Story ballet

While a modern work, Manon is at least as fusty as Giselle or Sleeping Beauty, all costumes, decorations and melodramatic music. Since Manon is no transcendental work of genius, its prurience makes it even more part of another epoch. Manon‘s closest relative in the pantheon of story ballets is probably the amoral and vapid The Corsair.

The message of the first half of Manon seems that crime is lots of fun and pays off in riches and love. Then in the second half, the message becomes “until it doesn’t” and everyone associated with even theft is murdered, exiled and raped. Finally even Manon dies of consumption in the swamps of Louisiana.

Early critics of Manon loathed the story. In the Guardian, Mary Clarke wrote “Basically, Manon is a slut and Des Grieux is a fool and they move in the most unsavoury company.” The Morning Star critic Jane King was even more categoric in her condemnation: “An appalling waste of lovely Antoinette Sibley, who is reduced to a nasty little diamond digger.”

Why Manon

Sin and spectacle sell though and Manon has been popular where it has played. The elaborate 18th century ancien regime French costumes and décor, along with the prurient story lead to a lively evening. SND designers and costumers did excellent work in recreating the story ballet costumes. Manon looked very good, if old school. There is not much innovation here.

SND director Nina Poláková built her own career at Vienna Staatsoper on excellent performances in the great costumed story ballets like La Bayadère, Giselle, Le Corsaire, La Sylphide, Swan Lake, Nutcracker, Manon, Mayerling, Onegin, The Pavilion of Armida, Raymonda, Romeo and Juliet and Sleeping Beauty. Poklakova’s choice of Manon as a new work for the SND makes a great deal of sense.

The company is mostly smaller dancers, with few great stars. Leaning on pomp and decorations, with less demanding dancing is the right artistic strategy for the major works and to bring in a wide public. The best SND performances are usually sparked by a single great dramatic performance, who pushes the other dancers to reveal themselves in the emotion of the show, drawing in the audience more from emotion than technique. Manon’s dark fate seems to promise such an opportunity.

Manon Music

Massenet’s music in the orchestration of Martin Yates is surprisingly deep. While Jules Massenet did write an operetta Manon, the ballet score is taken from Massenet’s weightier orchestral scores. Adam Sedlický did splendid work at the conductor’s podium with strong support from a charismatic lead violinist.

Well-played, as it was in Bratislava, on the night we saw Manon, the score is one of the highlights. I’d like to listen to the score at home or work.¹ Without extraordinary dance, astonishing decorations or an uplifting story on which to lean, Manon mostly leans on the performances of its dancers.

Performances

Konstantin Korotkov as Des Grieux came across as a bit old and tired to be Manon’s impulsive and infatuated student lover. While always he cuts a handsome figure, Korotkov’s astringent Des Grieux didn’t make much sense to me. Home grown Evy Jaczove Choreographic School graduate, Mergim Veselaj played GM effectively. In his aristocratic finery Veselaj was a persuasive aristrocratic, drawing attention to himself whenever on stage, drinking in the attention to his person as a celebrity or spoiled noble would do. While SND stalwart Andrej Szabo as the New Orleans Prison Governor dripped cruelty, Szabo’s actions lacked the necessary lasciviousness to truly chill the audience’s blood.

Artemyj Pyzhov as Manon’s brother Lescaut was the performer who brought the most convincing energy and conviction to his performance. His ill-conceived plans to lure his sister out of the convent and to betray his master GM at cards sincerely flashed the symptoms of a misguided chancer.

And Manon, the centre of the story and star of her eponymous show? Sadly, after twenty years as a dancer, the lovely Tatyjana Melnyik has become exceptionally thin and austere. This is not unusual among ballerinas, the strict eating regime and endless training slowly takes its toll. While there was nothing wrong with Melnyik’s dancing per se, she lacked the youthful sexual ebullience and nonchalance of a budding femme fatale.

One felt Manon had already done her twenty years in prison. Melnyik’s emaciated Manon at this point in her life would do whatever necessary to avoid deportation and enjoy a seat at a warm, well-laden table. She’d be old enough to be more careful in terms of risk. Her Phrygia in Spartacus is a better role for Melnyik today.

It’s not just a case of visible age, which we observed seated close to the stage. Age is also in movement. Young people move differently, with a livelier bounce in their step. Without a sex kitten Manon, in my opinion, the whole work falls apart. The motivation of the men, all falling over each other for a night’s attention from Manon, makes no sense.

Conclusion

We sat back and enjoyed the live orchestra and the costumes. Manon at SND is a pleasant musical evening, though on the evening we saw it much less piquant than it could be.

Preferred Casts: Tatyjana Melnyik performed as a guest artist from the Hungarian National Ballet. Based on past performance, I’d aim for one of Romina Kolodziej‘s performances. Tatum Shoptaugh is the other Manon. The key role is Manon so choose your performance based on your preferred Manon.

Since French étoile Manuel Legris took over the reins at Staatsoper, he’s insisted on rebranding Choreolab as the rather dull “Junge Choreographen des Wiener Staatsballets”. Vienna ballet lovers remain grateful for his enthusiastic support under its new moniker.

Ingeborg Tichy-Luger founder of choreo.lab and Vienna Ballet Club

This year choreo.lab enjoyed a particularly full program at its new venue Theater Akzent on 7 and 8 May. In two parts, the evening began at 7pm and ended about 10pm, granted that the pause was a full half hour for resetting the stage for live music (more on that later). There were a total of thirteen original works presented.

If one considers the Stravinsky Hommage at Volksoper last week an extension of Choreo.lab (Eno Peci, András Lukács and Andrei Kaydanovsky are all veterans of Choreo.lab), there are sixteen original works presented this year by Staatsoper dancers.

As every year, there are a few outstanding works in 2017. Yet with this much production, the quality is inevitably uneven. Even in the lesser works, one feels a sincerity. Perhaps there should be a last editorial pass where the only the best finished choreographies are presented to the full audience. Of course there would be a risk of politics and many broken hearts, so less damage is probably done by forcing a rapt audience to sit through a few too many short dance pieces.

Without further ado, let us revisit the choreographies in order.

Trevor Hayden’s pas de sang is a dance take on the original dracula story to dramatic music from Bela Bartok and Sergei Prokofiev. Alas, brilliant casting of a gaunt and frightening Alexis Forabasco as the Vampire and Eszter Ledan as his victim. Ionna Avraam is uncharacteristically dull as a physical manifestation of blood or the vampire’s bloodlust. There are some nice lifts but there isn’t much continuity to the dance. Many of the sections feel rushed or unfinished.

I’ve been keen on vampire stories, since I first read Bram Stoker’s Dracula in high school and it’s perfect for representation in dance (passion and death) but Hayden misses the mark here.

Hungarian dancer and third time Choreo.lab veteran, Attila Bakó leaves mysticism behind for technology in shadows we cast. His large group of dancers are strapped to pulse monitoring devices which project the beats per minute of their pulse live on the back of the stage as a waveform. The technical visuals could have been presented with more panache but that’s really a question of time and budget. Much thanks to Vienna’s Technical University and Uni Wien for participating in a dance project in their free time.

