Here’s a few photos.

Obligatory fries and leberkase sandwiches. Fortunately for the gourmets, Bisto Hannah was there with excellent goulash.

Kahr/Post Office is turned into an open-air bar, lit by the shop windows.

Delicious 2018 Red Cuvée in elegant glasses poured by off-duty music verein leader Claudia Domschitz.

Constantin collecting an ice cream cone. The goulash is in the silver pot.

These guys were very good, the lead singer had a rich and acccurate baritone, and his players hit all the notes. This is the best band I’ve heard play Kittsee.

She’s in the Bistro Hannah car, enjoying delicious goulash and the music.

Most of the evening he played with his friends in an extensive playground with jousting, nut cannon and boat swings.

Fortunately in German, there’s a much better song than “Happy Birthday”. It’s called “How Wonderful that You were Born” (“Wie schön dass du geboren bist”) by Rolf Zuckowski. We’ve just done a video for our sons’ aunt’s 60th birthday. For that video, I made an English translation as I couldn’t find a good one online. Here is my translation:

Heute kann es regnen,
stürmen oder schneien,
denn du strahlst ja selber
wie der Sonnenschein.
Heut ist dein Geburtstag,
darum feiern wir,
alle deine Freunde
freuen sich mit dir

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
wir gratulieren dir, Geburtstagskind!

Unsere guten Wünsche
haben ihren Grund:

bitte bleib noch lange
glücklich und gesund.
Dich so froh zu sehen,
ist was uns gefällt,
Tränen gibt es schon
genug auf dieser Welt.

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
wir gratulieren dir, Geburtstagskind!

Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch,
das ist ganz egal,
Dein Geburtstag kommt im Jahr
doch nur einmal.
Darum lass uns feiern,
dass die Schwarte kracht,
heute wird getanzt,
gesungen und gelacht.

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
wir gratulieren dir, Geburtstagskind!

Come rain, snow or storm
no matter, you shine
like rays from the sun
It's your Birthday
today all your friends
will celebrate with you.



How wonderful that you were born,
we would so miss you otherwise,
How wonderful that we are together,
Contratulations, Birthday child {boy/girl}


Our best Wishes
are most serious

Stay long healthy 
and happy. Seeing your
happiness is what we like.
There's tears enough
in this world.


How wonderful that you were born,
we would so miss you otherwise,
How wonderful that we are together,
Contratulations, Birthday {child/boy/girl}


Monday, Tuesday, **Wednesday**
it's all the same
It's your birthday only once
each year. Let us celebrate
until the dawn breaks,
this day we'll dance
and sing and laugh


How wonderful that you were born,
we would so miss you otherwise,
How wonderful that we are together,
Contratulations, Birthday child {boy/girl}

There’s a lot of work to be done on meter and rhyme still to make a finished song, but the language of this translation offers some of the dignity, simplicity and elegance of Zuckowski’s original. Zuckowski is still alive (long may he still thrive) and is considered Germany’s most successful recording artist. Hence “Wie schön dass du geboren bist” should still be under copyright for public performance or recording.

Image of Rolf Zuckowski with the Elbkinderlandchor in 2015 copyright Frank Schwichtenberg and licensed under the GFDL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A deep and beautiful evening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yakovleva is now in her prime as a ballerina at 27 years of age. It’s always a joy to see a dancer with all the strength and beauty of youth, but with solid experience. The non-ballet public often makes the mistake of going to see celebrated dancers when they are past their prime. The time to see Yakovleva is now.

[fvplayer src=’Maria-Yakovleva-Masayu-Kimoto-La-Sylphide.mp4′ popup=’Maria Yakovleva and Masayu Kimoto in La Sylphide 7 April 2013, Wiener Staatsoper’ width=”500″ height=”280″ splash=”masayu-kimoto-maria-yakovleva-la-sylphide-preview.png”]
Maria Yakoleva, Masayu Kimoto and Andrey Kaydanovsky in the tragic final scene
of La Sylphide at Vienna State Opera 7 April 2013: 
Yakoleva’s final moments are truly touching

Returning to the young Yakovleva, her early faults were too much attention to her footwork and not enough attention to her emotions, as well as too strong a reliance on what is indeed a charming smile. In modern works, recently she’s overcome her urge to charm with strong expressive dancing. Yet in the title role of La Sylphide, Yakovleva continues to charm but without entirely bewitching. There’s some secret part of her which she does not give to the stage. This is not to say Yakovleva is not entirely delightful as she effortlessly dances through even the most challenging sequences.

