revue fragment: Karina Sarkissova

Six out of nine for laboratory work is a very good score. Overall, the varied lengths is much better than the flat ten minute cap we had in Choreolab 2008. I still miss the one or two masterwork style pieces at twenty or twenty five minutes of the early choreolabs. This could work well with some five minute miniatures from debutants.

Choreolab is a fabulous initiative.* Something similar be part of every major classical company around the world. Some are already doing it, but those who aren't should. A very happy tenth anniversary and I for one look forward to another ten years of Choreolab.

* On an organisational note, I would also like to praise Ingeborg Tichy-Luger's choice in wine for her dance events. It's always the same and always very good. Longer parties with less food and better wine is a potent combination for joie de vivre. Life is so short - and it's nice to see someone getting the small touches right.

All photographs copyright Alec Kinnear. The stage crew are to be highly praised for the speed of the transitions between pieces. The lighting crew should be damned for making the whites far too hot all night.

More photos can be seen and prints can be purchased online in the full Choreolab 09 gallery.

On Monday, I thought I was dropping in on a young composers concert at Porgy and Bess. Something about the Konservatorium Wien. To my surprise, there turned out to be as much dance and performance as music.

MIR geht es gut - Petra Straussová

The best dance piece which I saw was called MIR geht es gut. It's about two girlfriends who meet repeatedly in the underground or at a joga class or via a quick handy call. If you've lived in Vienna any period of time, you are familiar with the persistenty shallow "Mir geht's gut und dir?" At first you think they really want to know. But not at all. It's equivalent of the empty North American. "How are you?" for which there is only one acceptable answer. "I'm great and how are you?"

MIR geht es gut - Petra Straussová

It's an absurd situation. Why do people speak at all if they have nothing to say. Both Petra Staussová and Simone Kühle managed to catch the inflection and frantic feel-good vibe of the modern urban woman perfectly.

MIR geht es gut at the Fidelio-Wettbewerb Konservatorium Wien Continues »

In what seems to be an endless tour at Wiener Staatsoper of masterworks from great choreographers of the 1970's, the latest premiere brings us Die Fledermaus, a.k.a. La Chauve-souris from maestro Roland Petit.

Roland Petit brings his Chauvre Souris to Staatsoper:
85 years old and hard at work and happy
Early retirement is heavily overrated

La Chauve-souris is a particularly amusing example of how cultural cross-pollination can go full circle.

Mr. Petit's inspiration for La Chauve-souris was an operetta by Johann Straus (Jr.), the famous waltz king. Die Fledermaus is part of Austrian folklore, televised every year at New Year's on the national television station. Mr. Petit transposed Die Fledermaus's scenes at the ball to Paris's own Maxim's. This production is the first visit of the ballet version of Die Fledermaus to Vienna.

At the heart, the story remains the same. A man with a beautiful wife has grown too accustomed to her, as men do, even bored. Johann's wife Bella solicits her husband's attention to no avail. He prefers even the newspaper to her company. In evening however Johann has other plans. He likes to slip out to Maxim's to dance, flirt and even seduce.

Kirill Kourlaev Olga Esenina

While Johann is ignoring her, Bella - as attractive women, married or not, always do - has an admirer. In this case, the admirer is their children's tutor Ulrich.

Rafaella Sant Anna Olga Esina

When Johann has disappeared to Maxim's, Bella calls Ulrich to the house. Ulrich sees his chance and goes in for the kill, hoping to seduce Bella the same evening. But for the moment, Bella cannot bring herself to betray her husband. Ulrich has a backup plan - to disguise Bella and take her out to Maxim's where she can see Johann's womanizing for herself.

Eno Peci Olga Esina Chauvre Souris

Eno Peci Olga Esina fledermaus

Eno Peci Olga Esina faints

Eno Peci Olga Esina

Olga Esina Odile

Ulrich's hidden agenda is that when Bella has seen Johann's infidelity, she will be easy prey for Ulrich himself.

Roland Petit's Die Fledermaus (La Chauve-Souris) at Vienna Staatsoper Continues »

The Vienna State Opera ballet has a new Artistic Director.

He is a familiar name to connaisseurs of European ballet, Manuel Legris. Manuel Legris has been one of the top men at the Paris Opéra since the 1980's.

Manuel Legris at the Opéra de Paris by Shinoyama
The Paris Opéra is sending us on of her best

He has danced everything from all the classics, through George Balanchine, John Cranko (Onegin), Sir Kenneth MacMillan (Manon's Story), Twyla Tharp, John Neumeier (La Dame aux Camélias), William Forsythe Juri Kylian (Il ne faut q'une porte), Trisha Brown (O zlozony / O composite: Legris came to Vienna's ImPulsTanz with this), Angelin Preljocaj (Le Parc) even to Vienna Statsoper's own Renato Zanella (Angel, Alles Waltz).

