The evening began with a short extract from one of Toulon’s own most ambitious works, Swan Trilogy (Schwanentrilogie). I saw the full piece at its premiere in 2009 and Swan Trilogy has aged well. The giant eggs with cracks in them create impressive atmosphere while Dianne Gray looks fabulous as the Swan princess. Michal Zabavik is in great form. The live orchestra give the performance the feel of one Europe’s great cultural capitals like Moscow or Paris. It’s a pity the excerpt was so short.

The next pas de deux came from Roland Petit’s Proust ou les intermittences du coeur. Two men dance naked to the waist as equal partners. Beautiful shapes, tender movement. Gabriel Faurie’s Elegy for Violoncello and Orchestra provided a deeply moving acoustic background for what Toulon correctly noted as a masterwork. 1974 is like today. Rainer Krenstetter and Marian Walter’s communication via movement will be the best we see tonight. A perfect performance of Petit’s perfect piece.

Marian Walter and Rainer Krenstetter in Roland Petits
Duett from Les intermittences du Coeur

Aimless is just one year old, Dimo Milev won the Copenhagen International Choreographic Competition with his short reflection on life: “it’s not important where you go but with whom you go”. Style is Hong Kong cinema with rust coloured pants and flowered shirts. Tango music from Marc Ribot adds a sensual funkiness to slinky synchronous movement. Performer Tamako Akiyama moves like a young dancer in her timeless and trendy swan song.

Dimo Kirilov Milev und Tamako Akiyama in Aimless
von Dimo Kirilov Milev Foto Costin Radu

Fortunately the Graz Oper’s speaker system is good enough to mix with live orchestra. Jean Sibelius’s “Ariels Lied” mixes into nature effects in the next duet, another extract from Toulon’s own Swan Trilogy. Anne-Marie Legenstein’s costume for the white swan remains breathtaking, a tightly pulled gauze bodysuit with transparent sections, decorated with silver and jewels. Bruna Diniz Afonso did justice to Toulon’s finely wrought choreography but her partner Keian Langdon persistently let her down. He looks good but his movement was sloppy and neither his head nor heart were in the dance this night.

“Fifth Corner” tries to tell the story of solitary confinement through three dancers. We hear opera arias mixed with some synthetic beats but the mix feels like a posed cool. Three long-haired beardos in Mao suits are the dancers but for me the movement was second rate. Choreography credits are shared by Guido Sarli and Manuel Rodriguez. Perhaps the full Loser King from which “Fifth Corner” was extracted makes more sense: Loser King won prizes in both New York and Madrid.

Toulon takes us back again to Swan Lake with Pascal Touzeau’s two year old reinterpretation of the pas de deux from the second act. The music is original and gorgeously played by the Graz Orchestra but the movement is entirely new, in what is an almost naked Swan Lake. This is great dance from a ballerina in her prime. Anne Jung brings a ferocious German intensity to Tchaikovsky’s elegaic score. A slightly awkward Christian Bauch does his best but he’s not able to keep up with Jung. It would definitely worth the trip to Mainz to see an astonishingly refreshed Swan Lake with parallel love stories (Odette and Odile are twin sisters).

Anne Jung und Christian Bauch in Pascal Touzeaus Schwanensee Act II Pas de Deux

Tarek Assam’s Alter Ego brings two men together on the stage again to the pure industrial sound of Alva Noto’s Argonaut. Michael Bronczkowski is a big black miracle worker of a dancer, his long arms extend forever. His silken movement makes you wonder how there any white male dancers. Manuel Wahlen holds up his end but Bronczkowski absolutely dominates the stage in one of the best performances of the evening.

Stephan Thoss’s Between Midnight and Morning returns us to Swan Lake but in a peculiar parody with the focus on an Odette head over heels in love with Rotbart. Laia Garcia Fernandez has a tutu which goes up to her chin. With short runs and bodychecks, Fernandez bowls Tenald Zace over again and again in fits of jealously. The game is funny at first but we quickly tire of it, repetition of the same joke breaks the funny bone.

Phew. That’s part one done. Back to our seats. After the second half, the orchestra does not return nor does Swan Lake.