On the dance side, shadows we cast is much brighter. There are some excellent duets (Mila Schmidt and Greig Matthews comes to mind) and the excellent group movement is truly elegaic. The whole piece makes me think of Rosas and Anna Teresa de Keersmaekers’s best work which is high praise indeed. Géraud Wielick’s long hair is perfectly in place here (unlike in Movements to Stravinsky) and he dances well. Elena Bottaro, Sveva Gargiolo and Zsolt Török round out a committed cast.

Étoile Nina Poláková presents her visually austere daneben (nearby) to an emotional Yann Tiersen score. Jakov Feyferlik and Gala Jovanovic are dressed in what look like early twentieth century costumes – he’s wearing suspenders and she in a long dress – and seated on two chairs. They struggle to understand one another. While Jovanovic is a commanding dancer, she overmatches the slight Feyferlik. Where their duet should be sensitive and soft, he’s clearly struggling to carry and lift a dancer who is almost the same size as she is. This piece would have worked better with a light, ethereal and fragile dancer like Poláková herself.

daneben is Poláková’s first public choreography so it would be server to judge the work too harshly.

Francesco Costa’s anima et corpo is intrinsically a crowd pleaser with lots more white sheets (pas de sang) and a bedroom atmosphere. The women (and men) enjoy the young Jude Law like beauty of James Stephens while Nina Tonoli’s exuberant youthful beauty and talent delight the men. Natalya Butcho and Francesco Costa do fine work, albeit outshone by a radiant Tonoli and Stephens.

As for the movement, there’s thrashing in sheets on the floor, Arab music, some close duets. I didn’t take away anything deeper than a tasteful lascivity and physical beauty from Costa’s dance poem but that’s sometimes enough.

Another Hungarian dancer, László Benedek makes his choreographic debut with realité. This is the first but not the last piece to a gag or joke made three dimensional with dance. realité talks about the promises a man makes to seduce a new woman in contrast with the reality of his indifference to the woman in his life. This is a well-known plight across cultures and across centuries. Once Alexander Kaden in the lead role controls an interchangeable (done with identical wigs) Marie-Sarah Drugowitsch or Suzanne Kertész, he becomes brutal and indifferent. The dance sequence at the end with projected video from a sex doll factory as Kaden dances with both ladies is laugh out loud funny.

I suppose the moral of the story is roughly Perrault’s from Little Red Riding Hood:

All wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

Don’t expect too much from men or love! Cunningly made and performed with charm, realité was a success with both the audience and on its own light artistic terms.

Young Portugese dancer Leonardo Basílio debuts as a choreographer with another beauty piece, appropriately titled Skin set to sensual electronica from René Aubry. We have sexy dancing and sexy costumes worn by Nina Tonoli and James Stephens again, with an equally beautiful Alaia Rogers-Maman and the powerfully built Masayu Kimoto rivalling them for charm. The women again are almost interchangeable in dark bob length wigs. The men wear nothing but sparkling briefs.

The dance is largely about symmetry with the two couples mirroring each other’s movements. Some original lifts and dramatic focused lighting bring an originality to a largely sensory piece. While the pleasure was skin-deep, it was complete. I’m curious to see where Basílio goes with his next works.

Swedish soloist Nikisha Fogo’s dramatically titled Movements of the Soul offered more visual irony in the vein of realité. We see blonde Sveva Garguilo against a blood red projected backdrop which turns purple and blue. The piece ends up as a study in colours. Unusual electronic music the barbatuques and Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein add to the surreal feel. The dance follows a young woman’s feeling about life. While Movements of the Soul failed to touch me, Fogo enjoyed an enthusiastic reception from the audience. Or perhaps many were looking forward to the long-awaited pause.

Brazilian Volksoper dancer Tainá Ferreira Luiz’s Thoughts & Feelings was the most ambitious work of the evening. With musician Sebastian Brugner, Ferreira Luiza created an original musical and dance work, with a full jazz orchestra with six musicians on stage (Brugner on vibraphon, brother Simon on drums, brother Franz on piano, Vienna star trumpetist Lorenz Raab, Roman Bisanz on viola and Luiz Gustavo d’Ippolito on contrabass).

The story follows two waiters in a tango bar both in love with a colleague and what happens when one of them falls in love with a client. There’s both an entrance to the nightclub where the waiters smoke outside and a colourfully lit interior set with tables. The two romances and mixed up feelings go back and forth, with the waiters hiding each other’s actions from the other woman. There’s always uncertainty about who really loves whom. Behind the comedy of manners Ferreira Luiz works to communicate a more serious point about class structure and social mobility. Whichever waiter stays in the club with the waitress will face a life of hard work and toil, unlike the wealthy and spoiled clients. The same band plays on and on as the ordinary struggle to survive and the wealthy play there way through life.

Felipe Viera and Andrés Garcia-Torres play off of one another perfectly and manage to communicate the slippery qualities of Latin waiter/lovers to perfection. Irene Garcia-Torres is beautiful as the waitress colleague while Natalia Salazar plays up her role of wealthy client to perfection.

There are a lot of acrobatic lifts and funny faces in what is a thoroughly delightful divertissement with heart. It’s inspiring to see this kind of ambition to get music, choreography, decorations and costumes right. If Ferreira Luiz maintains this level of intensity of preparation in her stage work, at the very least she’ll be in demand to stage the dances within opera and operetta. Time will tell if Ferreira Luiz has the talent and sustained inspiration to make it as an original choreographer in her own right. As a first work Thoughts & Feelings is a great start.

French Volksoper dancer Samuel Colombet is a choreo.lab veteran since 2008 with four original creations. Colombet has worked as an assistant ballet master in the Volksoper for the last couple of seasons. His choreographic work usually includes sophisticated costumes and high emotions. In Verrat (Betrayal), Colombet misses the mark. The costumes are ugly, partly cheap satin and partly sleazy sequins. The backdrop was just projected light without much atmosphere. The overblown Tchaikovsky score drowns us in unearned emotions. While Iliana Chivarova and Trevor Hayden valiantly try to communicate huge emotions neither the choreography or the atmosphere justify the music and emotions.

On a technical level, Hayden seemed to struggle with his partnering at times, suggesting a lack of adequate rehearsal time and sometime strength. Colombet himself is a wide chested man with a rippled muscular physique and probably over-estimated Hayden’s strength. It also seemed that the stage at Theater Akzent was quite simply too small for the dance which Colombet imagined as Hayden and Chivarova always seemed to be cutting short their movements. Colombet’s past choreo.lab works were a cut above Verrat.

Veteran Slovak dancer Martin Winter is presenting his second work at choreo.lab after the excellent don’t know in 2012. A tall and handsome dancer, Winter has been with the Vienna Staatsoper since 2007 and used to dance on the main stage until volunteering to move over to Volksoper due to some nagging injuries. Excellent dancing skills, along with height and good looks make him a great asset.

Outside In is a profound work set to a filmic score from George Crumb and Michal Hruza. A blistering performance from Mila Schmidt as Winter’s lover sets the pace. Tainá Ferreira Luiz dressed in a long black dress is a passionate dark döppelganger for Winter’s character in a simple charcoal suit who seems to be reluctantly abandoning his lover for Ferreira Luiz.

What’s special about Winter’s work is his ability to reinvent movement. He injects classical dance movement with a completely casual and fluid language of feeling. One symptom is a more complex hand movement than one would ever see in ballet. But Winter’s language of movement goes beyond simple explanation. It’s feeling made into movement.

