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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Petrushka – Eno Peci

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movements to Stravinsky – András Lukács

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Firebird – Andrei Kaydanovsky

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

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

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

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

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

Hier bist du Vogelfütter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orchestra – Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

All images copyright Wiener Volksoper 2017 and Ashley Turner.

Dancer credits beneath each photo in lightbox

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.