Angela

GOD he was great, wasn't he? Sylvie Guillem would have been proud for that ear-touching leg straight at 180 degrees... If he could find a little more strength in his partnering skills, mentally and physically, he'd be the next international star with those long legs, the timing, the never ending pirouettes, the beautiful phrasing...

It's strange how you can miss someone whom you did not know personally, not even by her real name or photo - just by a big green C, a funny alias, and so, so many insightful and prudent words she wrote about ballet. May she rest in peace. Condolences to all here who knew her.

A new, one-time event at Stuttgart Ballet: An Evening with Friedemann Vogel, where he talks about his 25 year long career and where he wlll dance Béjart's Bolero with all the men of Stuttgart Ballet at the end 🤩 Date. 15. July https://www.stuttgarter-ballett.de/spielplan/kalender/ein-abend-mit-friedemann-vogel/7863/

At Vienna State Ballet, Elena Bottaro was promoted to to Principal Dancer https://www.instagram.com/p/C6S3LWVImNN/?img_index=1

It works in Germany, which is another country. Oh my!! 🤣🤣 🤣🤣

Some informations about John Neumeier’s very last creation for his Hamburg Ballet as director: The piece is called „Epilog“ and is the 173rd work in his oeuvre. He will create ”an intimate work with chamber music, with piano and vocals on stage. It is an rather abstract ballet of soft sounds and subtle movements that leaves room for personal reflections.” The music is by Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss (“Four Last Songs”) and by Simon & Garfunkel. Celebrated Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian will perform the “Four Last Songs” on stage, renowned French Schubert interpreter David Fray will play the piano and the multi-award-winning young pianist Emmanuel Christien will be his duo partner. Swiss designer Albert Kriemler creates the costumes, he has worked with Neumeier several times before. Hamburg Ballet's photographer and videographer Kiran West will be responsible for the film projections. I don't think that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel will perform live, but who knows. The premiere is on 30th June

Here is a short TV report from Swiss National TV about Cathy Marston's new creation "Atonement", the premiere was yesterday at Zurich Opera House. Ian McEwan was there, too! I hope the link works in other countries https://www.srf.ch/kultur/buehne/opernhaus-zuerich-atonement-gelingt-der-bestseller-roman-auf-der-ballett-buehne

No, I don't think so - the premiere is on Nov 1st, the "matinee" in October means an introduction talk with the choreographer and dramaturg, maybe some excerpts from the piece. In Germany matinees are really in the (French) matin, that is in the morning - the other thing we call "Nachmittagsvorstellung", which is afternoon performance. I don't think that Dortmund Opera or Ballet ever did live streams in the past, so sorry. I'll check the reviews and the trailers in autumn and will post them.