In Outside In, Schmidt’s lover is suffering from jealousy, abandonment. It’s not clear if Ferreira Luiz is a rival or her own lesbian lover. What is clear that Schmidt is deeply in love with Winter’s dark suited man and something is separating them. Winter’s own ambiguous feelings about the relationship and himself perplex and intrigue. There’s a deep existential crisis taking place inside of him, for which Schmidt bears the costs.

In the end, Schmidt’s character is left with Ferreira Luiz when Winter leaves her.

After the performance I was able to speak to the choreographer and ask him about the structure of the ménage à trois. It turns out that Winter and Ferreira Luiz are one person. Winter based his thirteen minute work on the lives of close friends. Winter’s character suffers a sexual identity crisis and decided to physically change genders but wishes to stay with Schmidt’s character after becoming a woman. Schmidt’s crisis is losing the man she loves deeply yet having the possibility of becoming his/her lesbian partner after Winter’s sex change.

The fascinating backstory is less important than the authenticity and depth of feeling Winter managed to invest in Outside In and the performances he coaxed out of his female partners. Outside In is the most moving dance work I’ve seen in the last two years.

If Outside In is ever re-staged or you have the opportunity to see any of Martin Winter’s work, do not miss the occasion. It turns out Mila Schmidt is a rising star in Volksoper and will be honoured the Vienna Ballet Club’s Founder’s Prize next month. If Outside In is any indication, look out for Schmidt’s performances in roles which benefit from dramatic presence and intensity.

Handsome young Spanish Volksoper dancer Andrés Garcia-Torres first choreography an die ferne Geliebte (To a distant love) was a very traditional affair. The choreographer himself is in the lead role in an 18th century gentleman’s ruffled shirt at a desk, writing with a quill while a candle burns. Dramatic Beethoven music accompanies his writing. He sees a vision of his distant love, the very beautiful Irene Garcia-Torres in a long flowing dress (his wife, I will presume). She comes to him and the pair dance a beautiful pas-de-deux. The whole episode seems more like something made for Louis XVI rather than a modern audience but the piece is well made. Its modern antecedent would be Roland Petit’s dramatic and dark Jeune Homme et le Mort (A Young Man and Death) set to J.S. Bach). An die ferne Geliebte is far more upbeat of course and the charisma of the two dancers takes us a long way.

I’d be more interested in seeing Andrés Garcia-Torres dancing some princely roles (his looks and lines seem a bit wasted at Volksoper) than more of his choreography for now.

Austrian native-born rising star Jakob Feyferlik whom we’ve already seen dance a couple of times tonight also made his choreographic debut with the last piece of the evening. Desire is another crowd pleaser with ballet silhoettes, gorgeous curvy dancers, handsome men and lots of show-off style dancing. Ethereal music comes from the works of post-minimalist contemporary British composer Max Richter. A bevy of beauties Nikisha Fogo, Natascha Mair, Nina Tonoli make up the women. Francesco Costa, Greig Matthews and James Stephens are all look heroic and partner the ladies through high lifts and spectacular throws effortlessly.

There doesn’t seem to be any deeper message to desire than to the emotion of joy and delight at being young and beautiful. The choreography hints men’s desire is stronger than female desire as it’s always the men pushing the women further. No opinion ventured on that subject here, this is just a report. Desire is a feel-good and well-danced positive envoi for the evening.

The Spanish Embassy provided a glamorous reception to conclude another excellent choreo.lab. This year’s cuvée did lack some of the excitement and ambition of past seasons (live automobiles driven on stage, casts of twenty, both courtesy of Patricia Sollak) or a scent of scandal (Karina Sarkissova’s Moulin Rougesque erotic works). Some of the pieces seemed a bit underrehearsed (though less so than at Hommage to Stravinsky) due to the very non-stop workload of another busy Manuel Legris season (no complaints, dancers live to dance, better a few too many performances than too few). What interests me is to see how Winter, Ferreira Luiz, Bakó and others develop as choreographers.

1. They steal content from more reputable writers and re-post it as “click bait” 2. Judging by the brief and easily agreeable copy it’s easy to tell that the newer writers barely understand what they’re writing about nor do the writers even watch some of the tutorials/case studies they post anymore. 3. Ryan Koo, Robert Hardy and Joe Marine don’t write enough. And when they do it’s half-assed. They are this blog, and they are dropping the ball. 4. Quality over quantity has been lost and the reputation of the blog is suffering as a result. The basic idea of “think before you speak” could really benefit some of the writers here.

Gordon Robert’s critique is pretty much right on.

Frin Opus Jazz: Dance Filmed Right: Exciting, Dynamic

In this context of deteriorating standards, Lauretta Prevost recently put together an off the cuff clickbait article about dance film, based on the work and opinions of a certain Angelo Silvio Vasta.

[fvplayer src=”https://vimeo.com/198305446″ splash=”https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/611254249_1280x720.jpg?r=pad” caption=”showreel 2016″]

Angelo Silvio Vasta dance showreel 2016

Based on his uninspired and dull showreel, I wouldn’t take any of Angelo Silvia Vasta’s advice on shooting dance. In particular, Vasta dismisses dancing with the dancer and handheld footage.

“Don’t try to follow the action directly with camera movement,” Vasta advises. “If the dancer is going left to right to left to right, don’t do the same with the camera. That’s disturbing.” You don’t want to be so directly connected, but move around the space. “There’s this idea of ‘dancing with the dancer’ some people prescribe to,” Vasta says. “I don’t think it is so directly connected.

Evidently Mr Vasta is unfamiliar with the steadycam. Dancing with the dancer is harder but it can yield exciting dance footage. Removing depth of field from dance (everything in focus) is another cardinal no-no which Mr Vasta blithely advocates. The goal with dance film is not to chronicle the spectacle (that’s the craft of shooting theatre archives) but to capture the inspiration and movement.

Here’s a counter example, Althea Frutex.

[fvplayer src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD38tseZ668″ splash=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lD38tseZ668/hqdefault.jpg” caption=”Althea Frutex”]

Althea Frutex, Alec Kinnear, D.A. Hoskins, Kristy Kennedy

Vasta goes further recommend eliminating depth of field:=”http://uncoy.com/images/

Pro-tip: Camcorders are best for dance, with a limited depth of field. Never shoot below a 5.6 aperture.

Here’s a modern dance video in HD which breaks every rule in Vasta’s book (depth of field, camera movement) and is hence intrinsically exciting, Wendja Regentanz.

[fvplayer src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YWrPx1sCw” splash=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/e9YWrPx1sCw/hqdefault.jpg” caption=”WENDJA – Regentanz (Official Video)”]

Wendja Regentanz Music Video

If you’d rather see dance which is not part of a music video, take a look at Opus Jazz. Here’s an extract on PBS, Passage for Two. Breaks every rule in Vasta’s dull book and is hence absorbing.