I cite all these choreographers names - most of them worked with Manuel Legris at the Paris Opéra - as this amazing cross-section of dance makers is exactly what Monsieur Legris brings to the Staatsoper: a first hand familiarity with the best choreographers of the last forty years.

As a classically trained dancer in a classical company, Monsieur Legris knows how to integrate contemporary choreography into the heart of a classical company. The Paris Opéra should be the model for all classical companies today: a vibrant classical repertoire combined with the very pinnacle of contemporary choreographry.

Meet Manuel Legris - Vienna Staatsoper's new ballet director Continues »

A splendid mixture of music, choreography and light.

Salvatore La Ferla Kenia Bernal Gonzalez Tiffany Watson

The piece opens in near darkness. The steps develop slowly. Strange metal shades adorn the dancers' heads.

Individual bulbs hang down from overhead. The dancers push these pools of light and then dance solos underneath.

Salvatore La Ferla Tiffany Watson Kenia Bernal Gonzalez

For the rest of the piece, the dancers form and reform in pairs and groups and solos under these lamps. Occasionally, some of the dancers actually sing with Lars Stigler's splendid to score - they sing in an incomprehensible language (certainly not English or German).

Salvatore La Ferla Kenia Bernal Gonzalez

I didn't quite understand the how or the why of when they broke into song but they sang well. The program notes mention something about Dadaistic - singing in tongues and Dadaism go together.

Leonie Wahl Salvatore La Ferla

Each of the dancers has quite different technique and attributes, but all are excellent. Each dancer is beautiful in his or her own way, whether the long limbed speed of Leonie Wahl or the concentrated intensity of Kenia Bernal Gonzalez or the cool grace of Tiffany Watson or the incredibly flexibility of Salvatore La Ferla.

dancer Salvatore La Ferla

Gervasi's success in Seikes is again making the quotidien magic. Gervasi takes one ordinary object and makes it extraordinary. This allows us to see the wonderful in daily life. As daily life is the only life we have besides fantasy life - whatever will allow us to see the magic is welcome. It is something like the eye of a child. Remember how incredible a microscope or a crystal ball could be? Elio Gervasi does and he lets us see it.

Tanz Company Gervasi: Seikes Continues »

I've just shot quite a brilliant show - Nikolaus Adler's Oedipus is Complex. I got some good shots but I missed a lot of the most powerful sections while shooting. Was I not paying attention? No, I was paying very close attention and watching my shots go by while withholding fire.

Boris Nebyla lets loose in Nikolaus Adler's Oedipus is complex
Shot with Canon 20D and Canon 50mm 1.4 1/160 sec f2.2 ISO800

What happened then?

Shutter noise. Oedipus is Complex was a live event and my friend Jörg was shooting a film version. So what we agreed with producer Nicolaus Selimov was:

• no shooting in quiet spots
• no rapid fire bursts (not something I'm inclined to do anyway - I pick my moments)
• minimal number of photos except in very high volume sections

And following this prescription:

• the performance was not disrupted by my shooting
• the photographs are quite good

But I did miss a lot of the strongest emotional moments with the performer alone on stage. And some of the sections which I do have could be even better (but I had a choice of three images instead of ten).

So both inspired and frustrated by this evening I went camera browsing for the first time in a couple of years (I've been very happy with my 20D, particularly since I put the Canon 50 MM F1.4 on it). I started by making a checklist for the perfect camera for dance photography:

Here are the camera requirements for dance (or classical concert) photography in order of priority:

Seven Features of the Perfect Camera for Dance Photography Continues »

Oedipus is Complex begins like Blade Runner with a dramatic voiceover - full of darkness and light.

From a crashed and cutup Volvo on the right hand side of the stage runs a red carpet across the full stage. Three austere single beds each under a single flourescent long hospital bulb. The bare brick walls of the Odeon distant in the dim light. A ruin of time.

A rich and jaded male voice intones a monologue scattered full of such phrases:

"I am a rat"
"The filth of the city"

In the distance, the sound of black rain.

Homunculus Theater 2008 Oedipus is Complex: opening dance

A beautiful young woman in a white blouse and black skirt drifts on and stares at the audience. A sixties Rolling Stones type song - think Paint it Black - starts to play and the woman begins to fling herself to the rhythms. She is gradually joined by another six dancers all convulsing with equal force.

At the end a blond man (Karl Schreiner) with the dangerous looks of Billy Idol at his prime remains alone with the young woman. The narrator tells the story of their love, as Laius bends Jocasta over the bed to take her crassly from behind. An ironic contrast to the narrator's beautiful final phrase "the earth moved" - a moment full of truth concerning the origin of children and the nature of love.