Chat Rooms 2 is a sneak preview of Rosana Hribar and Grego Lustek’s contribution to the new Oper Graz dance evening. Bostjan Ivanjsic comes out early with Laura Fischer where he takes over an armchair and squaks about love. Others join them in bright green, red, blue shirts to ask the same question while tumbling. “Do you still love me?” which is always followed up by “I have to be sure which side you are on.” “Your side of course.” Uncertainty in love is universal so the trope of funny voices amuses at first but Michal Zabavik, Thanh Pham, Clara Pascual Marti and the rest wear it to death. The entire audience breathed an audible sigh of relief at the end of the short excerpt.

The simple piano music of Yarosava Ivanenko’s Invisible Grace brought soothing relief to raw nerves. A very beautiful pas de deux between the choreographer himself and Heather Jurgensen offers subtle gestures, great feeling and amazing empathy. There’s only black costumes but fine choreography and emotional performance makes one forget anything except the music and the dancers. If you are anywhere near Kiel, check the Ballet Kiel program to catch Jurgensen.

Heather Jurgensen und Yaroslav Ivanenko in Invisible Grace

Grey boxes, grey glothes and grey movement are what Kevin O’Day brings to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a work where good choreographers go to die. The sad duet between older men is art with a capital A, important with a capital I and boring with a capital B. Dance is not about death from old age, even if the boomers are getting older, but about passion and fire. Thoughtful and interminable.

Kevin ODay und Robert Glumbek in Four Seasons Photo Christian Kleiner

Hung-Wen Chen’s acrobatic dancing in V.V.V. quickly made Oper Graz much livelier. Half way through their leaps and flips, up come the house light. Lester Rene Gonzalez Alvarez asks the audience about games of chance before going back to horizontal and vertical floorwork. Veni Vidi Vici is very entertaining though the black and white costumes and the movement often seem very eighties (not necessarily a bad thing).

Hung Wen Chen und Lester Rene in Veni vidi vici von Hung Wen Chen

David Dawson’s brand new “Opus.11” is a choreographic reflection on the impossibility of truly coupling and life’s temporality. It was written for two retiring dancers. Tonight Courtney Richardson was majestic in the role written for Yumiko Takeshima. Raphael Coumes-Marquet’s movement seemed a bit too distant and self-involved, as though not only was he not interested in this woman, but no women.

Courtney Richardson und Raphael Coumes Marquet in
David Dawsons Opus11 Photo Costin Radu

Chat Rooms 1, another sneak preview, closed out the evening with a bang. Checkerboards of light and industrial banging grab our attention. Young star James Cousins does not seem to have a clear point yet in this preview. Oper Graz’s company looks good but in a fashion piece like this regal ice princess Sarah Schoch is clearly missing. A dancer like Schoch would add a visual edge to this fashion piece.

Throughout the evening, we had the pleasure of Toulon’s introductions and reflections on dance. Toulon’s mix of intellectual humour and pomp mostly charms. Toulon seems more self-conscious about his age than he needs to be. While dancers careers are short-lived, a choreographer’s need not be.

Toulon came up with a great promotional and fundraising idea: attractive black t-shirts with next season’s program on the back and a quote from Nietzsche on the front for €10: Most sizes sold out.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Next year is Toulon’s final season in Graz. There will be a sixth International Tanzgala here next May. Graz is wonderful in May and so are Toulon’s dance galas.

A splendid respite from pas de deux from Don Quixote and La Bayadère.

Further reflections on the future

If I had any wishes for future Graz Tanzgalas they would be to have fewer pieces, but longer excerpts. I’d like to continue to see as many pieces with live music as possible, even if it doesn’t involve the whole orchestra (piano with cello for example live). There is a danger of hitting the same wells each time: it’s important to see dancers from new venues every year rather than the same dancers back with something new each year. Several repeating artists does provide some continuity though and artists in their prime often have five or six stupendous years in a row, so the right mix of repeating and new artists is a fine line to tread.

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.

A sumptuous rendition of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis & Chloe opens the evening. As substantial a stage as is the Oper Graz, the orchestra pit is full to bursting while the female voices take up the the left upper lodge. The male singers are in the wings backstage. The musical performance is worth the price of admission on its own. Combined with ballet director Toulon’s complex visuals, this is an extraordinary work. Majestic dancer Bostjan Ivanjsic takes centre stage as Daphnis. The role is a complex one, exploring a young man’s sexuality – first timid, then more aggressive. He throws himself into a pool on stage and comes out soaking wet and fully nude, challenging the slightly bourgeois Graz Opera audience with full frontal male nudity.