Next season at Vienna State Ballet: “Once again I want to do everything that I think is important for the Vienna State Ballet, for our audience and for dance. Of course, we have to care for our heritage and traditions. They are our art form’s memory. But new creations are its muscular heart. For me, the art of theatre and ballet always means opening up, going further, studying our time and not simply celebrating what already exists. We also need to create new works that will enable ballet to keep on living and form tomorrow’s memories. We have planned five world premieres, some of them taking up a full evening. We are throwing a lasso into the future. That is our intention. We have faith in this art form and in creating new works. And I am extremely curious about what else will be possible this season, because you always move on from where you are now.” Martin Schläpfer Martin Schläpfer has planned four premieres for his last season as Director and Chief Choreographer of the Vienna State Ballet: The Winter’s Tale and Pathétique at the Vienna State Opera, KaiserRequiem and Kreationen at the Vienna Volksoper. Five choreographies by Martin Chaix, Alessandra Corti, Andreas Heise, Martin Schläpfer and Louis Stiens will receive their world premieres, Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale will be an important Austrian premiere, and Summerspace is the first work by Merce Cunningham to be performed with the Vienna State Ballet at the Vienna State Opera. In the Vienna State Opera’s repertoire Rudolf Nureyev’s Swan Lake, Martin Schläpfer’s Sleeping Beauty and John Neumeier’s Lady of the Camellias are back. At the Vienna Volksoper Pierre Lacotte’s Coppélia opens the ballet season and invites to visit with the whole family, as does Iolanta and the Nutcracker. The multi-part programmes Shifting Symmetries (van Manen/Forsythe/Balanchine) at the State Opera and The Moon wears a white shirt (Schläpfer/Armitage/Taylor) at the Volksoper present ballet of the 20th and 21st centuries in all its fascinating variety. In June 2025, Mahler, live returns to the State Opera for two exclusive performances – the programme with Hans van Manen’s video ballet Live and Martin Schläpfer’s first creation for the Vienna State Ballet 4, which opened his directorship in 2020 and which is also available on DVD. In May 2025, a guest performance will take the Vienna State Ballet to Spain, where it will present Hans van Manen’s Concertante and Martin Schläpfer’s 4 at the Teatro Real Madrid. The 2024/2025 season will see continuity in the conductor’s roster: artists such as Christoph Altstaedt, Paul Connelly, Alfred Eschwé, Christoph Koncz, Patrick Lange, Jean-Michaël Lavoie, Markus Lehtinen, Robert Reimer, Matthew Rowe and Johannes Witt will return to the orchestra podiums of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper, while KaiserRequiem will bring an intensive collaboration with Omer Meir Wellber. In 2024/2025, the repertoire will be accompanied again by a varied supporting programme, including introductory matinees, ballet workshops, dance podiums and the film series DANCE MOVIES. Members of the Vienna State Ballet’s Circle of Friends will once again be able to gain special insights into the work of the company with exclusive rehearsal visits, backstage and workshop tours, artist talks and much more. BALLET: PREMIERES THE WINTER’S TALE 19 November 2024 Venue Vienna State Opera Music Joby Talbot Choreography Christopher Wheeldon Conductor Christoph Koncz / Johannes Witt Vienna State Ballet Orchestra & Stage Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera KAISERREQUIEM 25 January 2025 Venue Vienna Volksoper Music Viktor Ullmann & Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Choreography & Director Andreas Heise Conductor Omer Meir Wellber / Keren Kargalitsky The Death / The Loudspeaker / Bass Josef Wagner Emperor Overall Daniel Schmutzhard Harlequin Seiyoung Kim A Soldier / Tenor JunHo You The Drummer / Alto Wallis Giunta Bubikopf / Soprano Rebecca Nelsen Vienna State Ballet Choir of the Vienna Volksoper Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper PATHÉTIQUE 9 April 2025 Venue Vienna State Opera DIVERTIMENTO NO. 15 Music Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Choreography George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust SUMMERSPACE Music Morton Feldman Choreography Merce Cunningham © The Merce Cunningham Trust Piano Joonas Ahonen & Johannes Piirto PATHÉTIQUE (URAUFFÜHRUNG) Music Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky & George Frideric Handel Choreography Martin Schläpfer Harpsichord Stephen Hopkins Conductor Christoph Altstaedt / Jean-Michaël Lavoie KREATIONEN 14 June 2025 Venue Vienna Volksoper AEREA (WORLD PREMIERE) Music Michael Gordon Choreography Alessandra Corti HIGH (WORLD PREMIERE) Music Lisa Streich Choreography Louis Stiens M TO M (WORLD PREMIERE) Music Max Bruch Choreography Martin Chaix Violin Benjamin Herzl Conductor Jean-Michaël Lavoie Vienna State Ballet Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper Season Booklet 2024/2025 here

The honorable John Neumeier will say farewell with Heavy Metal: For his definitely last Hamburg Ballet Days he invited Birmingham Royal Ballet with the Black Sabbath Ballet. They'll be guesting at Hamburg in July. If you can't get the Bolshoi, take Black Sabbath 🙂

Now this is interesting: Ballet Dortmund in Germany announces a new Bayadère for next season, "set in Hollywood in the 1920s" and choreographed by director Xin Peng Wang. Decors by Jerôme Kaplan. https://www.theaterdo.de/produktionen/detail/la-bayadere/ English Translation of the website

The German Dance Prize 2024 goes to choreographer Sasha Waltz. Dieter Heitkamp, head of the dance department at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts for 22 years and an important German dance teacher, is honoured with a lifetime achievement award. “explore dance”, a network for the young audiences, is honoured for outstanding development in dance. The main award is endowed with €20,000, the awards for Dieter Heitkamp and explore dance are endowed with a grant of €5,000 each. The prize ceremony will take place on Saturday, 12 October 2024 with a Gala at the Aalto-Theater in Essen.