The two other leads, Masayu Kimoto as James and Kiyoka Hashimoto as Effie, gave us an interesting pair of betrothed, both Japanese. The contrast gave a special kick to James’s search for the perfect woman, i.e. one who is different from the banality of everyday life, someone truly special. I haven’t seen a full Japanese ballet company and sometimes wonder how our two local stars would fit in, back in a top company in Japan. Would they be immediate principals there as well or would they have to fight their way through as soloists?

Kimoto made one very good choice in the evening. His James really struggled to stay with Effie, resisting the enchantments of the Sylphide right to the very end.

Alas Hashimoto didn’t give him much reason to stay. Hashimoto has often seemed b flat to me on stage and so it was again. There’s nothing wrong with her steps or her form, she enjoys dancing but she restrains her emotions too much or she just can’t express them. Kamil Pavelka as Gurn, James’s best friend, does his best to help Hashimoto out of a tight spot. Pavelka is visibly eager to take James’s place at Effie’s side from the start of the ballet. We could viscerally feel his delight at catching James cheating with another woman, hiding her under a blanket, his enthusiasm at raising the alarm and sense his deep frustration when there is nothing and no one there when the bridesmaids lift the blanket to find nothing. He is a first rate Gurn.

In passing I should note that Yakovleva would be as fine a spurned Effie as she is the Sylphide. Out of the ballerinas at Staastoper the best Sylphide must certainly be Irina Tsymbal who is able to expose more fragility than any other dancer in the company. Olga Esina is too majestic to be truly at home on this territory and Ludmila Konovlova too brutal.

A pairing of Yakovleva as Effie and Tsymbal as la Sylphide would be visually interesting as they would be like a mirror reflection. As Effie, all of Yakovleva’s sweet charms would be put to good work and she would not need to worry about the ethereal where Tsymbal is entirely at home.

James’s dilemma continues to fascinate me. Some of the orchestra members rode the train away with me and suggested La Sylphide might be out of date. The music, yes. But not the theme, I don’t think. The musicians don’t see much from the orchestra pit which might be why their musical performance is sometimes a bit tired.

Every day men continue to senselessly chase fantasy women while neglecting the woman at their side. When James finally catches La Sylphide with the magic scarf and she perishes, it’s just a metaphor for what happens when a man catches the fantasy woman. If he’s lucky she turns into a mother and a cook and someone with menstrual pains, probably far less suited to be his consort than the women of his standing and circle whom he left behind. If he’s unlucky, it could be much worse.

I remember visiting the home of an exotic snake dancer from Kazan in Moscow. Dark blonde Tatar Dina was one of the most beautiful and elegant women I’ve ever seen. A giant python and Middle Eastern veils were her costume during her acrobatic act. To my delight, I was able to get the green eyed beauty’s telephone number and a few days later we went to the theatre together. After the theatre and a romantic supper, I took Dina home to the far outskirts of the city. At home there was an alcoholic mother who was happy to see me and who tried to sell me her still uncertain daughter.

This strange plan went off the rails when her jealous (ex)boyfriend turned up, despite being told Dina was not at home. He broke the window and climbed into the first floor apartment. The mother tried to settle him down and prevented him from slicing his own wrists with a knife but that only turned his rage outwards. He came after Dina and I with a crowbar, the mother held onto him while we fled into the stairwell and out across the fields.

Dina’s boyfriend’s maniacal screams could be heard somewhere in the distance but getting closer. As the lights from the Moscow suburbs faded behind us, there was time for a passionate kiss and then goodbye. Dina’s last words to me were, “Goodbye. I must go, I do not want Vanya to kill himself or my mother.”