The women challenge us equally. Dianne Grey represents mature female sexuality in a long red skirt and a revealing bodice. The costumes are amazing. Her long arms enlaced Daphnis again and again, hypnotically and sensually. I was less taken with Chloe, Jura Wanga, whose innocence and dilemma were less persuasive. Soft and timid touching of genitals interweave with passionate duets and trios, making one think hard about Western societal constraints on sexuality. Why are we so constrained about what makes the world go round? more so even than money which is just a currency for the buying and selling of comfort and pleasure.

Michael Munoz dances a rooster-like Pan with diabolic elan. Still the episode where Munoz offers the different young women a shiny necklace confuses. One young woman (Claudia Fürnzholer) dies after donning the necklace while another one (Laura Fischer) is happy wearing it and dances gleefully away with him. Long time Graz star Michal Zabavik has matured: he’s in very good shape while his facial features have hardened. Always handsome, Zabavik’s curved nose and full lips now leer imperiousness and disdain, as if he’d spent his life cutting deals among the power brokers on Wall Street. Usually a person only acquires such a hard edge in a city like Moscow or New York, not in sylvan Graz: Zabavik’s dark and brooding presence helps lift Oper Graz ballet to first tier international level.

Love and fidelity don’t make so much sense any more after watching Toulon’s Daphnis & Chloe. Those who stray seem to have a lot more fun. The power of Toulon’s treatment of sexuality is that it is not a full on empty headed bacchanal but is progressive and questioning.

Along with the choreography, the dancing and the music, stagecraft here is spectacular. A large white wall in the middle back of the stage is not just a visual prop but the entry point for different characters who clamber over and into the action. There is the pool in the middle of the stage which appears and then disappears. Atmospheric but thankfully subtle video projections deepen and texturize the stage. Toulon is a sculptor in full control of his materials. Sets and costumes from Vibeke Andersen were right on mark here and for all three productions.

Daphnis and Chloe is a performance one could watch over and over again.

After a short pause, the second half kicks off with an elegant Afternoon of a Faun from veteran Portugese choreographer Vasco Wellencamp. A peculiar choice of choreographer for the normally youth driven Graz company, Wellencamp taught everyone in Graz what real dance mastery entails. Every gesture, every hand shape was choreographed to the smallest detail. Nothing escaped his eye.

The stage offered a giant couch with a reclining Bostjan Ivanjsic, again shirtless. Subtly projected against the black back wall were silhouettes of trees, a moon shone down from overhead. Dianne Grey returns at the back of the stage to climb over a giant tree stump. One is nearly convinced that one is in the center of a dark forest. Astonishing atmosphere. But the giant couch remained strange: how did it get to the middle of the forest I kept asking myself.

Fortunately the performances put such silly but persistent questions out of mind. Bostjan Ivanjsic is a regal faun inciting the women to passion and dangerously physical. His chiselled physique lends itself perfectly to such body sculpting. Michal Zabavik returns as a hard edged man who wantonly ravishes the porcelain beauty of long legged Sarah Schoch. Serge Desroches and Dianne Grey enjoy a more equal and very passionate duo as the other pair. Wellencamp takes us into another mythical space of fauns, beauty and mystery. This was the second time I’d seen the piece in about ten days. With the live music I would happily go again to see Faun every day for the next week.

The Celebrating Sacre program in Oper Graz is one of the most musically fulfilling dance programs I’ve ever had the pleasure to enjoy. Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky make a perfect three course feast. On the choreographic side, Toulon, Wellencamp and James Wilton are an equally well-matched trio.

Curiously as it is the eponymous highlight of the evening, if there is a weaker element to the evening it is James Wilton’s Sacre du Printemps. Before the 100 year celebration of Sacre begins we see a 3.5 minute long presentation of a list of the different versions of Sacre created around the world. The last fifteen years have been particularly fruitful yielding about 25 original creations including superb versions from Angelin Prelocaj in France and Renato Zanella in Vienna.

What is there new to say about the Rite of Spring where the maiden is killed by her fellows to satisfy the gods of fertility? Probably not much which is likely why James Wilton decided to turn sensuality into a political and military statement. The stage is a military encampment in the roman style protected by wooden poles: the minimalist effect is persuasive, powerful and elegant. Vibeke Andersen hits the set on the money again.