[fvplayer src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE5JL71elgk” splash=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HE5JL71elgk/hqdefault.jpg” caption=”Jerome Robbins – NY Export : Opus Jazz (extrait du DVD)”]

Opus Jazz – Passage for Two

Here’s the trailer in HD (start watching at about fifty seconds as before that there’s no movement):

[fvplayer src=”https://vimeo.com/40626770″ splash=”https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/280844999_1280x720.jpg?r=pad” caption=”NY EXPORT: OPUS JAZZ”]

Opus Jazz Trailer

Dance film can be exciting. And should be exciting. Camera should move with the movement. Every effort should be taken to create an almost 3D effect. Dance is movement in three dimensions. The only bit of Vasta’s advice with which I can agree is to attend dress rehearsals. Before you film dance it should be at least your second time seeing that piece:

One important tip Vasta offers is to attend the dress rehearsal and make notes on lighting changes….Vasta shares that at this stage in his career he’d be uncomfortable filming a live show without seeing a dress rehearsal.

If you are a dancer and thinking of creating a video record of your dance, whatever you do, do not take Angelo Silvio Vasta’s advice on how to shoot dance. You will bore your audience to tears. If you are an aspiring dance filmmaker, find another mentor.

This was originally a much shorter comment under the article but Lauretta Prevost managed to get my comment blocked and banned so I posted my comments at greater length in an article.

It’s a hallucinigenic and disorienting spectacle to face that many principal dancers at the same time, each dancing his or her grand role. Staatsoper is a particularly beautiful ballet company with the men for the most part fine featured and long limbed. The Staatsoper corps-de-ballet women are slim, soft curved and graceful. Thanks to their pretty faces and fine dancing skills the illusion of eight princes and eight Giselles convinces.

Staatsoper is a better match than Eifman’s own company for Red Giselle as the Staatsoper dancers perform the classics every week and are prettier. Eifman’s own group are a bit shorter and more muscular – primarily modern dancers.

Giselle-Rouge-Red-Kommissar-with-Giselle-Vladimir-Shishova-Nina-Polakova

Red Giselle’s story follows a principal ballerina who abandons her choreographer director husband in the early years of the Russian Revolution for a fling with a Red Kommissar. Initially her plans were for a short affair but the black coated kommissar is not prepared to let her go.

Ioanna Avraam is perfect as the arrogant and willful ballerina who gets her and everyone she knows into such trouble. Later her choreographer husband is thrown into a basement somewhere and tortured to death. Andrey Teterin dances his way to death with distinction and poise.

The role of the Kommissar equally suits Alexis Forabosco, whose sinister handsome face reminds one of Christopher Walken in his prime. Princes don’t suite Forabosco’s gaunt features but villains do, he exudes dark power.

Giselle-Rouge-Red-Kommissar-with-Giselle-Vladimir-Shishova-Nina-Polakova

Avraam’s strong almost masculine features and powerful shoulders are a good match for Forabosco’s muscular physique. I’m not sure how effective Red Giselle would be with a fragile Giselle type dancer in the lead role.

When Forabosco’s Kommissar takes Avraam’s ballerina to visit his revolutionary mates, the women spurn her at first. The costumes are Red chic, with revolutionary caps, scarves and long quotes on both men and women. Avraam then wins them all over with a bold dance. This is fantastic spectacle, worthy to be the principal scene of any West End musical.

There is a ravishing Soviet late night café scene complete with flappers where the entire cast swings through the night. It’s the same tight group of thirty dancers who play the Ballerina’s dancer friends, the Soviet revolutionaries, the decadent Soviets, a second dance troupe and finally Willis. There are full costume turnaround in less than two minutes at some points without a single cue dropped. It’s amazing work by the corps-de-ballet, drawn from both Staatsoper and Volksoper companies and by rehearsal masters Alice Necsea, Jean Christophe Lesage and Albert Mirzoyan.

The underused Igor Milos is perfect here as Avraam’s principal ballroom partner. As Avraam’s post-Kommissar dancing partner, Staatsoper étoile Roman Lazik convincingly portrays both dancer and prince.

The minimalist decoration communicates a post-Revolution Leningrad perfectly. The lighting plan is well wrought and atmospheric. The score provides a wide range of musical delights from Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowki’s Serenades, diverse Alfred Schnittke’s extracts, particularly from the Gogole Suite and finally Georges Bizet’s L’Arlessiene Suite. Red Giselle ends of course with the finale of Adolphe Adam’s Giselle.

Giselle-Rouge-Second-Act-The-Madhouse-Willis-Ketevan-Papava

The fast forward Giselle in the second half is very strange and in some ways goes on too long. It’s unclear what Giselle’s story has to do with an arrogant ballerina who thought she could bed whomever she wanted without consequence. It’s a role reversal from the original Giselle where the prince was the thoughtless one. In this case, the Kommissar should become Giselle in a complete role reversal. But in the final Willi scenes, Giselle remains Giselle. Despite the very effective shock-value madhouse costumes on the Willis, the last third of the piece doesn’t make much sense.

Yet when a theatre work is so well-composed and so varied and so effective, a small thematic failure can be overlooked in favour of the spectacle.

Eifmann’s work is perfect in Volksoper with a grand group of Staatsoper dancers. An almost flawless must see show.

David Dato in a photo by Johannes Ifkovits, the publicity image.
In Movements to Stravinsky costume where Dato does not dance

Stravinsky’s compositions for ballet were the core of Sergei Diaghelev’s Ballets Russes. The Firebird premiere took place in Paris Opera in 1910, while Petruschka premiere also took place in Paris but in Théâtre du Châtelet. The original choreographer for both ballets was Michal Fokine. Both of these ballets enjoy a rich tradition around the world, with versions in the repertoire of The Mariinsky Theatre (Kirov), National Ballet of Canada, The Bolshoi Theatre, the Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre to name just a few. Ironically enough, the Russian premiere of Fokine’s The Firebird had to wait until perestroika in 1993.

In fairness to Michal Fokine, what we saw this week should probably not bear the name of the original compositions, a while the music is still Stravinsky’s, neither the original choreography or libretto plays any role in Peci or Kaydanovsky’s creations.

Petrushka – Eno Peci

The original Petrushka tells the story of the puppet Punch (Petruscha) who loves a Ballerina puppet who in turn loves the Moor puppet who takes the Ballerina away from Petruschka. The loss of his love kills Petrushka. Most of the action takes place in the middle of a bustling Russian street market.

Petrushka is a difficult work to rebuild as a new ballet. The clown, his mistress, the Russian market. How do you replace all of that colour and energy?

Peci choose to open with a birthday party at home where Petrushka is with his beautiful partner celebrating the birthday of their young son. The ongoing motif is a clock installed in the ceiling on which the hands turn and turn.

Suddenly we are in a white schoolroom with wooden desks and very high ceilings. The girls come in white jackets and very short skirts. Céline Janou Weder enthusiastically leads her able fellow classmates including Emilia Barano, Adele Fiochhi, Anna Shepelyova….in the playful dances of schoolgirls. They are joined by an equal contingent of six boys who quickly quarrel and stir up petty rivalries and trouble. On a high trumpet note Petruschka enters as a buttoned down school teacher in brown suit and tie.

David Dato quickly takes control of the hijinks and quarrel between the boys and the classroom settles down. Dato’s Petrushka owes more to Hollywood dance start Fred Astaire than Michel Fokine. He’s convincing in his fifties style persona with a big smile and a cheerful attitude.

