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.

Once again we are in the extraordinary studio theatre Wilder Mann. What makes Wilder Mann different from almost any other space is that there is no depth to the stage and it is enormously wide. Dance works horizontally instead of vertically. Alas neither of tonight’s choreographers took full advantage of the space this time: to take advantage of the space, one needs to program opposing important actions on either end of the stage. The effect in when used properly is almost like Mike Figgis’s Timecode film with four frames of action taking place at the same time.

In Deal.East.West, the something new involved bringing together two young choreographers from the two far extremes of the Eurasian continent: Shanghai native Jie Dong and James Wilton from England. Both are dedicated national artists, working respectively in their native lands, rather than from the European melting pot of choreography (French in Belgium, Spaniards in Paris, Russians in Germany).

I can think and dream about it

To be fair, Dong’s work is very much in the Western tradition of modern dance and has very little to do with Oriental movement: his masters studied in the tradition of Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan and Pina Bausch. Dong is as Chinese (or not) as Hong Kong action films.

Jura Wanga, Jana Drgonova, Daphne van Dooren,
Ruo Chen Wang, Dianne Gray

Dong collaborated with long time Toulon stage designer Vibeke who onced again offered us one her extraordinary minimalist environments in white. On the left there was an enormous three meter high white chair. Later a smaller white chair is passed among the dancers. Small elegant details which worked.

“I can think and dream about it” started with dancers rolling in white tires from the left.

Then the sound of soft breath.

The dancers formed groups and parted again, in varied episodes. At one point they sleep altogether on the ground to an an ambient soundscape. The women’s movement gently lyrical, the men somewhat colder. Particularly fine were Areti Poulaki, Laura Fischer and Jana Drgonova. Sarah Schoch exuded a stern presence and beauty but her expression varied too little to communicate much.

Biag Gaongen Areti Palouki

Among the men, Michael Munoz was in fine form as usual, risking life and limb to make a choreographer’s work appear more daring. Serge Desroches offered a very strong presence in Dong’s work.

There were a few aesthetic decisions which weakened the work for me. In terms of costumes, it looked like everyone just turned up in his or her pyjamas. Everyone wore some kind of loose fitting pants and musty t-shirt, with no apparent rhyme nor reason in their choices. To choose to do nothing with clothing is also an aesthetic choice. I think Dong’s intention was an insistence on natural. But pyjamas do not strike me as natural clothing. His sartorial insouciance could be more studied. A chance was missed here. If the intention is post apocalyptic, Jong could go much further than pyjamas. The one item of clothing which worked for me was Areti Poulaki’s Turkish pants which offered form throughout her jumps and lifts.

Equally strange was the big eyes everyone made all the time. Along with just a smattering of pasty whiteface, Dong asked everyone to keep his or her eyes wide, wide open most of the time.

Jana Drgonova in particular seemed like a vulnerable blonde rag doll, a creature out of Blade Runner.

Jana Drgonova

What did work were the thunder and rain sounds towards the end preceded by an episode of Chinese pop. The strange sounds both alienated us and sensitised us to the movement.

Some work with a rope binding a dancer to the others and then unbinding him made visual the ties between people, even in modern cities.

“I can think and dream about it” ends with rag doll Drgonova atop the three meter chair looking out at us as all the other dancers look up at her. The mood was reflective, the moment touching. More like the true beginning of the piece than its natural end.

The whole piece felt more like variations building towards events which never happened. Agreeable but not earth shaking. Dong does show a great ability to move the focus between groups and solos and a talent for pulling meaning from simple objects.

Growing Divide

The second act offered young independent British choreographer James Wilton a venue outside of England where his career has taken fire since winning the Salder’s Wells Global Dance Contest in January 2011.

Wilton has no fear of taking on big themes: “Growing Divide” is Wilton’s reflection on the London riots and the class struggle in England. Wilton does not try to give us a narrative of the riots but rather explores the emotional state of the rioters. I’m afraid Wilton might be vulnerable to new English laws about sympathising with and encouraging rioters.