Here Michal Zabovic again plays the anti-hero as the brutual, Hitler-like leader of a mixed gender group of marines. He incites them to vicious exercises, ganging up on their colleagues and pummelling them to a pulp. Norikazu Aoki is spectacular as one acrobatic rebel against Zabovic’s totalitarian cause, leaping and tumbling across the stage until he is literally a bruised wreck. Serge Desroches is a more tragic figure as he succumbs to Zabovic’s abuse finally ending up a broken corpse, as a predatory Zabovic literally scoops out his guts and eats his heart. In Wilton’s Rite of Spring, society is entirely militarised and completely unforgiving. Given the current political structure of England, blindly supporting every heavy handed American intervention across the world against the will of the majority, I can see why Wilton thinks this way. His attempt to confront our diabolical politics is laudable. Unfortunately it should probably be to other music. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is not about militarism but about fertility and sexuality: Wilton’s has been sterilised by its politics.

Still the corps-de-ballet looks great, all dancing well in what is a long and physical piece. They seem to be enjoying themselves and the hard work. I’d not rush to see this Rite of Spring again – Wilton rather bored me by the end and in retrospect left me annoyed. But it’s still a fine execution of a flawed concept and certainly worth seeing once, even if one does not hunger to see it again and again like Toulon’s Daphnis or Wellencamp’s Faun.

The ruins of life.

The beginning is the end, like a film. How did she arrive here?

As we all do by living life.

Voda na voda is a series of associative tableaux, focused alternatively on travel or on the relationships between men and women.

Men don’t do very well here. We’re either brutes, or dependent winos. Easily seduced, easily duped. Better controlled on a short leash than loved.

It’s a dark look into the heart but not an unmerited one. Most women do feel hard done by.

Along the way we are treated to elaborate work with bathtubs, high heels, climbing gear, skipping ropes, suitcases, suspended rope.

What’s wonderful about Sarka Ondrisova’s work is the elaborate work with objects together with the consistency of the choreography. In difference from my recent experience at Dido and Aeneas where the choreographic language seemed to change from scene to scene (same thing happens in Linz at Jochen Ulrich’s work but that’s the topic of another post), Ondrisova’s movement fits together to create a work greater than the sum of its parts.

Particularly powerful is the work against the floor and other bodies. Movement builds up into a crescendo and then into high impact. But the impact is never simple pyrotechnics, as is sometimes the case with Win Vandekeybus. Ondrisova earns her body slams in an elaborate emotional subtext that builds up over the full scene.

While its roots are in choreographed contact improvisation, Ondrisova takes her dancers much further. Movement is a reflection of both thought and feeling.

There’s a splendid scene lifted directly from Bram Stoker’s Dracula where a young man full of wild oats (he prances around the stage as a horse) is seduced by three beautiful succubae who come out of a bathtub with long hair and high heels. As they drain him of his life force, a thought comes forward: “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.”

Apparently despite invitations for the last five years, no one from ImPulsTanz can get down to Bratislava to check out Ondrisova’s work nor her colleagues work. Shame on you Karl. This is some of the most interesting modern work I’ve seen. And it’s happening in ImPulsTanz’s own backyard while they comb the far outreaches of Europe and all the continent for something interesting and new.

On the other hand, perhaps the title is not so out of place as space is crucial to Oper Graz ballet director Darrel Toulon’s latest work. The Wilder Mann studio theater where Oper Graz ballet will work for the next two years of Next Liberty renovations is very special.

The space is exceptionally wide and very shallow. What this wide space means is that everyone in the audience as first to third row seats. In the front row you are so close to the dances you could reach out and touch them. Or as in Upper Room, feel the wind of a pillow flying in the hands of a pirouetting dancer across your nose.

Upper Room: pillows, pillows, pillows everywhere
notice the breadth of the stage: this is only about half of it

The great advantage of this stage is the possibility to work with multiple independent dance units at the same time. It’s easy and even desirable to have as many as three different sets of action informing one another at the same time. For choreographers who want to control the audience’s eyes and minds, the opportunity to have multiple action at the same time is frustrating. For those who accept its potential, multiple centres of action is very liberating and very modern.

Upper Room Bostjan Ivanjsic

We live in a world of intense sensory input: billboards, cellphone, radio, television, telephone, street traffic, computer all compete for our attention at the same time. We are constantly making choices of what information to absorb and what information to discard. Wilder Mann is a contemporary stage for contemporary dance.

