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.

Horecna Contra Clockwise Witness 1

The Second Detail opens up with a huge bright grey rehearsal space with just the words THE at the front. Thin white horizontal lines dividge the strange into precise grids. The dancers are in the same grey as the floor. I’m not quite sure why Apple is getting away with suing Samsung for packaging as Forsythe had the iPhone and MacBook Air boxing under control back in 1991 in Frankfurt. This is an early great work.

Vienna State Ballet company looks great dancing Forsythe these days. Under Legris, they’ve acquired both the élan necessary and the discipline necessary to put it all together. Strangely, the men have improved more than the women (who have been excellent as along as I’ve been in Vienna). Particularly notable is strongman Vladimir Shiskov but Mihail Sosnovichi also delivers an imposing performance while Eno Peci and Alexis Forbasco look good too. All of the men have developed powerful lower bodies and are a joy to watch.

In Forsythe, Olga Esina is in her element. Her perfect and pure lines outclass any other ballerina in the Staatsoper (and most in the world) even before she starts to dance. Forsythe’s dry emotions don’t even leave her colleagues a chance to make up for catch up ground.

Indeed, the whole company looked great with Nina Polakova in good form alongside Reina Sawai and Rui Tamai. Prisca Zeisel was given one of the more substantial roles. In her third season, Vienna’s child phenomenon has grown into a beautiful woman but needs to lighten her footwork is she is to catch the likes Polakova, Papava or Esina.

Rafaella Sant’Anna enters in a Greek toga in a large role as a woman from another time who wanders into this world of perfect bodies and machine like precision. She negotiates with aplomb tricky balance between balletic grace and primitive movement.

There was no orchestra playing tonight and I wondered why the stage was not built over the orchestra pit. The only issue with the whole evening is that the dance somehow seems quite far away. With an orchestra that’s justified but with an empty pit it makes little sense. In the end, the orchestra did arrive for Lander.

The second ballet “Contra Clockwise Witness” is the work of Slovak expatriate Natalia Horecna, a relatively young choreographer who only recently gave up her place as one of the stars at Netherlands Dance Theatre. I worried Horecna would just be another NDT dancer recycling what she’d seen as a poor reflection of the original.

The stage opens with choreographer dancer András Lukács with this head in a noose. It’s a lovely reference to Jeune Homme et la Mort which will follow Contra Clockwise Witness through its development. Three male angels of death gather with Greig Matthews as a imposing leader. The skull makeup, his two metre frame and fierce dancingf frighten like a good horror film.

At first we think it’s an execution but it appears to be more a suicide. While Lukács fathoms his own death a naked Andrey Kaydanovsky (curiously the other serious choreographer among active Staatsoper dancers) slides up behind him. Kaydanovsky will be Lukács spirit/shadow henceforth. Kaydanovsky represents mortality.

Five dancers in transparent gowns have entranced us now, Rafaella Sant’Anna keeping pace as a ballerina now in an excellent group of angels. The most remarkable movement was Avraam, whose movement is entirely otherworldly, controlled and abandoned at the same time. Céline Janou Weder and Ketevan Papava kept Avraam a close pace.

We then start to see episodes from other people’s lives as Kaydanovsky reads a magic silver book of tales. Emlia Barancowicz dances a charming comic book can-can, all gypsy red with a virile Mihail Sosnovichi with no pants and flowing hair. Alas they both die, falling through the floor.

The good angels leave us and we face hysterical dark angels in wigs, who shout in unison at us. In the back of the stage there is a giant door. Kaydanovsky tries to penetrate but he is pushed away by two male hands. Frantic Paganini violin solos animate ballerina shadows who circle the stage like abandoned wraiths. Two lovers push through long white tunnels to unite in the center of the stage naked, again Sosnovichi and Baranowicz. Now we get film music, as if from Hollywood but here à propos. The whole stage shakes with the low notes (whoever did the technical prep did a great job, I’ve not heard canned music sound so convincing in a dance performance). They shiver in the dark.

Lukács eventually wakes from his nightmare and goes on to live. A happy ending to a dark piece.

Horecna’s work is profound and shows the full potential of dance. When united with dramaturgy and adequate staging, dance can be life changing. Grigorovich understood that and gave that gift to John Neumeier and it lives on Horecna. Dance is just an element to help reveal the essential, asking questions like what is the after life, do we have a soul, can lovers meet in the after life.

Horecna’s answers appear to be yes we have a should but the next world is more frightening than we could ever possible imagine. Contra Clockwise Witness like Swan Lake or Giselle is the kind of work one can see again and again and find something new each time. This is a masterwork and Manuel Legris should be applauded for bringing it to the main stage in Vienna.

Horecna was with us tonight in Vienna: it’s thrilling to see true living choreography on our main stage.