Our worlds were too far apart. A Sylphide died for me in that dirty field. La Sylphide is anything but out of date. And this is a short story with a relatively happy end. It could have been the end of all roads that night.

In the ballet tonight, the two lovers are separated by Madge, a witch, admirably portrayed by Andrey Kaydanovsky. Kimoto is cavorting in the woods with his Sylphide Yakovleva but can’t seem to hold her down. Kaydanovsky gives Kimoto a magic scarf which when Kimoto wraps it around Yakovleva’s neck and wrists, kills her after a final sad dance together. Kimoto/James is left alone in the woods with nothing, while Gurn is enjoying both his hearth and his bride.

The timeless message of La Sylphide is clear: Young men, do not grow up to be James. Do not senselessly pursue illusions, but love the here and now, the women you know.

Kaydanovsky and his witches are admirably outfitted with ghastly masks in Pierre Ciceri’s fine historic reconstruction of Pierre Lacotte’s original. Kaydanovsky manages to be both feminine, hideous and evil in his gestures. By softening his Madge he makes her much wickeder. He is a real revelation in this role.

Alas the same cannot be said of Maria Alati and Marcin Dempc, in their featured pas-de-deux. Alati while a beautiful woman and a charming dancer suffers from a severe bout of Don Quixote syndrome – itself nothing but a string of empty pas de deux, usually performed to roaring circus applause and as far from meaningful art as it’s possible to get.

I.e. all of Alati’s steps are fine, her smile is broad but her whole performance is both hard and brittle. She’s just a ballet dancer. I hope someone will take Alati aside for some acting lessons, as with her physical gifts, she would otherwise be capable of dancing large roles. If not, she’ll have to be content with her place as a good half-soloist.

Marcin Dempc is an interesting character. The Polish dancer does a fine job and has reasonable presence, while lacking the charm of a leading man. A smaller dancer, he also lacks the proportions to easily manhandle larger ballerinas. Somehow his pas-de-deux with Alati despite great early promise managed to be just charming.

Kimoto also seemed to struggle a bit with some of his lifts. Apparently it was only his second performance, so it may just be a performance issue rather than a strength issue. Ballerinas always look so much better in the hands of men who lift them with certainty and carry them like feathers. I’d like to see Yakovleva with a more accomplished James, although I don’t exclude that Kimoto will get there himself one day.

If anyone dares to say Kimoto is a first rate James, s/he never saw Sergei Filin dance this role. Filin was full of masculine energy, with bold flashing eyes and youthful idealism. He lifted both ballerinas as if he was waving his hand. With Filin, La Sylphide was an experience not to forget: that’s where the markers are, not getting through the part adequately. 

Eva Polacek as the mother was quite heart warming, which is what one can hope for from the role. Alice Firenze, Alena Klochova and Andrea Némethová were lovely enough solo Sylphides, although none of them shone brilliantly tonight or perhaps it was Yakovleva who simply was more radiant.

The Nutcracker. Author: Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Staatsoper

At the Vienna State Opera, Liudmila Konavlova as Clara holds the
nutcracker, surrounded by the giant heads of the grown-ups

Photo: Wiener Staatsoper

Every child should see The Nutcracker at least once. But if you want her to remember and him to treasure the occasion, best to be very careful which Nutcracker you choose.

Thus the new Nutcracker at Vienna State Opera is not a bad choice. It’s a Russian version, from Rudolf Nureyev, one of his first grand evening ballets in the West. The costumes are very traditional and very Russian: fancy officers’ uniforms, the grand gowns of the 19th century. The soldiers are Napoleonic and numerous, there are Hussars on horses (well, convincing enough). The decorations are as rich as the costumes, with photorealistic drawing rooms and massive grandfather clocks.

A realistic fairy tale

Despite his own fame as a dancer, what’s special in Nureyev’s Nutcracker is the stagecraft. Avoiding the metaphoric or symbolic approach of someone like Yuri Grigorovich and other more recent Nutcracker revisionists, Nureyev treated it like a realistic fairy tale, full of plot and visual effects as in a Hollywood film.