Oedipus is born from between Hein's legs as she sits on the right front bed with Schreiner. Plop, Kun-Chen Shih flops to the ground. A prophetic voice intones about how he will kill his father.

Kun Chen Shih born as Oedipus with mother Anna Hein

Two of the dancers (Karin Steinbrugger and Amadeus Berauer who alternate between dancing and observing, like a miniature Greek chorus) take the young Oedipus away and raise him.

When Oedipus returns, quickly enough a mass fight between the full cast starts to a soundtrack of soaring 80's pop. The fight ends in a head butt from Kun-Chen Shih to Schreiner, with Schreiner sprawled dead at the front of the stage.

Homunculus golden girls Martina Haager,
Anna Hein and Karin Steinbrugger mourn the fallen Laius

Oedipus is Complex - Nikolaus Adler Continues »

Man or beast. Where is the boundary between us? This is a theme that Damien Jalet often explores on the boundary of his larger pieces with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

On stage Damien Jalet live on the boundary between man and beast. His contortions on stage have a sinister aspect. He rolls and crawls, often ending in a fierce growl.

Tonight he took this theme and devoted the evening to transmutation between animal and human.

Damien-Jalet-Three-Spells

The opening piece began with two mythical creatures with grasping mouths doing some strange dance of love and combat, kissing and biting one another. The movement was front lit throwing up macabre shadows on the wall behind.

Eventually one of the white furry animals perished and the remaining animal attacked a supine young woman, who gradually struggled back against the beast and stood up. She was wearing a black veil and jewellery. Her translucent black silk top revealed a gorgeously proportioned body.

Three Spells - an enchantment by Damien Jalet (TQW Vienna) Continues »

Jörg Haider was the first person I met in Austria outside of my girlfriend's family.

Anna was dancing at the opening of the Carinthian Summer Musical Festival in July 2003. I had been in Austria for about two days before the festival. We'd had time to go swimming once and then it was off to the lake and Anna's performance there.

We were both thinking about the dance - the choreography was in order, but we were still concerned about her costume and Anna's hair. Anna had to get her head shaved for the asylum scenes in Lapinthrope just a week before. Wigs, scarves, hats were all proposed to make hide her shaved head. In the end the bare head prevailed (it's a lot easier to dance modern without something precarious glued to your head). With a woman as beautiful as Anna that summer and a dancer as talented as Anna, the audience is unlikely to pay too much attention to the length of her hair. And so it was.

The dance went very well.

On the way there, I heard Haider would be there, in his role of Landeshauptmann to open the festival.

Of course, I'd heard of Jörg Haider before. Even in Canada we got news of the Austrian politician who was supposed to be a new Hitler, threatening the rise of a fourth Reich.

Based on what I'd read in the press, I expected to find a brute - either foaming at the mouth and shrieking like Hitler or a portly sadist like Goering.

Instead, an elegantly attired fortyish and athletic man in an immaculately tailored Italian suit rose and spoke for over half an hour. If Haider had notes, he didn't need or use them much. It was the first time I'd heard a long speech in German, outside of the vituperative extracts from Hitler's rallies.

jorg haider speaks

Haider's voice was resonant and clear, the structure of his sentences as well tailored as his suit. Little acquainted with the German language at that time, I was only able to follow the phonetic balance of Haider's rhetoric.

The audience was as rapt as I'd ever seen at the speech of a politician. From Haider's end there appeared to be little grandstanding - none of the whipping up of the crowd that so cheapens many politician's public speaking. Just an engaging speech.

Like most young Carinthian women living in Vienna, Anna had an obligatory loathing of Haider. Later I learned why from Astrid. If you didn't profess anti-Haider sentiment, you would instantly be blackballed back in Vienna. You would be ghettoized as an undesirable Carinthian.

Margaret Wallman had a strange and wonderful life. Where others would have seen curses, she found blessings. In 1938 where she was the very popular ballet director, the Direction of the Vienna Staatsoper summarily dismissed Wallman on the grounds of her Jewish origins.

Wallman hardly missed a beat. She emigrated to America but ended up in South America running her own dance company for some of the happiest days of her life. When Europe had stabilised after the war, Wallman returned in 1948 to Milan. Her prolific career as an opera director took Wallman regularly to Salzburg and Vienna.

Between times she found time to choreograph Greta Garbo's dance scenes in Anna Karenina.

For the Berührungen festival, choreographer Renato Zanella, another former Staatsoper ballet director, decided to tackle Wallman's not uncomplicated life story. Zanella's path through Wallman's life is impressionistic, sketching out what Zanella believes are the key moments of her spiritual and creative path.

Margarete Wallmann in her days as a dancer

Wallfrau - a new work from Renato Zanella Continues »