The last piece begins in the dark with dozens of legs in near blackness executing perfect fouettés. To cloying music from dead Dane Knudage Riisager on Carl Czerny’s original Etudes. For almost ten minutes. I think this is the first time in my life I have not enjoyed the Vienna Philharmonic.

Fortunately the lights came up and we could see almost the whole company from Dagmer Kronenberg to the beautiful Hungarians. We could admire how comfortable ballet dancers can make uncomfortable poses look. Cypriot Ionna Avraam looked especially at ease with the legs twisted.

From there it just went downhill. Apparently the theme was how beautiful and remarkable the ballet is.

Roman Lazik was the first fall guy as the perfect romantic hero, prancing around the stage. Of course, showboat Denys Cherevychko was right in his element piroetting for applause. Peculiarly Cherevychko’s leaps do not fly as high as his self-esteem. His Italian point man Davide Dato managed to outdance the ambitious Ukrainian.

Lead dancer Kiyoka Hashimoto acquitted herself well, considering the vacuity of the material. She didn’t allow her smile to smudge into a grimace and always moved with grace.

Etudes could just work with dancers of the calibre of Olga Esina and Ketevan Papava. With the second tier, it’s a frightfully dull experience. Even worse than watching ballet rehearsal. More like watching ballet class. Watching musicians play scales.

If you visit Ballett-Hommage, you will lose little if you leave after the first two acts.

The audience collectively takes a breath, expecting the full stage to explode in dance. No dice. All but two dancers slowly slink off to the wings. Over the course of the next half hour deserted stage is gradually built back up to full, but never does Suite en Blanc manage to equal the thunder of its opening salvo.

Quickly Suite en Blanc turns into a battle of the ballerinas, the ballerinas parade out one by one to show their dressage qualities.

Highly rated Ludmila Konovalova has finally found some costume designers who understand her figure and for once her kit doesn’t make her powerful body look like a female hockey player. She acquits herself well with Alexis Forabosco and Shane A. Wuerthner providing steady support.

Nina Poláková, normally one of the most expressive ballerinas in the Staatsoper, prances in at speed. An empty pastiche of Eduouard Lalo’s Namouna and Lifar’s absent libretto don’t leave Poláková much else to do than show off a silly smile. Strange to see such a deep dancer come off as vacuous.

Prima Olga Esina copes better with the absence of story. Esina is regal, each move effortless, beautiful, poised. She unleashes twenty fast pirouettes on us at the end of her solo to thundering applause.

In this endless talent show, Denys Cherevychko is up next. Cherevychko shows off with some amazing turning jetés. Clearly Chervychko continues to train hard: his rounded butt cheeks resemble the haunches of a racing thoroughbed. While Cherevychko’s confidence remains unlimited as ever, his bravura performance left me indifferent. A bit of texture and refinement would do more for his performance than additional acrobatics.

Next Irina Tsymbal and Roman Lazik dance a lyrical pas de deux. Tsymbal outshines all of the bigger names who preceded, with feeling, consant musicality and expression. Even Lazik shows off a surprisingly good ballon. I haven’t really ever seen him dance on his own. Even at this mature stage of his career, Lazik begun again to develop under Legris.

Maria Yakovleva put in a perfunctory but satisfactory performance to close out the battle of the ballerinas. Yakovleva was ever comfortable in the mask of the prima. Chalk one up for long shot Irina Tysmbal with favorite Olga Esina following closely.

While the costumes gleam, Suite in Blanc’s steps throughout are fairly anondyne. High leg extensions. Leaps here and there. Pirouettes and enjambés, like a ballet class. Curiously, Suite en Blanc was put together for the 1943 season in Paris to show off the capabilities of the Opera de Paris dancers to the occupying Nazis.

Lifar was the one personality the French got to keep from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Balanchine and Fokine left to America. While Lifar is an important part of French ballet history (the Opera de Paris credit Lifar with founding the tradition of technical excellence at Palais Garnier), I’m not at all certain that his work holds more than historic interest. Lifar himself described Suite en Blance as “true parade of technique, a demonstration of developments in contemporary dance.”

Happily, Nils Christie’s Before Nightfall is as deep as Suite en Blanc is shallow.

Built on the music of Bohuslav Martinu’s Double Concert for Strings, Piano and Pauken, Before Nightfall is a trip into profound feeling. Dark colours, dim lights left us in the solitariness of the woods. Elegant costumes, with bare arms. The men bare to the midriff.

Ketevan Papava, the only principal ballerina not to perform in Suite en Blance (exception Dagmer Kronenberger) from round one, quickly made an impression with her long expressive arms. In principle, she was in a dream couple with Eno Peci. Alas, Peci while both beautiful and dancing well enough, didn’t seem to have his head in the game, so Papava had to carry all the drama of the opening set herself.