Particularly charming are all the children. There are dozens of them in the ballroom scene playing the soldier army. Seeing so many other children on stage will surely delight the ones in the audience. In the end, the stage is just as much a mirror for children as it is for us, the grownups. Overall, it’s a great scene, with partygoers evoking all the decadence of fin-de-siècle Russia. The Staatsoper men look splendid in their fake moustaches (some should consider growing them!) and Gabor Oberegger and Franziska Wallner-Hollinek were the perfect hosts of the family Christmas.

Born to Vienna high society in real life, the very beautiful Wallner-Hollinek has just the right aristocratic nose, height and noble bearing. The artifice of her Viennese charm perhaps lacks a certain Russian frankness, but aristocrats are aristocrats. The lively interaction between partygoers is captivating, occasionally even distracting us from the core action.

From here the first act takes off in one plot event after another. The party ends, the Nutcracker soldier is broken by brother Fritz, the rats arrive and are defeated in hand to hand combat. The Rat King returns with reinforcements and they kill a legion of toy soldiers. Clara is surrounded and barely gets away before Drosselmeyer, dressed as the prince, comes to her rescue. Spectacular snowflakes in titanium and silver descend from the rafters and bring the first act to a triumphant close.

The second act is completely different: All dance and no plot, in one extended dream sequence with variation after variation, a relentless sequence of pas de deux. After that it’s Spanish, Arabian, Russian, Chinese and pastoral variations until you think you can’t stand another jeté. You might want to take the kids home at the end of Act I, as even many adults won’t have the patience for the second.

Snowflakes descend from the rafters to close the first act of the Nutcracker | Photo: Wiener Staatsoper

Snowflakes descend from the rafters to close the first act of the Nutcracker
Photo: Wiener Staatsoper

And what of the dancing?

As a young dancer now in his prime, Vladimir Shishov switched between the old Drosselmeyer and the Prince with great grace, the perfect age to act both parts convincingly. He’s also strong enough and large enough to easily lift ballerinas of any girth.

Davide Dato and Emilia Baranowicz make a delightful Fritz and Luisa and return to dance the Spanish dance convincingly. Baranowicz has an easy charm on stage and Dato has a sweet, if a bit cloying, boyishness, which suits the role of Fritz.

Out of the variations, Ketevan Papava and Eno Peci’s comic Arabic duet stood out, combining just the right amount of mystery with humour. Georgian beauty Papava helps pickpocket Peci nick the purse of their master Christoph Wenzel, before they run off with his money, delighted in their own subterfuge.

Legris gave the role of Clara to Liudmila Konovalova, one of his recruits from Vladimir Malakhov’s Berlin Staatsballett. Nominally Konovalova is a powerful and physical dancer with great technique, and is better suited to this role than any other I’ve seen her in. But while her round face is quite child-like, her sulky petulance is not entirely Clara. As physically capable as she is, hard and brassy is not charming in a ballerina: She comes across as Tanya Harding in pointe shoes.

Be on the lookout instead for Maria Yakovleva’s performances on 23 and 25 December, or even Natalie Kusch on 26 October. Finally, Ludmila Konavlova will be performing on 27 and 28 December.

Der Nussknacker
Vienna State Opera
1., Opernring 2
www.wiener-staatsoper.at

Three hints for kids at The Nutcracker:
1. Arrive on time so the child has time to get used to the environment, can take his or her own seat, and must not sit at the back of the auditorium.

2. Buy tickets as close to the stage as possible. Children have no conception of choreographic formation and no reason to have one. They want to experience the ballet and not see it from a distance.

3. Consider leaving after the first act of The Nutcracker. The first act is very lively and full of toys and action and plot. The second act just sort of drones on and on with endless pas de deux and huge dance scenes.

Originally published by Alec Kinnear on October 26, 2012 in The Vienna Review

The colours of the bottle, the shoes and the skirt fascinated me here. The ordinary becomes extraordinary: normally these trains are banal commuter ferries.

