Dearest Earthly Friend
„Dearest Earthly Friend“ are the words with which the American poet Emily Dickinson adressed her dear friend Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she only met a few times but remained emotionally attached to for her entire life. In a different, but somehow comparable way Marco Goecke, whose latest creation for Les Ballets de Monte Carlo carries this title, adresses his audience, that is each of us: with a salutation that expresses trust, but also imposes a certain responsibility. The dancers, accompagnied by Ella Fitzgerald`s singing and Gyorgy Ligeti’s piano music, are quickly moving in the apparently fuzzy but highly sophisticated, typical Goecke-style they are already familiar with as this is Goecke`s fourth choreography for the company. The series of precise and razor-sharp movements is performed in an tense atmosphere tinging the air with dust and the colour of melancholy.
Dancer: Jeroen Verbruggen Photo: Nadja Kadel
Vom 19.10.2011 | Permalink »
"Fuel" by Cayetano Soto was premiered on September 23rd 2011 with Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal.
picture by Cayetano Soto
In his new choreography, Cayetano Soto is inspired by „Fuel“, a piece for string orchestra by the American composer Julia Wolfe who transforms the modern industrial world of fuels and machines into clanking string sounds. Soto transfers to human bodies, five women and four men, this idea of a single substance that keeps the world moving restlessly: as if the dancers, too, were driven by one predominant energy. This energy is not only revealed by the striking music but also by Soto’s particular use of the lighting, which in this piece even serves as the main element of the stage design: bright white light emanates from a pile of lamps, dazzling the dancers as well as the audience. This lighting contributes to create a strange contrast between the full speed human commitment and the coldness of a machine-driven alienated mechanical world. However, the interaction of dance, lighting, and costumes – the women’s light and refined dresses in apricot colour and the men’s long black fluent trousers – produce an impression of superior elegance within an explosive world of untamed power.
The choreography works with dynamic Pas de Deux and Trios and very few still but never strainless moments. Soto’s dance is built upon a classical basis. The dancers’ upper bodies, mostly static in classical ballet, are carrying out motions reminding of electrical oscillations. Particularly the Pas de Deux are technically very demanding and require the dancers to give their all, as they command fast and unusual, sometimes almost acrobatic movements and many complicated lifts.
Right before the ending all nine dancers appear, intensifying their dancing together with the crescendo of the music. Finally one female dancer is standing alone while three men disappear in an apparent slowdown moving their backs like waves. Yet she is unable to achieve any rest, instead performing little, nervous, jerky movements as if she was being recharged while waiting for the next crash. When one male dancer approaches her quickly, everything could rebegin – blackout!
Nadja Kadel
Vom 26.09.2011 | Permalink »
Demis Volpi creates a new work for ABT, world premiere on November 8th at City Center New York
American Ballet Theatre’s return to New York City Center will be highlighted by the New York City Premiere of a new work choreographed by Demis Volpi and major revivals of Merce Cunningham’s Duets in honor of the late choreographer, Paul Taylor’s Black Tuesday and Martha Clarke’s Garden of Villandry.
American Ballet Theatre’s 2011 New York City Center season features the New York City Premiere of a new work by Demis Volpi. A dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet, Volpi won the Erik Bruhn Prize for Best Choreography in 2011. He began his training in his native Argentina before studying at the National Ballet School of Canada and the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. He joined Stuttgart Ballet as an apprentice in 2004 and became a member of the company’s corps de ballet the following year. He began choreographing in 2006 for the Noverre Society’s “Young Choreographers” program at the State Theater Stuttgart and has been commissioned to choreograph for the Stuttgart Ballet and the State Opera Stuttgart. The new work, which will have four performances at New York City Center, will be given its World Premiere at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, on Saturday, November 5, 2011.
Vom 28.06.2011 | Permalink »