Nina Polakova returned but this time with an purpose. With an emotional line to follow, Poláková floated like an enraged leaf in winter winds. Her arms bent back, her back opened. This is the Poláková we know and admire: not a show horse but an artist. Her partner Roman Lazik fully entered into the moment, a perfect antidote to Poláková’s angst. One wonders if Legris is coaching him personally. He has become a different dancer.

Liudmila Konovalova and Mihail Sosnovschi put in a perfectly satisfactory performance as the third couple but with less flare than Papava-Peci or Poláková-Lazik. In contrast, the supporting couples were astonishingly good, particularly Ionna Avraam whose talent continues to menace the stars ahead of her and the three men Richard Szabó, Masayu Kimoto and Davide Dato. The trio of men danced with incredible passion and intensity. At that pace, any of them could easily have taken the place of Peci, Lazik or Sovnoschi.

The final work of the evening was Roland Petit’s L’Arlésienne. Petit is most famous for Death and the Young Man (1946). Also a tragic love story, L’Arlésienne came much later in 1974. With a casting of real life couple Maria Yakovleva and Kirill Kourlaev, hopes were high for an incredibly moving and powerful experience.

The curtains open on half a dozen women in peasant dress costume dancing a jig with a half a dozen men looking like Italian sailors. The backdrop is a huge Van Gogh painting.

The Baltic damsel beside me leant over and asked if this wasn’t a famous Soviet work. I can understand her confusion. George Bizet’s loud and relentlessly cheerful Suite Number 1 and 2 hits you over the head like a marching band.

It turns out Kourlaev’s Frédéri is experiencing premarriage jitters. So we share a few rounds of the jitters with him. By the time Kourlaev is naked to the waist and running around the stage losing his mind, the intensity picks up a bit but Kourlaev seemed to be holding back a bit, not dancing with his usual abandon. Perhaps he has not fully recovered from a recent leg injury. Ironically, despite their real life love, Yakovleva and Kourlaev are not a particularly expressive couple on stage.

The evening is called “Masterworks of the Twentieth Century”. A more fitting name would be “Productions danced by Opera de Paris during Manuel Legris’ time as a dancer”. The only one worth rescuing is Before Nightfall.

I could see why the Opera de Paris might want to perform this evening to reflect their history. But I don’t see why we should face tired French works, when there is a world of fresh choreography out there and many true Masterworks of the Twentieth Century to perform first.

I would have to put the evening down as Manuel Legris’s second small misstep as artistic director of the Vienna State Opera Ballet, after Marie Antoinette. Everyone is human. What worries me more is that Legris seems to be working with an eye more on Paris than on Vienna. A program like Masterworks of the Twentieth Century would be welcome in Paris like Marie Antoinette, just the right calling card for someone who aspires to the post of Artistic Director of the Ballet of Opera de Paris.

General Director Dominique Meyer of the Vienna Staatsoper has just signed a five year contract extension. Hopefully he can keep Manuel Legris’ mind on the work at hand in Vienna. The best calling card for Legris would be to turn the Vienna State Opera Ballet into a world class company performing original work, not a second string clone of the Opera de Paris.

Fortunately Before Nightfall is a strong enough piece to justify an evening out.

Once more former artistic director Gyula Harangozo deserves a mention for the legacy of beautiful talented dancers he left  Manuel Legris to work with. Almost all of today’s and tomorrow’s stars who look so good now were recruited by Harangozo. Nice work.

Upcoming Events

For those inclined to more contemporary work, there will be eight original works shown February 26 to 28 in the beautiful Odeon Theater in Choreolab 2012: Young Choreographers of the Vienna State Opera. For many of the dancers on the program, this is their first chance at a substantial piece of choreography. Choreolab is always an exciting evening as all the work is new creation and there are almost always at least two main stage quality productions.

Volksoper will borrow some dancers from Staatsoper for another original production, Carmen Burana by new Volksoper ballet director Vesna Orlic with her colleagues dancers András Lukács and Boris Nebyla on March 2. The score includes Ravel’s Bolero, Debussy’s Afternoon with a Faun and Carl Orff’s eponymous Carmina Burana. Volksoper dancers like Florian Hurler, Samuel Colombet, Ekaterina Fitzka and Gala Jovanovic who are normally confined to operetta and musicals will have a chance to show their stuff in original choreography.

• the Scottish setting can seem very campy
• adequate stagecraft to preserve a sense of wonder
• the music can come across as thin and grating
• sufficiently large, gifted and beautiful corps-de-ballet
• the male audience can fail to fall in love with La Sylphide
• the women in the public fail to identify with Effie
• the women in the public can wonder what Effie sees in James

Manuel Legris has gotten it all right with Wiener Staatsoper ballet.