A very dangerous Rebekka Horner comes across as a giant wasp in her geometric black latex suit. It’s uncertain for me if Horner should represent the Magician or the Moor. In any case, she’s accompanied by two young street thugs who cause trouble at the school and rape the teacher/Petrushka’s wife. Trevor Hayden and Arne Vancervelde convince with malice. Even their 80’s hairstyles are offensive.

Pavol Juras’s decorations, costumes and light are the real highlight. The huge blackboard, the high ceilings, the worn out windows, the faded colour palette are all on the mark. Peci has struggled with story in his past works, often as beautiful as perfume ads but equally shallow. It’s great to see him working in close partnership with a dramaturg. The great Juraj Grigorovich did his best work in close collaboration with stage designer Simon Virsladze.

Balázs Delbó has created a fantastic trailer for the piece which gives a real taste of the amazing atmosphere and the lighting, as well a short glimpse at the performances:

[fvplayer src=”https://vimeo.com/217467530″ width=”470″ height=”320″ splash=”https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/634740096_1280x720.jpg?r=pad” caption=”PETRUSCHKA – Trailer”]

Less convincing is the relationship between Petrushka and his wife, a very beautiful Nina Tonelli. In the original, one feels Petrushka’s humiliation when the Ballerina prefers the Moor’s ravishment to Petrushka’s true love. This time around the humiliation takes place in front of his students. Any teacher would say that’s almost as bad. It’s quite a distance from unrequited love.

The choreography and movement are solid but not extraordinary. There is no original spark in the movement, instead a pastiche of suitable fragments gathered from here and there.

Peci and Jurás’s collaboration is an original and strange yet viable re-interpretation of Fokine’s work.

Movements to Stravinsky – András Lukács

Movements to Stravinsky opens in a bare off-white box. The costumes are black and white. Some of the men have neck ruffles, some of the women battery lit horizontal white tutus.

The majestic Stravinksy melodies relentlessly insist on lyric art, as the dancers regally walk in from the sides, extremely elegant. Everything is extremely tasteful.

Between bouts of elegant walking we enjoy duets, solos and triplets.

The first pair is the best. Long limbed Cypriot Ionna Avraam is in another category tonight, bending her body like copper, harmonious, perfectly in sync with the music and very long. James Stephens is an able partner.

The other major duet Nikisha Fogo and Greig Matthews. The choreography is excellent and Fogo’s soft curves are well suited to the sensual lifts. Unfortunately both she and Matthews appeared very uncertain while dancing. They could both use at least a week or two of additional rehearsal before public presentation.

Alice Firenze with Masayu Kimoto fare better against a less challenging duet. Céline Janou Weder dances a trio in pants with an absurd looking Géraud Wielick in some kind of tunic skirt with a Mongolian pony tail on his head. Wielick’s casual hipster look nearly collapsed the entire aesthetic of Lukács’s neo-classical piece.

Movements to Stravinsky is a lot like any Kyllian piece staged in Paris Opera from about 1985. Its roots go even further back to George Balanchine’s structured art like Jewels. Some would call Movements to Stravinsky dated, others might consider it timeless. The conservative Viennese audience adored it, András Lukács has created a real crowd pleaser. Movements of Stravinsky or something very like it will be danced in 2050 as well. There’s probably not enough passion or innovation in this particular version that it will survive much beyond next year. Choreographer András Lukács is capable of much more feeling.

The Firebird – Andrei Kaydanovsky

The Firebird is a great story of resurrection and redemption. Unfortunately choreographer Andrei Kaydanovsky has chosen to wrap it in his own dark notions of modern times:

rampant consumerism of our time, our egoism, and the problem of dead centres of personal development.

I don’t disagree with Kaydanovsky about the wasteland of contemporary mainstream life. But the Firebird was never about the mainstream and general despair. It was about rising above the ordinary.

As far off target as he is with the music and the theme, Kaydanovsky’s sense of stagecraft is magnificent right from the parting of the curtains. A group of men gather outside a Russian deparment store goggling at the mannequins. Kaydanovsky creates this atmosphere with just a few wood frames and a Универсал (Department Store) sign in Russian.

A man in a giant chicken costume wanders in and circulates among the men handing out restaurant fliers. After a time the mannequins come to life and the men flee. Chicken-man (the character of Ivan in the original Firebird follows the Firebird mannequin into the store where there is an entire wall of boxes stacked high in three giant shelves with the text above them in Cyrillic characters, straight out of Soylent Green.

Hier bist du Vogelfütter

Shoppers crowd around and riot underneath the boxes until they fall down. At this point the shoppers turn into zombies writhing in the boxes – Kaydanovsky’s rampant consumerism. The movement is very sloppy but exceptionally organic.

Ivan now follows the Firebird deeper into the basement factory of the department store where grey female rag doll princesses move along a conveyor line.

The dolls are dancers who drop into old dirty yellow foam at the end of the conveyor line. This is quite a clever reinterpretation of the twelve princesses of the original. There is still hope the story will take an interesting and parallel path with the original.

The workers are in overalls from the thirties or fifties. The vast empty space of the workshop is created by rows of overhead flourescent lamps. Richard Szabó in particular convincingly offers the rough movement of a factory worker in a trio with Zsolt Török and Géraud Wielick (whose hair once again distracts).

Ivan dances – rather stumbles around – with the mannequins trying to find one he likes. Finally he finds his Vasillisa in a dirty pink costume and a huge orange wig. It’s Rebecca Horner under a thick cake of white zombie makeup.

Their awkward duet finally ends in collapse on the floor. A window appears at the back of the atelier. Dato’s Firebird takes his place in the window when a man in a hotdog costume wanders by. The end. Kaydanovsky offers no redemption, there is no firebird, just a guy in a shiny jacket, luring you into a department store.

Kaydanovsky doesn’t give the dancers much to work with so one cannot talk much about the performances but all of the dancers acquit themselves well enough. While the performance and the stagecraft, Kaydanovksy’s The Firebird remains fairly shameless shocktastic piggybacking on top of a classic with which his work has nothing in common. An approach symptomatic of the same weak ethical qualities and consumerism about which Kaydanovsky complains.

Orchestra – Conclusion

Throughout the evening the orchestra under David Levi offered an excellent classic interpretation of Stravinsky’s splendid scores. The Volksoper orchestra is a bit thin for the Firebird in comparison to the Marinsky or Bolshoi or full Staatsoper orchestra but the three pieces make an excellent musical evening.

According to his granddaughter and trustee of his works, Isabelle Fokine, Michal Fokine was not keen on radical changes to his works:

When Alexander Golovin’s designs were destroyed, Diaghilev commissioned Natalia Goncharova to design a set that would be easier to tour. My grandfather was horrified by the result – “It dealt a death blow to my ballet.” This was due to the fact that dancers were reacting to elements of the staging no longer present. This may not have troubled Diaghilev, but to a choreographer for whom dramatic sense was paramount, Fokine believed it made nonsense of his work….My grandfather greatly resented his ballets being altered. Today nobody would dream of tampering with the work of a living choreographer, so it seems inconceivable that it took place, but it did – often.

It’s good thing Fokine has been dead for 75 years. Let’s hope Peci’s and Kaydanovsky’s revisions don’t bring him back from his grave.