I guess they already belong to the Cranko Foundation, but I'm not sure. This ist what Anderson said at the press conference for the opening of the new Cranko School in 2020 about the Foundation: “Everything will then go to the school. To protect the school forever.” In another interview, he said that the Cranko Foundation has two important goals: the well-being of the school and the integrity of Cranko's ballets – so it ressembles the trusts that manage the copyrights to Balanchine’s or Jerome Robbins’s ballets. The Cranko Foundation has a board of trustees who not only manage the rights, but also care for coaches and ballet masters who work with the companies that dance Cranko’s works.

Dieter Graefe, heir to the rights of John Cranko’s ballets, has died on Saturday, April 20th, at his home in Stuttgart. He was ballet secretary and administrative director at Stuttgart Ballet, first with John Cranko and then with Marcia Haydée. In his will, Cranko had named the long-time friend and collaborator as heir to his estate and the rights to his ballets. Since then, Graefe has licensed Cranko's works outside Stuttgart and Munich. After Cranko's early death in 1973, Graefe was entrusted with the temporary management of the Stuttgart Ballet together with ballet mistress Anne Woolliams, until Glen Tetley became director a year later. Graefe remained ballet secretary and was promoted to deputy ballet director in 1983 and administrative director of the Stuttgart Ballet during Marcia Haydée's time as AD. In 1985 he moved to Canada with his partner Reid Anderson, and in 1996 they both returned to Stuttgart, when Anderson was appointed AD of the company. In 2020, together with Reid Anderson, Graefe founded the John Cranko Trust which already receives all royalties - and in future all the other income - from Cranko's estate with all proceeds going to the John Cranko School. An obituary on Stuttgart Ballet’s website

Next season at Ballett on the Rhine, with new directors Bridget Breiner and Raphael Coumes-Marquet: https://www.operamrhein.de/en/schedule/productions/#season-202425 somehow the choice buttons work only on the German website for me, so try this if it doesn't show season 2024/25: https://www.operamrhein.de/spielplan/produktionen/#ballett/spielzeit-202425 Next season at Hannover Ballet https://staatstheater-hannover.de/en_EN/premieren-24-25-staatsballett

Ex-RB-dancer and Best Swan Ever Mr. Adam Cooper will continue to work at the Gärtnerplatztheater at Munich, next season he will direct "The Pirates of Penzance", also with his choreography https://www.gaertnerplatztheater.de/de/produktionen/die-piraten-von-penzance.html?m=489

Hamburg Ballet, casting for Anna Karenina with guest ballerina Olga Smirnova: Anna Karenina: Anna Laudere (26., 27.4.), Olga Smirnova (8., 10.5.) Alexei Karenin: debuts for Matias Oberlin (26., 27.4.) and Christopher Evans (8., 10.5.) Vronsky: Alexandr Trusch (26., 27.4.), Jacopo Bellussi ((8., 10.5.)

And then there are the top academies that think they can profit from having one PdL winner after the other, like the Académie Princesse Grace at Monte-Carlo. I think the schools directly attached to companies send their students rather rarely to Lausanne, as they want to keep them for the company when they are fine dancers. Instead of having lots of talent scouts running after them at Lausanne and luring them away. Students who already have contracts are not allowed to the competition. It's always the question: do you want to tout your academy by sending your best pupil from whom you know he will get a contract at home, or do you go to Lausanne as a academy director to pick up students who are already good to put them in your school for another year and then say: look, we made him. The PdL winners are not necessarily the best dancers of their generation.