Irina Tsymbal as La Sylphide
All photos courtesy & © Max Moser

The decors are very sober, even a little bit drab. You feel inside a Scottish manor somewhere in the Highlands. Yet all the space of the huge Vienna State Opera stage is all there for the variations. In the second act the woods were tremendous and airy.

The small touches of stagecraft were a delight. Sylphides flying across the stage at 15 metres above the stage, Sylphides perched in the branches of the trees, La Sylphide disappearing vertically up the chimney or disappearing instantly into the floor.

The Staatsoper orchestra was in fine form, particularly in the overture which was sufficiently lyrical and touching that one wishes a recording. Through the rest of the ballet the performance was usually very good but the limits of the score were sometimes felt and the music hinted of military marching band. Still I’m far from sure one can do better without reorchestration.

Staatsoper corps de ballet La Sylphide

Manuel Legris has continued to work wonders with the splendid corps-de-ballet that his predessor Harangoza so paintakingly built. There are no less than 23 additional sylphides on stage in the second act. The whole corps-de-ballet looked great. There are small moments of synchronicity to perfect, but it is the premiere after all. There are few over-rehearsed ballet companies left in the world and Vienna Staatsopera ballet is not one of them.

Irina Tsymbal tears of La Sylphide

Irina Tsymbal is a perfect Sylphide. Her pallid complexion and somewhat tragic demeanor finds its natural home. Tsymbal can portray imperious roles as well. She is a very versatile ballerina. But La Sylphide is the most natural fit of all for her.

After the performance, Manuel Legris elevated Irina Tsymbal to First Soloist. It is good to see Legris keep an open mind about dancers. Initially, he planned to release Tsymbal before his first season as what he saw in rehearsal hadn’t impressed him. Fortunately a good fairy told him that Tsymbal’s talents flame on stage and not at the bar. If Legris can remain open to talent like this, he has a long and bright career as a director ahead of him.

Effie is a more difficult role. Danced with sufficient flair, James enchantment with La Sylphide would make no sense. Nina Polakova is almost as lyric a ballerina as Irina Tsymbal, with less of Tysmbal’s undercurrents of dangerous passion. As Effie she very deliberately curbs her charms to become a real girl, in love with her man but more cheerful than deep, trusting than passionate.

Roman Lazik Irina Tsymbal La Sylphide

As James, Roman Lazik is in his element. James is the ordinary guy caught in a remote fantasy. Lazik plays James as a good old boy more than a dreamer. Still, in the second act, he struggles as one feels the the emotion is not in his bones. While Lazik is a very handsome man and a very correct classical dancer and an attentive partner, he lacks a certain passion.

With a truly charismatic and masculine dancer in the role of James – Sergei Filin from the Bolshoi comes to mind – the men identify strongly with James and the women understand and feel both for Effie and La Sylphide. Lazik didn’t fail to move us, but didn’t move us as much as I’d like. This single weakness explains to me why the audience reception was enthusiastic and not ecstastic. I hope we will see Vladimir Shishov in the role of James.

Andrey Kaydanovskiy as Madge

We did see some great performances in secondary roles: Andrei Kaydonovsky was truly wicked as Madge. The pantomine was writ large but he pushed through it with sufficient abandon that we believed in her evil. His movement remained strong but feminine.

Kamil Pavelka was a resolute and sufficiently antagonistic Gurn. One felt his contempt for his friend who was half heartedly stealing the woman he loved. Pavelka is the kind of dancer who is perfect in the secondary role, although I’m not sure how well he’d carry a prince.

The Scottish kilt complemented Mihail Sosnovichi’s shape and gave him more traditional proportions, which along with a good leap and his usual energy helped both Sosnovichi and his partner Maria Alati to an invigorating pas de deux as the young newlyweds.

Mihail Sosnovichi Maria Alatii

Solo Sylphides Alena Klochova Marie Claire d Lyse Andrea Nemethova

The solo Sylphides – Marie-Claire D’Lyse, Alena Klochova, Andrea Némethová – were very good but perhaps a little bit too heroic. Super Sylphides, I would call them. But why must Sylphides always be frail.

Manuel Legris brought in excellent pedagogues: himself and Elisabeth Platel. Gradually he is pulling Vienna up to the level of Opéra de Paris. The danger is too much success and perhaps Paris will be calling him back too soon for Vienna’s good.

On the whole La Sylphide earns a 9 out of 10. If I hadn’t seen Sergei Filin dance James, perhaps I’d give La Sylphide 2011 at Vienna Staatsoper a perfect 10.

Special thanks to Max Moser for his ever excellent dance and theater photos. You can book Max’s services at PhotobyMM.com. His full gallery of La Sylphide.