Sarah Jane Taylor Norikazu Aoki

After watching “Growing Divide” one understands very well the rage of a lost English generation, victims of a class divide who have been disinherited by what appears to be bottomless financial and governmental corruption.

From the beginning, one woman stands out among the nine dancers, Sarah Jane Taylor. She enters the stage seething with visible rage. Her every movement evinces contempt, anger and frustration. Taylor’s blistering performance makes the piece.

Wilton’s choreographic vocabulary here draws largely from martial arts and street fighting. The exact lifts and pushes and overall violence reminded me of Wim Vandekeybus’s work. Perhaps there are only so many ways to kick and shove a person on stage without permanent injury. Wilton acknowledges Vandekeybus’s influence but draws this distinction: “Vandekeybus starts with emotion, I start with movement.” Perhaps. More visible is that Vandekeybus usually has some kind of prop as a starting point. Wilton outside of the minimalist costumes allowed nothing on his stage but bodies and attitude.

James Wilton Growing Divide

In Wilton’s case, appropriate attention was paid to costume. All the dancers were clad in grey hoodies and cargo pants, allowing them to become an anonymous group and then slip into individual personalities seamlessly.

Musically “Growing Divide” offered more variety than I’ve recently heard. Wilton offers us an Eastern melody to begin “Mugam Beyati Shiraz” but in the middle switches to a very hard rock almost metal music from Steven Wilson, “Salvaging” and “No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun”, the latter a clever tribute to King Crimson’s “In the court of the Crimson King”. It is great to hear a choreographer using living music (Wilson’s Insurgentes was released in 2008).

For the middle point of “Growing Divide” Michál Zabavik fixes us with a fierce contemptuous stare. Zabavik dares society to take him on. Hatred in his eyes screams the anger/frustration of underemployed existence.

In some ways, “Growing Divide” is like music video choreography. Cat fights break out between the women. It is certainly not your grandmother’s modern dance.

Especially good were Dianne Gray, Nori Aoki, Biag Gaongen and Michael Munoz and Michál Zabavik. Strangely, as a dancer, James Wilton himself seemed to be a little bit at sea in his own production. His weaker physique and soft face seemed a bit out of place among the relatively hard bodies of the Graz dancers. Agnès Girard didn’t has not caught up to the fury or the precision of her colleagues. Jana Drgonova who had such touching presence in “I can think and dream about it” went through the motions in “Growing Divide”. Combat and violence are clearly not her muse.

James Wilton Michael Munoz Dianne Gray

At one point Taylor does a quieter solo in a cross projected from the ceiling, both a window frame and a cross. The change of pace was welcome.

Both pieces left us wishing for a little more in what seemed a short evening.

A point of artistic interest is the more or less permanent cross pollination between Oper Graz. Guest choreographer James Wilson and his dancer Sarah Jane Taylor participate in all the Graz shows and have taken some of Oper Graz’s dancers to England with them for their own touring.

Artistic director Darrel Toulon insists that cross pollination is the way forward: “It means dancers are knocked out of their normal hiearchy and have to treat the work as fresh. They are on their best and most competitive behaviour”. Toulon also likes having the guest choreographer help grow his piece past the premiere. Toulon still regrets not being able to bring in a few of Jie Dong’s dancers from China (part of the original conception of the evening): “It just didn’t fit within the budget”.

Neither piece as electric as the Guido Markowitz’s “ Sometimes it is not nice to be me” from last year. Part of the issue may be the absence due to injury of Bostjan Ivanjsic, the incredible soloist and leader of the Oper Graz dance company. While everyone else does their best, Ivanjsic’s physical presence and charisma is not easily replaced. Hopefully he will soon return to the lineup.

James Wilton may be the future of British choreography and is certainly an exciting creator but we are in the early days still. May he retain his willingness to tackle big issues along the way. It’s refreshing to see a choreographer leaving behind both deconstructionism and maudlin love to take on the world.

All photographs copyright Werner Kmetitsch/Oper Graz.

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.