Toulon’s Upper Room is an evening length work divided into two distinct parts. Part one and part two include entirely different costumes and entirely different stagings. The only unifying element is the music of singer Vesna Petkovic and violinist Boris Mihaljcic.

Including live music is a wonderful decision. Live music brings dance to another level and Petkovic and Mihaljcic offer powerful performances which visibly infuse the dancers with energy.

Michael Munoz acrobatic handstand in part one

One could argue that also unifying the two pieces is that in both parts a single metaphoric prop is central to the work. Part one focuses on metal frames, about the size of a large door or a single bed. Part two focuses on pillows, large white pillows on which to lay your head for sleeping.

Sarah Schoch in front of frames Upper Room

In part one, the dancers lie inside the metal frames, walk through these frames, observer one another across these frame and jump through these frames. At times there are up to five frames on stage at a time worked each by a pair of dancers.

Even more striking are the costumes in part one: each dancer is wearing a bob of shiny bronze hair. Each wears dark silver pants. The men are naked from the waist up, the women in small tube tops. The look is very androgynous. As is the dance.

Upper Room: part one fantastic wigs and alien look

With the strange wigs and clothing, I felt a certain alienation and otherness from the dancers. As they all look identical and different from us, it’s like watching another species live out their lives and feelings. This alienation creates an interesting distance and encourages scientific observation. At one point, Michael Munoz’s wig flew off in a powerful duet and we could see him for the next fifteen minutes as himself: the impression was enitrely different. If the dancers looked more human, the emotional text would be far more powerful as we could identify with them as individuals and not conceive them as a group.

Much of the dance is pairings. Sometimes two women will live an intimate relationship, sometimes a man and a woman, sometimes two men. There is a very disturbing near rape scene of a woman trapped in her frame. Upper Room Part One takes a very violent look at human emotions. Vesna Petkovic’s dark Serbian songs echo and lead the action. That most of us are not able to understand the words is intentional: Upper Room Part One is about emotional text and not about literal metaphor.

Dianne Gray – Bostjan Ivanjsic

Towards the half hour mark, Swiss dancer Sarah Schoch makes a very dramatic entry in a long red dress and a baroque coiffure. Moving with abandon, Schoch reveled in her moment in the light, kicking her long legs high. Her intervention was a delight in itself but I didn’t entirely understand its place in an otherwise very disciplined exploration of the frame metaphor.

Sarah Schoch – Lady in Red

Another highlight is the solo by and duets including Bostjan Ivanjsic whose physique is in magnificent form. When Ivanjsic is center stage he dominates the other dancers who struggle to keep up with his presence. On the other side, after the summer pause, Michál Zábavík has returned with a spare tire more suited to a sedentary man ten years his senior.

Bostjan Ivanjsic in good form with Laura Fischer

Among the premiere audience, some suggested that part one with the frames could make an entire evening of dance. I’d agree with that. One might be able to cut the score back to minimalist elements, leaving most of the explicit text behind.

When we reenter the theater the dancers have taken our place and Vesna Petkovic is enthroned on a mountain of pillows. We surround her as she sings. Five minutes later, the dancers being to guide us back to our places one by one. The confusion and role reversal here is very powerful. I wondered why Toulon chose not to develop the switch further by creating multiple circles of action from which spectators could move from one to the other before sending us back to our seats.

Once we are back in our places, the dancers each take a pillow to caress.

Part two is an exhiliarating voyage through violence and tenderness. But by the time it windes down after forty odd minutes, the work with pillows feels like it has run its course by the time. Pillows have been used as a giant bed, as sleeping companions, as hurled weapons, as instruments to suffocate friends, as dance partners. After watching part two you will never doubt the importance of pillows in our lives.

You don’t perceive it as you watch the show, but dancing with pillows limits the range and precision of dance. A pillow is an object constantly changing form and weight balance. Unlike the frames which are stiff and certain contexts with which a dancer can work carefully.

Sarah Schoch and Laura Fischer face off with pillows

The pillow piece feels more like a great fun experiment than the normally deep work of Toulon. There is some very good work with focused light in the hands of the dancer. Dianne Gray is particularly adept in lighting the other dancers dramatically while managing to stay low to the ground and move smoothly with the action. Newcomer Challyce Brogdon danced near my place and danced with discipline and flair as did compatriot New York native Serge Desroches. There is a particularly charming catfight between Areti Palouki and Agnès Girard.