Out of the three works, Eno Peci’s Petrushka is easily the most successful. If you don’t pass out from déjà vu, Lukács Movements to Stravinsky is harmless and elegant fare. Kaydanovsky’s The Firebird is painful and depressing. Watching it is a suitable and delightfully ironic punishment for those superficial balletomanes who seek only shallow beauty from a night at the operahouse. As the Volksoper is often the first place people see dance in Vienna, Kayadanovsky’s The Firebird risks demotivating many to ever see another ballet.

All images copyright Wiener Volksoper 2017 and Ashley Turner.

Dancer credits beneath each photo in lightbox

After the birth of an heir, Christian took a trip abroad and came back in the care of a Danish-German physician Johann Struensee. Struensee became both confidante and friend of King Christian, later the lover of Queen Caroline. Together they ruled in Christian’s place for almost two years, before the Dowager Queen led a palace coup in favour of her own son. Result: Struensee executed, Caroline exiled.

In 2012, the Danes themselves made a majestic film version starring Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Struensee called A Royal Affair. Both sensual and intellectual, idealistic and cynical, Mikkelsen is thorougly compelling in the role. His queen is a fascinating and contradictory Caroline, divided between duty and passion.

Ballet Graz artistic director Darrel Toulon’s instinct to treat this story in ballet is unerring. Dance thrives on passion and emotion, love and death. The Struensee affair has all of it.

How did Toulon do?

The staging starts off with a bang: an almost constantly slowly rotating stage symbolises the movement of time. We see the betrothal of the children, Caroline departing reluctantly from England, her ceremonial arrival in Denmark greeted by a mad husband. The colours were fabulous with the whole court in a radiant royal blue which symbolises both frivolity and power. Elke Steffen-Kühlnl’s costumes were excellent, both looking regal yet allowing free movement.

A highlight of the court is the use of real old people in the white wigs, frock coats and long gowns. So often these roles are played by either current dancers or ex-dancers who communicate nothing of the stodginess of a court. The portly fellow who could hardly walk with puckered thick lips and sneering brow made every court scene a sour delight.

Albert Garcia as the king does his best at madness, but we rarely fear him. He’s missing the absolute abandon, the wildness of high. I was somewhat surprised not to see Bostjan Ivanjsic in this role as he would have no difficulty communicating true madness. There is not much dancing in the king’s role so I can really only judge Garcia’s performance on the drama.

An early episode in court includes live piano, with cello and song. Bringing the music live on stage was another great touch. Musically the evening was splendid. The orchestra played Sergej Rachmaninow sumptuously under the musical direction José Miguel Esandi.

Michal Zabavik is a darkly charismatic Strauensee but seems to miss the real Strauensee’s high idealism. The love scene between him and Martina De Dominicis goes in circles, without the intense passion that one would expect from people breaking all societal bounds. In the Danish film, the slow conversations, rides aparts and society dancing which precipitate the affair work much better. Many men and women are much sexier at home than the dance cast on this pair. Both Zabavik and De Dominicis made their best effort with what they were given.

We are treated to the hypocrisy of the court as the state council personally encourage Christian’s whoring to weaken him.

The end of the first half is the high point of Die Liebe Einer Konigin. Christian, Caroline and Struensee climb atop a seven meter wall and sit there together staring down at the audience and laughing among themselve before the curtain falls.

The second half speeds along at lightning pace. Hardly has it begun than we find Strauensee in bonds, taken away and shot.

In the meantime, Michael Munoz as the leader of the conservative faction had a few splendid scenes with backflips and somersaults. Munoz has always been the small dancer who could and he made the most of his role and the evening. Ambition and evil energy thrilled his every movement. Munoz’s scenes were the highlight of the evening.

Lady in waiting Agnès Girard was splendidly imperious. Her good counterpart in the role of Elisabeth von Eyben, Dianne Gray moved us deeply with her devotion to her queen and friend. Kristina Aleksova as the Dowager Queen offered a dark and coldly beautiful presence. When she had the opportunity to dance she made the most of it.

The final dream scenes of the deposed Caroline with a still living Strauensee, trees in the background, a happy daughter offered a world beyond the literal or straight metaphoric. Beautiful stagecraft and quite moving. Excellent work from stage designer Jürgen Kirner and choreographer Toulon. I wished for more of this.

An evening like Die Liebe Einer Konigin reminds me of the work of choreographer Jochen Ulrich, who sadly left us last year. Ulrich was always searching for a rich story and rendering it in dance. A frustration of mine with Ulrich’s work (which has carried over into much of Toulon’s work) is the concern with symbols. This evening it was books. There are books strewn all over the stage and books held in people’s mouths and people beaten with books.

Such a metaphoric approach with physical objects to my mind traps the dance. Juri Grigorovich, the genius behind Spartacus and Legend of Love, approached dramatic scenes very differently, always seeking a pattern of movement to communicate the idea.

Die Liebe Einer Konigin is a beautiful evening, with great music and excellent performances. The story is ideal. Somehow though the great ideas and strong feelings get lost in stage business. Instead of life changing, the evening is clever and beautiful, an opportunity lost. Given how few choreographers even aim at the big targets anymore, I am grateful to Ballet Graz and Toulon for at least reaching for the stars.

Often the works are either historic pieces or imported. This year Volksoper ballet director Vesna Orlic and Staatsoper dancer and choreographer Andrey Kaydanovsky have collaborated on a new program called Marchenwelt or Fairy Tale World. The two parts are unified by dramatic Russian music, first Modest Mussorgski’s Pictures from an Exhibition and then Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scherezade.

Boris Eder’s brilliant turn as the Genie stuck in a lantern in Orlic’s 1001 Nights

Kaydanovsky has contemporised The Ugly Duckling for his fairy tale. His version includes high fives, industrial agriculture and sport hunting with rifles. And why not? Fairy tales should be timeless.

Ugly Duckling starts well with a turning stage which moves from one egg on stage to three. The hatching is neatly done with two students from the choreographic school peeking quickly out before ugly duckling Laszlo Benedek is revealed. Everyone is supposed to be horrified by Benedek’s appearance and they do their best, but really this duckling is never ugly enough. In the hands of a stronger character actor we would feel the rejection very strongly but Benedek is never more and never less than sympathetic.

Ugly-Duckling-Lazlo-Benedek-mother-Rebecca-Horner

All of Ugly Duckling is predicated on anthropomorphism: here’s how Kaydanovsky and his performers did in order of appearance.

• the two chicks Zuzana Kvassayova and Mila Schmidt were suitably brutal and bird-like.
• Rebecca Horner was a passable mother but didn’t exude much warmth. Her motherhen movement could use further elaboration.
• Patrik Hullman as the terrifying turkey was both outrageously funny and truly frigtening. Hullman stole the show in his huge black hoop skirt and red makeup. It’s a pity his tyrannic episode is so short: the short reprise at the end is an even greater delight.
• wild ducks Samuel Colombert and Keisuek Nejime were quite funny in their combat clothes but their movements were none too ducky.
• the reflected hunter with rifle was great. I’m not sure if it was video or shadow play but it was a highlight.
• Martin Winter as the old lady with his head wrapped up under a massive cape was fantastic. Making the old woman a huge man helped enormously with the difference between people and animals.
• Felipe Vieira appeared twice as a rooster but was not at his best. On the other hand, his partner in crime, the cat Suzanne Kertesz was lithe, saucy and thoroughly cat-like.