This never happened to me. But Swiss people do speak many languages, maybe not perfectly, but they switch easily. Everyone who speaks Swiss German speaks "normal" German too, don't worry, and they switch because they know no one can understand them. Whatever normal German may be... I have heard from dancers at Stuttgart who came with well-prepared German words and then people here spoke Swabian and they were lost. We all have a common standard German that we try to use with strangers, but as soon as Swiss people or Saxonians or Bavarians are among themselves, the language gets imcomprehensible. It's like me hearing Scottish or Australian for the first time 🙂

You will always find someone who speaks English to help you, just ask the younger people. Not necessarily at the box office or with the ushers, but normally they know somebody they can ask to help you. Zurich is a very international town, so don't worry. And don't try to understand Swiss German, it's impossible 🥴 We know how hard it is to learn German, we don't laugh or get offended if anyone makes the effort. On the contrary, we admire you! Most websites of German theatres have an English version to help you with the basics.

At Stuttgart Ballet, after the debut of Swedish dancer Henrik Erikson as Siegfried tonight, director Tamas Detrich announced that he will be promoted from soloist to principal dancer next season. It was a nice debut, but I hope he can show in the rest of the season he really deserves this promotion which I find comes surprisingly early.

The Munich standing room is quite cosy, places are numbered, you have much room and a friendly railing at the perfect height to put your arms on. But yes, the Nationaltheater is way too big for ballet, you need good binoculars to see the details. In the first rows of the stalls, I have a feeling like I need to look up to see the stage, as the seats are under the level of the stage, and the rake is not really steep. Another theatre where I can't find the perfect seat for ballet...

Second Balcony in the middle is excellent for standing room, but third balcony is already too far away for my taste. And I would only take the more expensive standing room tickets, not the cheaper ones, you always miss a part of the stage.

Myrtle, I did not check for the Zurich casting so often, but as far as I remember, it comes rather short before the performance. Maybe you could check when they put it online for the next performances; right now, it's just for the next week. The Zurich Opera House is lovely, next to the lake - but it has the worst sightlines I know for the highest prices. You're safe when you are in the orchestra level - the rake is not steep, but it is there, and I never had problems. If you can get the first row in the Parkett Galerie, that would be perfect, everything is near enough to the stage, as it is a rather small theatre. For every other seat in the house you have to sit in the middle part of the theatre if you want to see the whole stage - don't got further out than boxes 8 or 7, even there the second row is already bad. Never go in the third row of a box, it's standing room only, even if you have a seat (the fourth row are barstools - maybe you can see if you stand on them 🤪). In the second balcony, you see very well in the middle section (very steep rake) and maybe in the first three seats from the middle in the side sections, don't go further outside. They have seats with slightly restricted views behind columns, "slightly" means restricted, not slightly restricted. Getting a cheap seat with good sightlines at Zurich is really hard work! As it is so small, the acoustics are great, but what does that help if you don't see the dancers. A great house for opera... My theatre with the best sightlines, by the way, is the Badisches Staatstheater at Karlsruhe, a modern and a little ugly building, but you can see the whole stage from literally every single seat in the house. And it has a huge stage, so much room for the dancers.

In Dumas' novel, Armand gives Marguerite Abbé Prévost's book about Manon Lescaut, so this was not Neumeier's invention. Also in the novel, Armand and Marguerite meet at the theatre for the first time, so Neumeier makes them meet at a ballet about Manon. You see her in white in act II in the country, without camellia, where white suggest summer, love and bliss. You see her in a deep red velvet dress at the end, with a white camellia, when she goes to the theatre for the last time. I think Rose wrote in his memoires that Marguerite has 15 different costumes in the ballet. Only one piece of music is repeated, the Largo from Chopin's Piano Sonata in b minor - it is Marguerite's leitmotif. We hear it at the very beginning at the auction, when the pianists tries out the piano and unknowingly evokes the woman whose belongings are sold. We hear the full Largo for the white pdd in act II where Marguerite and Armand are happy and blissful, and we hear the beginning of the Largo as the last music of the ballet, when Marguerite dies. Then, it is not played in the orchestra pit, but from behind the stage, very far away, already making her a memory - for me, that is one of Neumeier's most heartwrenching ideas of the whole ballet.