2023-11-13 04:34:56
“The moon wears a white shirt” – this title sounds interesting and unusual, especially for a dance evening. But what you saw on Sunday evening at the Vienna Volksoper was a ballet evening with three 25-minute, highly conventional choreographies by Martin Schläpfer, Karole Armitage and Paul Taylor to three extraordinary pieces of music. And neither the moon nor any of the dancers wore a white bodysuit.
There were many of them, because the evening is expressly dedicated to the 24 dancers of the State Ballet, who form the Volksoper’s corps de ballet. And a few days after it was announced that the Italian dancer Alessandra Ferri would replace Schläpfer as director of the Vienna State Ballet from September 1, 2025, they showed that they are through and through the “classic company” that Ferri described them as at their performance.
In this respect, the ensemble evening was like a journey in a time machine, a look into an ideal dance world in which things may be haywire outside, in which many crises make life difficult for people, and in which the future of humanity is at stake , but inside the focus is still on whether lifting figures, jumps and turns are carried out with technical perfection and graceful ease. They definitely will this evening. And yet you wonder who missed something.
The concerto for piano and string orchestra by Alfred Schnittke is a tremendous piece of music, which is also clear in the interpretation by conductor Christoph Altstaedt and pianist Alina Bercu. It opens up many spaces for association and sometimes breaks over the listener like a huge thunderstorm. In his choreography “Third Piano Concerto”, created 23 years ago and now rehearsed by Yuko Kato, Schläpfer described it as a “ballet about the difficulties of loving, being a friend of a lover and about all of us need to often desire and dream more or completely different things “than we are able to achieve”. So you can see rapprochements and repulsions between men and women. Nothing new under the sun.
You will meet the eponymous moon in the second part of the evening – provided you know Hungarian. Then you can correctly translate the beginning of the three songs composed by György Ligeti and sung by Stephanie Maitland, Annelie Sophie Müller and Birgid Steinberger to poems by Sándor Weöres: “The moon dances in a white shirt, everything is bathed in bluish light.” However, none of this takes place on stage. In her choreography “Ligeti Essays”, which premiered in New York City in 2007, Karole Armitage has dancers try it again and again in front of a bare tree that could have come from a production of “Waiting for Godot”. This is more powerful, more athletic, but also more playful than before with Schläpfer. And there’s also an “I’m going with my lantern” episode, matching Martini.
The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra op.3 is very romantic and decidedly cheerful. No.2 by Pietro Locatelli, with the stirring violinist Bettina Gradinger. The music was created around 1723, the choreography by Paul Taylor dates from the year 2000. He called it “Dandelion Wine” after an alcoholic dandelion drink that was apparently popular in the USA. Here you will find white dresses, blouses and trousers, but in the center is a man in yellow, the “master of ceremonies”, who arranges this celebration of joy of life. Was life really so carefree and guileless 300 or 23 years ago, you think about it on the way home after the premiere cheers and look towards the starry sky. There is no sign of the moon. Tomorrow is the new moon. Or maybe he’s just changing clothes.
(By Wolfgang Huber-Lang/APA)
(SERVICE – Further dates at the Volksoper Vienna: November 17th, 22nd, 2023, January 4th, 9th, 12th, June 1st, 4th, 8th, 2024, www.volksoper.at)
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