The constantly turning stage with it’s ambiguous reed or wood constructions did much to keep the pace. The ugly ducklings travels meandered a bit, losing the audience’s attention. Ravel’s orchestration was splendidly helped by a strong string section and an excellent oboe solo but thoroughly let down by an inconsistent French horn.

But the real hole in Ugly Duckling is the story. Kaydanovsky’s Ugly Duckling is a very dangerous work: it’s about birthright. If you are born a swan, you may have to suffer while you are small but eventually due to your born grace you will become a kind of celebrity. Hollywood might even work like this: on the whole sons and daughters do awfully well in comparison to the new arrivals. Never does Laszlo Benedek extend himself to succeed. He just meanders through life until the 24/7 swan party people find him and elevate him to their level.

24-7 Party People Swans

I have no use for blue bloods or privilege. If you believe in the divine right of kings, perhaps you’ll have more patience for Kaydanovsky’s Ugly Duckling than I do. Still many children will enjoy the performance for its barnyard anthropomorphisation, even if it gives them exactly the wrong ideas about life. No doubt those many spoiled over-privileged children in Vienna will feel right at home with Ugly Duckling.

Orlic’s A Thousand and One Nights is just the opposite. Her story is of true love and freedom won through constancy and struggle. The show opens with the genie on stage speaking while a huge crystal swirls above the stage. The ball is created relatively inexpensive by video projection. As someone who has done online edits for TIFF films, I’m usually annoyed by the weak video and effects work done in theatres for stage performances. But Balazs Delbo’s effects were impeccable and did a great deal to make Orlic’s Thousand and One Nights epic, whether it was live thunderstorms against minareted skylines, magic genies, emotional flashbacks or prison bars.

Tonight we enjoyed the vast horizons of films and the immediacy of theatre along with the impact of live music. In the end, the aesthetic of Orlic’s Thousand and One Nights is like a live version of the classic Wizard of Oz film.

The opening dance scene is in an Eastern court with the entire Volksoper corps-de-ballet paired off. Orlic very cleverly choreographs them (she danced in the Volskoper herself for seventeen years) to make them all look like Staatsoper soloists, with beautiful high lifts. Staatsoper director Legris’ policy of limoging flagging Staatsoper dancers to Volksoper instead of running separate auditions appears to be paying dividends with a very strong set of dancers determined to prove him wrong.

The beloved of the story is Rebeccas Horner, this time in white raiment as the Sultan’s daughter. She is flanked by handmaidens Ekaterina Fitzka and Una Zubovic. Long legged Horner danced superbly in the title role, but the charismatic Zubovic’s lithesome movements and gorgeous midriff threatened to steal the show whenever she was on stage.

Felipe Viera is a gorgeous Aladdin, both charming and valiant and beautiful as the pauper who dared to love a princess and fights adversity to justify the love offered him so easily at the start.

The show stealer in this case was not even a dancer but character actor Boris Eder who works as both the genie and the narrator, allowing Orlic to introduce the story to the children who are unlikely to read the whole program before watching the show. When he suddenly appears in the middle of the audience in a gigantic magic teapot, the audience almost fell out of their seats. The reverbation voice effects when Eder disappears from the stage and returns to his lantern create a real illusion that he is trapped in the silly little lantern.

1001-Nights-Evil-Vizier-Samuel-Columbo-with-Volksoper-harem

Samuel Colombert also returns, this time as the evil vizier whose soldiers kidnap Aladdin’s love to join his harem of one hundred brides. Colombert’s sinous and cut body along with the makeup made him look like a young Ghenghis Khan. A superb performance as a cruel tyrant. His jealous and spoiled brides epitomised our vision of Oriental sensuality and luxury. The harem scenes were among the best in Thousand and One Nights.

On the other hand, the battle scenes while they nod to Spartacus should be redrawn from scratch. The second one in particular is long, drawn out, repetitive and a bit silly. A real letdown in an otherwise almost flawless production.

Felipe-Viera-Samuel-Columbo-face-off

The ending comes straight from Firebird with the happy couple wandering out to Rimsky Korsakov’s ringing chords (perfect performance by the orchestra this time) to the applause of the court with the blessing of the Sultan.

The genie has the last words with gratitude for Aladdin’s hard won “happiness and at last freedom” for himself. Orlic’s Thousand and One Nights offers an inspiring vision: if you live true to your heart and strive for your dreams, you can make a better world.

Orlic’s glorious pastiche of film and ballet classics is not to be missed for either children or grown ups.

As the final show of this summer’s ImPulstantz, Vienna was privileged to welcome the premiere of a new work by underrecognised but brilliant Elio Gervasi. One of the first choreographers to bring modern movement to Vienna, his improvisational influence spread wide. Gervasi, like many creative geniuses, is often a bit gruff. Strong movement is his native idiom not redundant words and empty promises. After blooming at the end of the nineties and start of the noughts, Gervasi’s company was one of the first dance companies to fall victim to the city of Vienna’s heavy arts cuts starting in about 2004. For several years, Gervasi worked in miniature with either principle muse Leonie Wahl or at most a quartet of dancers. Most of the others, including Homunculus are no longer here at all.

Dark introspective chamber performances are not the right medium of expression for Gervasi’s orchestral invention. And most of these transitional pieces ended up as underlit shards in comparison to his larger pieces. There were happy exceptions on commissions for site specific creations for Museumsquartier courtyard for example.

Here Gervasi has thrown caution to the wind, bringing an ephemeral group of performers together, some more like students, others national theatre stars or even international choreographers in their own right, in a whirlwind of creation. Tragically, the performances are thus occasional: you are unlikely to ever be able to see a given work again. Be there or lose it forever.

In Solo with Guests we get anything except a solo. We enter the always impressive Odeon space where a ten box tall wall divides the two halves of the stage right down the middle. At the back of the massive space we glimpse an impatient Gervasi himself in a scruffy winter coat moving from one end of the couch to another. He struts to front of the green milk crate wall and stamps back to his couch a few times as the stragglers wander in.

The lights finally go down as seven dancers wander in, a group of three on one side and a group of four on the other side. The older Gervasi himself has left us but perhaps not. Ex-Jochen Ulrich star Martin Dvorak serves admirably as what appears to be a younger Gervasi living through his life, surrounded by the energetic young dancers.

[fvplayer src=’//cdn.uncoy.com/videos/Elio-Gervasi-Solo-with-Guests-Part-Two-720p.mp4′ src1=’/videos/Elio-Gervasi-Solo-with-Guests-Part-Two-720p.webm’ width=1280 height=720]

Short video extracts from Solo with Guests Part Two: total running time 5 minutes

The seven performers are often all in motion together, sometimes in dance duets, sometimes trios. The focus moves seamlessly from one dancer to another throughout the seventy minute performance. Gervasi has always been able to extract the maximum amount of meaning from objects (whether lamps or milk cartons: this is the second time round for the latter). His walls and sofa move around the stage as the dancers build different lego castles through the stages of life.

Leonie Wahl understands Gervasi’s movement in every bone in her body, tonight her motion lacked some of its earlier frenzy (perhaps for the good). Wahl is always a whirlwind of movement and radiant performer. Newcomer and stage chameleon Dvorak (I’ve seen him take hold of so many different roles and styles) adapts effortlessly to Gervasi’s fast movements. His maturity and almost narcissistic focus do much to provide a moral center to an otherwise young group.