Near the end, Vesna Petkovic breaks out in Fran Landesman’s 1959 Beat classic “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men”. While the duet between Serge Desroches and Ruo Chen Wang is powerful, the change of musical language grates after a full evening of song in Serbian.

Upper Room opened exactly one month after rehearsals started. The normal period of development for an evening lenth work is anywhere between six weeks and three months. With Upper Room, you feel that you are watching a work in progress. All the elements have been found but not worked through to the end. It’s like a half-finished sculpture where you can see the grand lines of the form, but the expression has not been finished.

My hope is that Toulon if he revisits to Upper Room will return to the frame metaphor and the very groundwork he has done for a one act evening length piece. He could retitle it very simply “Frames”. While the pillows piece was more fun and valid as a technical experiment, it remains more a divertissement than a work of art.

The lucky pair: Vienna’s budding star Nikolaus Adler lately of Homunculus and Villach born Guido Markowitsch, best known for his choreography for musicals and his work in Darmstadt Staatstheater.

While both pieces were part of a coherent evening, as separate and nearly full length works, I have divided this review into two sections.

Resurrection or the Alienation of Humanity – Nikolaus Adler

At first glance Resurrection appears to be a reprise of Törte für Alle, which premiered at Choreolab in 2006. Adler has brough back the cakes, the clowns, the brutal music from the Tiger lillies, a statue of the Virgin Mary next to a dead man and even a little girl singing a beautiful song at the end.

But in fact Resurrection is more a complete remake of the original with a little more time and a dedicated cast. The last piece was created at Choreolab where the dancers are just borrowed from Staatsoper between rehearsals for the main stage. Very happily Adler has made some of the explicity intellectual pretensions of Torte fur Alle (billboard style references to Sartre and Fox news) implicit and reinvested the returns in the dancing.

Nikolaus Adler – Resurrection oder die Befremdlichkeit
der Zwischen Menschlikeit: Cakes and Clowns again

Resurrection opens very strongly with high speed deep bending dancing with grinding rhythms. The opposite of what one could expect from the usually austere Adler. What is remarkable about his choreography are the contrasts. Even during a powerful energetic duet, Adler will stop to show delicate work with fingers. Without being afraid of movement, Adler has always shown an unusual fineness of gesture.

I’ve always wondered how and why Toulon chooses his performers for Oper Graz. His auditions go on for weeks and in the end, he usually chooses not particularly tall nor superficially attractive dancers in what is frankly a buyer’s market. Now I’ve found out:

Opera Graz dancers can really move. Particularly astonishing are Laura Fischer, Michael Munoz and Bostjan Ivanjsic.

Bostjan Ivanjsic Laura Fischer duet Resurrection:
wonderful movement and powerful duets based on contact

After the opening burst of energy, Resurrection quickly slows down to Adler’s usual ironic sadness: Adler’s macabre clowns stand in a line and push a cake in one another’s faces.

Adler takes us through a sinister pantomime of funeral by a group of clowns, complete with statue of Virgin Mary by the head of the deceased. Adler’s clown-faced brutes kick the poor corpse in the head. Wtih all the cellars in contemporary Austria filled with the corpses of unwanted lovers and incest’s children, Adler’s wanton brutality seems part of daily life here in Austria.

The pace doesn’t relent with a spectacular duet between Ivanjsic and Fischer without music: swinging arms writ large, difficult lifts and kinetic gyration. Stunning dancing: mesmerising enough to only notice the absence of music when sound reappears in the next duet.

Adler was able to go to complex, dangerous movement with these dancers experienced with one another and with enough rehearsal time. Much of the movement seemed polished versions of very good contact improv. Contact improv is about communication with the partner so refining it for the stage is to choose communication through movement.

All good things must come to an end and they do with a little girl on stage with another dancer. Tatjana Wiesenhofer sang extremely beautifully:

My papa was a wonderful clown. My father was a beautiful man.

All children are charming on stage. Wiesenhofer has a great voice and seems a natural.

Sometimes it is not nice to be me – Guido Markowitz

The simple narrow black stage was divided into three with two ten metre silk like transparent black curtains. Two men begin the action with an extended duet. Neither Mathias Strahm nor Gyorgy Baán much impress. Their movements are exaggerated and false, parodic. Not nearly so fine as the work Adler just showed us. The tall Strahm reminds one of typically world weary Nicolas Cage.