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Technical notes

This is shot on Canon 40mm 2.8 lens at aperture 5 on full frame. 40mm seems an almost perfect every day focal length. The 40mm 2.8 STM is also sharp, edge to edge in a way that no other lens I own is (apart perhaps a Leica Elmarit 90mm). The rich colours (hardly enhanced, just a bit of vignetting to kill off unneeded corner detail and focus the eyes on the subject. There is no real sharpening either. An incredible lens.

Franz West by Ludwig Koeln

Moderator and hands on organiser Jennifer Lacey did her best to keep the program on track but at two hours without a formal break and some real trouble moving the performers on and off, momentum was uneven. Had Lacey known how many pauses there would be, she could have passed on the introduction and done that in forced breaks. She told one joke which made me laugh while waiting what seemed like half an hour for Philip Gehmacher to get out of the back and onto the stage. Gehmacher’s equipment in the end was moved out onto the stage by force by Intendant Regensburger himself.

“As dancers we learn young to come on time or ahead of time and to be ready. Visual artists don’t ever seem to get this message – they are almost always late and badly organised – so collaborating with them is always an adventure for us.”

To open there was a beat poetry reading in the upper foyer of Kasino. Then the doors opened and a blonde transvestite in the most amazing electric blue platform heels pranced out.

“you can fuck a German in English too, fuck the uglies too to be kind and polite.”

I believe this was François Chaignaud.

Right after Chris Haring came out to show off one of his simplest tech tricks, microphone wrangling. Haring uses two loudspeakers and a microphone on a long cord. First he swings the mike between the speakers like a bell to get the measure of the feedback and then he starts to swing it around his head slowly and then faster. All the while his sound guy cranks up the volume into a crescendo of sound. It’s an impressive party trick. The stocky Haring can still really swing a mike like a rodeo man.

Here Lacey told us a bit about Franz West. He was a “participatory audience member. He would come to shows he wouldn’t like to be challenged by the work. An elegant hippy punk. Unlike most artists, West just got better as he got older.”

At this point, the highlight of the evening. Benoît Lachambre strutted out in thigh high platform bondage boots with a studded dog collar wrapped around his neck. Lachambre sang a song of unrequited love in a long term relationship, the pace of it tapped out by long strides with his boots. A pretty girl in tight blue hotpants and long dark hair joined him on stage, doing strange tricks like standing on her head and shaking her butt like a gogo girl. At one point Claire Furey puts on red sparkling Dorothy shoes from the Wizard of Oz and accompanies Lachambre in his rhythmic stomping. Finally Furey sits down at the piano and sings a richer version of Lachambre’s lament. Furey here sounds as good as Tori Amos, while Lachambre offers his rump coyly to the audience in a passive position of love.

The idea was good but what made Lachambre’s piece stand out was the intensity of his performance. Lachambre emoted the despair of love at the audience at volume know 12 out of 10, with a pasty face and bulging mad eyes. One worried for the man’s health. The effortless sexiness of Furey gave a necessary gloss of glamour to Lachambre’s gay madness.

After the show an Israeli Dancewebber where Lachambre is the mentor this year told me about what he had taught them: “Lachambre always talks about energy. Energy and more energy is the core of performance.” He’s not wrong.

Cecilia Bengolea did a cover of Kate Bush’s song “Wuthering Heights”. I’ve always loved Kate Bush’s fluttering voice and passion here. Bengolea got off to a surprisingly strong start despite a very present French accent. Alas, when she started to move, her vocal work limited her dancing and her dancing limited her vocal work. I think it’s the only time I’ve seen Bengolea perform clothed. I don’t think this performance can ever progress beyond shock value as there is no physical way to do the singing and dancing right.

Right here we went right off the deep end – but as this was a tribute to Franz West, it’s not important what I think but what he would have thought and I believe he would like the next (non-)performance very much. One of the world’s most famous Baroque violinists came over to perform the piece. The violinist very seriously set himself up on stage and played some tuning notes. We waited two minutes and thirty six seconds for him to start playing. He never did. The piece is called “Moment of potential silence”. It could just as easily be called “Moment of missed potential”. Bringing a world class performer to not perform is highly ironic and about as intelligent as burning €500 notes. As a political act, yes it’s highly charged. But as a long term proposition it has nothing to offer.