Other striking performances included the young man with shaven head who offered a compelling physical charisma in his solos. Hopefully Polish Hygin Delimat will return in future Gervasi productions. One tall young woman sported a body more like a swimmer than dancer, with muscular shoulders and power throughout her body. Her unusual and strong physical lines added special impact to Gervasi’s fluid movements. It turns out this extraordinary dance Amazon hails from Australia, Hannah Timbrell is her name.

Japanese Yukie Koji, Italian Sara Marin, Viennese Patric Redl all gave strong performances to round out the strong international ensemble.

In the middle of the production Timbrell stopped to stand on a stack of milk cartons where she declaimed beautifully one of Whitman’s best poems.

Here it was clear that Gervasi had told us the story of adult life. How it starts full of discovery and hope and ends among old friends or solitude, the lamps growing dimmer, the clothes older, the movement quieter. Appreciate this fragant moment the evening shouts. It’s passing you by even now, the chance to move and to love. Do not go gently into the night.

A long still life in half sillouette with most of the dancers frozen each in a single peculiar pose with arms or legs in the air, captures a timeless moment of consciousness and mortality, before finally the last lights go out. Gervasi returns to dim them by hand himself.

In Solo with Guests (Part Two), Gervasi worked closely with assistant choreographer and dramaturg Nicoletta Cabassi. The match appears to be made in heaven, as sometimes the ever fluent with movement Gervasi has struggled with story. Not here.

A deep and beautiful evening.

ImPulstTanz should be proud to have co-produced this autumn work. Gervasi remains one of the great architects of movement in Austria. Not childish conceptualist pranks but timeless works of soul and movement. I sincerely hope his company is offered the level of funding they deserve to continue to create powerful dance works like these in Vienna.

The evening opened with a fine excerpt from La Sylphide with full decorations, with Maria Yakovleva in the eponymous title role and Masayu Kimoto as her partner. While La Sylphide is always easier to watch in its entirety both were very good and the corps-de-ballet looked good too. An auspicious start.

In John Neumeier’s Vaslaw, Denys Cherevychko carried the lead role. It’s very good casting, as Cherevychko’s habitual narcissism works to good effect in Vaslaw’s solo gymnastics and diffident interaction with the other couples.

Prisca Zeisel starts to justify the high hopes placed on her precocious arrival at age sixteen in the Vienna Staatsoper, as the great Austrian principal, a role left vacant since Dagmer Kronberger left at the height of her powers to motherhood. Kronberger is dancing marvellously but has not had the same roles she had before leaving.

Alexandru Tcacenco did an excellent job partnering the lyric and self-assured Zeisel. Masayu Kimoto’s moved the audience with a passionate solo: Kimoto was both emotional and in excellent physical form, really finishing his movements.

Ketevan Papava and Ryan Booth are a very dramatic couple. Both tall, they were very effective together. The pas de trois was a little bit unbalanced.

Kiyoka Hashimoto and Davide Dato danced well together, as did Alice Firenze and Greig Matthews, without drawing particular fire or attention to themselves.

The pas de cinque from Swan Lake was performed to a blue backdrop and was rather a bore without decorations. Eno Peci was a marvellous prince, while Natascha Mair and Ioanna Avraam were lovely noble damsels. As companions, Davide Dato and Dumitru Taran partnered their damsels very well. I would have preferred to see Peci’s magnificent physique and radiant presence as Apollo later. While Peci is great on stage, his technique could be sharper: he seems just a bit lazy as a dancer before the show which is a great pity as he has international star potential.

The highlight of the evening was the pas de deux from Mayerling. Here Kenneth MacMillan’s masterwork had the best possible casting. Irina Tsymbal lived the role of the impetuous Baroness Vestera while Kirill Kourlaev incarnated Crown Prince Rudolf.

Kourlaev’s appearance with moustache and goatee is spectacularly dashing. He should consider dancing the grand roles with facial hair.

Kirill Kourlaev as Kronprinz Rudolf & Prisca Zeisel as Mizzi in “Mayerling” © Michael Pöhn
This is a symbolic photo from another performance

Tsymbal and Kourlaev’s passionate embraces felt truly real. Tsymbal gave herself to Kourlaev with abandon. One felt her folly with the pistol, one felt the passion of woman on the edge. Every one of her movements was both lyric and transparent. Kourlaev’s masterful steps and dignity belonged as much to the theatre as the ballet.

I felt like I was watching Ekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilev in their prime. Vienna has a very special pair in these two. They are a perfect match. Hopefully they will be kept together for most of next season. Someone should invite a choreographer to create something dramatic just on these two. They are in another league as partners to anyone else in the theatre.

In Apollon, an excellent performance by the orchestra brought the score alive.

On stage we saw the best dancers Vienna has to offer. The three graces included Olga Esina, Ketevan Papava and Nina Polakova.

Esina and Papava are schoolmates and rivals for the last fifteen years first in the Vakhtangova Ballet School, then a few years in the Marinsky Theatre and finally in Vienna State Opera. Both are classic St Petersburg ballerinas, with long arms and legs and perfect technique. And here in Apollon they offset each other ideally, one tall and fair, the other long and dark. Polakova did well to keep them company but perhaps Ionna Avraam would have been a better match.

Hopefully one day perhaps a perceptive choreographer will take advantage of these twin graces, dark and light, and build a piece based on fragmented personality or twin loves. As an example, one could rework Swan Lake in an entirely new version with Odetta/Odile on stage at the same time.

Roman Lazik did not look as strong as Apollon as he has all year, in what has otherwise been a banner year for him. Apollo should really be a Nijinki or Nureyev style dancer who summons the whole theatre to his godlike presence. With just a couple of workouts per week, in a few months, Lazik could put on the two or three kilograms of upper body muscle he’d need for such a role. A tall, elegant dancer if he wants to become a power on the stage, he should muscle up a bit.

Here’s a fantastic song which comes with a music video to match, Master Hunter. What’s very special for us at Uncoy is that the video is principally a modern dance performance with Marling playing the guitar in the background. Kitty McNamee did a great job with the duet. But the dance is not as indie a production as the music. McNamee is an LA based choreographer with MSA representation who appears to specialise in opera choreography: the strange thing about the bios is they don’t credit the years for the work.

[fvplayer src=’//cdn.uncoy.com/videos/Laura-Marling-Master-Hunter.mp4′ width=480 height=360]

Marling was a kind of early wonder, hitting the scene under Charlie Fink’s wing at age 18. Here’s another Marling hit from her very early years, “New Romantic”.

[fvplayer src=’//cdn.uncoy.com/videos/Laura-Marling-New-Romantic.mp4′ width=480 height=360]

But if Marling’s sophomore and third albums are folk masterpieces, Noah and the Whale will floor you with The First Days of Spring, a concept album and film, a concept dear to my own heart. Here’s the trailer/first song.

[fvplayer src=’//cdn.uncoy.com/videos/First-Days-of-Spring-Official-Trailer.mp4′ width=580 height=360]

The album goes south in the middle but someone with the ability to create that first song and an album long video deserves some admiration.