Happily enough the next duet between Michael Munoz and Shaohui Yi brought some real intensity back to the stage. Munoz seems to woo Yi to no avail. Yi’s persistent rejection is relentless. Munoz’s grimace of fury sears us.

On the curtains, water drops are cleverly projected. I’m as tired of projection as the next contemporary theatre-goer: most projection is mainly a worn out trope but here the moving drops felt real and right. Sounds of rain and water justified the visual. Stagecraft which works and is not expensive: you can see that Markowitz worked hard to bring light, sound and texture together to support the water theme.

Occasionally the antics to extend the water metaphor consume art, leaving only device: the dance with a full glass of water trying not to spill it was either pretentious or something from reality TV.

But then suddenly an astonishing solo from Dianne Gray stroking her own body with handfulls of ice offers a breathtaking visual and moves us with its strong emotional text.

Dianne Gray’s exceptional solo with ice cubes in her hands

Action now takes place in all three stages, with two sets of action on the left. The drama in the center, solos and duets on the sides while Munoz still weeps as the Japanese ex-girlfriend slaps him around. The effect is symphonic.

On both sides, there are ice solos while in the middle a trio dance: Michal Zabavik and Ivansjic with Fischer between them. The two men beat each other senseless for Fischer’s favours. The scene ends with Michal Zabavik drowning Ivansjic. Ivansjic’s head is held under water several times for up to as long as a minute. Even two of the girls come in to help hold a struggling Ivansjic upside down. When Ivansjic’s comes out of the water wet and gasping, it is not play acting.

The music splinters between klang effects, the crash of ice against metal (live) and vocal lullabies. The contrast makes each more effective in turn. The two men fighting on a wet floor means real danger, a sort of Ultima Vez light (Wim Vandekeybus’s company will likely hold the record for the highest career threatening injury per dancer forever).

Now six of the girls lie on stage and gargle together, extending the water metaphor to undreamt extremes. Ivansjic is strapped by the men into a trapeze on the left. As he hanges there helpless, Fischer comes and dances the most astonishing passion with him.

At times she climbs up onto Ivansjic to embrace him. At times Fischer is on the floor and Ivansjic pulls her limbs up to him as she somersaults or hangs upside down in his arms. Fischer’s long tresses cascade in the light, shiny and feminine and beautiful. They kiss kisses of passion. Finally Fischer rides Ivansjic like a broken horse.

Bostjan Ivanjsic & Laura Fischer on and off the trapeze together
one of the best duets I’ve ever seen: perfect conception
with touching performances from both dancers

For the last ten minutes into the golden age of Rosas and Ultima Vez. We don’t often see dancing or choreography as raw and passionate as what Ivansjic and Fischer have just shown us. The duet is like all of Romeo and Juliet distilled to seven minutes.

Michael Munoz is still to go mad, spat on from all sides by seven comrades or ex-lovers. The ice crashes louder and louder. In the end, he slaps his own leg out from under himself in an amazing acrobatic and symbolic fall. Like Munoz, sooner or later we all slap a leg out from under ourselves. It is only human.

Still, Sometimes it is not nice to be me piece slowly disintegrates after the trapeze duet. There is nothing Markowitz or frankly nearly any other choreographer can offer to maintain the intensity after such a moment. Perhaps the piece should have gone out on a high. Perhaps it’s better that it winds down with a slow thud. The last performers are not nearly as interesting as Munoz, Ivansjic, Fischer, Yi and Dianne Gray.

Envoi

A spectacularly successful evening on a very small and narrow stage. Markowitz, Adler and Toulon demonstrate you need neither large stage nor large budget to mount ambitious work. A will to create, strong dancers and the time to do it (rehearsals were spaced out over months and the premier date was moved a month later) are all it takes.

If you are tired of the Vienna silent non-movement conceptual scene, if you still love dance, if you’d like to see passionate movement, get thee hence to Graz while you still can. Jump Start is not an evening to be missed.

There are Jump Start performances on Tuesday 21 June, Wednesday 22 June, Saturday 25 June, Sunday 26 June. Keep in mind the performances are not in Oper Graz but StudioBuhne Wilder Mann Jakomimistraße 3-5 about ten minutes walk from the Opera. Photos © Werner Kmetisch/Oper Graz: frankly both shows are much more exciting than the photos show.