Now a new black strip of stage had to be rolled out. An enormous young woman in a black fur coat, a tall hair bun and nothing else strode out and stood in the middle of the stage, challenging us with her glare. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons starts. She rips off her fur coat, revealing hills of plump powerful flesh. Now she starts to powder her body as she tremors to Vivaldi. Shoulders, arms, breasts, belly. Turn and now buttocks in a rolling crescendo before stomping naked off stage. Again a party trick but a good one, confusing us with signals of classical culture, hygiene, body image and overt sexuality from non-standard body shapes. Doris Ulrich deserves praise both for the composition and for the performance.

Next come out a couple of old guys in worn out suits. It turns out to be the hairdresser of Franz West on stage with a massive soap bubble apparatus and a musician who worked with him in a beanie cap and a trumpet. A confusing twenty minutes of bubbles and half hearted trumpet. These guys are definitely going to miss Franz West as without him the world is just not quite the same. It was great to see them and to know what is waiting for all of us whether twenty years or fifty years down the road: the respect of time obscured by the confusion of age. Time waits for no man. Sow when the sun is high.

A young black gentleman in a black skirt came on stage to apologise for not being a singer and then to sing a song about “Daddy’s eyes” with the principle line being “Daddy is an alcoholic”. A moving enough performance but bit off topic. Dancers doing song covers is not really innovative or breaking the mold.

Philip Gehmacher took forever to get his act together and to come out on stage for semi improvised percussion with synthesiser on top. Phil Spector’s wall of sound. But not nearly so polished. I felt like we were being exposed to the experiments of a musician just starting his career. Something like a small child bringing his droppings to present to his mother, confident in his mother’s love and praise. Despite emptying half the hall (as usual), Gehmacher did collect a hearty round of applause after his half hour of diddling so I guess his expectations are not wrong. The sad part about this performance is that the pause waiting for it to be set up and the length of the performance broke the back of the evening. By the time we all left we were exhausted and drained.

Ivo Dimchev came out in a blonde wig which accented his cherubic face. The amazing trick Dimchev has of switching from angelic to demonic is quite mesmerising. He played with some sculptures, swapped the sculptures around, danced around to techno, scared the audience a bit by threatening to throw the sculpture at us, dry humped the corner of the wooden box he brought out with his props. Dimchev reminds me of King Lear’s fool: his madness allows him to say or do whatever he wants without giving anyone the right to offence. As much as “The P Project” delighted, this piece confused me. Showing off Dimchev’s talents but without much purpose.

Finally Mark Tompkins in his Sinatra suit wrapped up the evening with a performance of Heaven. “A place where nothing happens.” A fitting end to a tribute to a departed and much loved friend. As Karl Regensburger said in a short speech:

“I’d like to think that somewhere Franz has moved on to other works and other projects and that he is still with us in spirit. Such a creative force cannot come to an end, can it?”

High points? I was happy to have seen Benoît Lachambre’s work finally, in just the right dose to start. Doris Ulrich in the fur coat with baby powder is a very effective work. Seeing Mark Tompkins sing is always a pleasure. The beat poetry in the hallway was very good. Putting together almost overnight tributes is not an easy task and it is wonderful that Franz West got just the public wake he would have wanted.

The Burgtheater Vestibule is a great place for a nightly outdoor party.  When the weather is good, a large part of the party can be outside.

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ImpulstTanz lounge summer in the city

It’s a great place to run into choreographers and dancers whose work you might be curious about. Generally the big stars are not there all that often (big stars are often older and have families and just don’t go out that much anymore: being a star is hard work, everyone always wants a lot from you and expectations are high).

ImPulstTanz lounge young and beautiful

Inside there’s usually some very good music spinning. On this particular night, it was mainly dance club hits from the mid-eighties, often in remixes. Some dance better, some dance worse but there’s some good dancing to be seen. What is nice is the feeling in the room: it’s a celebration of dancing and movement rather than clothes.

The couple in the middle of this picture are very stylish. A pleasure to watch them groove through their animal prime, moving like panthers.