One of the more wonderful dance performances I saw this year was in the open air in MuseumsQuartier on 4 May. After what has been a truly terrible season at TanzQuartierWien with close to nothing except conceptual choreography or over the hill performers, I was close to giving up on the season. It appeared the dance highlight of the year in 2005-2006 in Vienna was destined to be a restaging of John Cranko’s Eugene Onegin.
Happily the Tanz Company Gervasi pulled a rabbit out of the hat in May, using the entire inner courtyard of MuseumsQuartier in a stunning use of space and projection.
The piece began with a woman dancing alone in front of the Leopoldsmuseum, high above the courtyard. That was soon supplemented by a huge projection of Sabile on the wall of the Leopoldsmuseum.
Sabile Rasiti projected on Leopold Museum wall
Fifteen minutes later a whole troop of dancers rushed the middle of the MuseumsQuartier and layed out a whole dance floor made of cardboard paper. On that improvised surface, the Gervasi dancers made mad battles and duets and solos.
Preparing to rollout temporary dance floor
I had my camera with me and managed to catch a fair amount of the action. The lens was not too fast so many of the pictures are darker than I’d like and darker than it seemed to the naked eye but a fair amount of the excitement of the event is caught in these images.
