Vienna State Opera Ballet (live stream), 14/11/2021

Marsch, Walzer, Polka (chor. Schläpfer, mus. Strauss family)

Fly Paper Bird (chor. Goecke, mus. Mahler)

Symphony in C (chor. Balanchine, mus. Bizet)

Artists of the Vienna State Opera Ballet

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Patrick Lange

This was the opening night of the Wiener Staatsballett's new triple bill programme, entitled "Im siebten Himmel" (In Seventh Heaven), with a 20th Century classic, and two more recent works, a revival/revision, and a premiere.

Swiss choreographer Martin Schläpfer is the (fairly) new director of the company, taking over from Manuel Legris last season.  Marsch, Walzer, Polka was originally created in 2006 for the Mainz company (which I'm not sure still exists), and Schläpfer has added a number to it, as well as generally revising the piece.  It set to a short suite of dances by the Strauss family, beginning with the Blue Danube waltz and ending (like the New Year's Day concerts) with the Radetsky March.  In between come the Annen-Polka, the New Pizzicato Polka, and the Music of the Spheres waltz.  The dancers are exactly that, dancers, not necessarily at a ball, but responding to the music as individual dances, and their own reactions and interactions within them.  There are shy ones and bold ones, demure ones and sexy ones, nervous ones or simply happy ones.  There's a fair bit of humour in the choreography.  One couple separate along a diagonal, the boy taking up a clear stance to catch the girl in a leap, except she leaps right past him into the wings, As he turns to the audience, perplexed, she jumps out of the wings into his arms just as originally intended.  The costumes are quirky too, colourful dresses over black lace leggings and a great variety of headgear for the girls, black shirts and bottoms for the boys, but with plenty of variation in the fabrics and patterns.  A little perplexing in places, but generally a feel-good piece, and a good curtain-raiser.

Marco Goecke is much more of the contemporary dance world than of modern ballet if this new piece, Fly Paper Bird is characteristic of his choreography.  His dancers seem to rush in and out of a designated area, and once there do not cover much floor space, until the move to the next spot, but the upper body works fantastically hard, choreographed almost down to the last muscle, including facial expressions and finger movements.  The hands are astonishingly active, grasping and clawing, twitching and trembling.  Dancers do not so much hold each other as interlock, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that look like they fit, but then you realise that's it's not quite right.  The movement is constant, nervous, neurotic, anxiety-inducing, which might seem fitting for Mahler, and certainly does for the first movement of the 5th Symphony, but meshes a little less readily with the serenity of the famous Adagietto.  On the other hand, when the dancers are truly still - and it's very rare - you really notice it.  It nevertheless held the attention throughout the two movements and the spoken interlude.  Spoken text in modern dance appears to be a thing now, the show I'm attending next week is also featuring that, which is all well and good if you understand what's being said, but subtitles would have been useful here, my German was not up to understanding anything more than repeated references to "a bird".

The final piece was Balanchine's Symphony in C, created in 1947 for the Paris Opera Ballet as Le palais de cristal, then revised the following year for the New York City Ballet, whose repertory it has never left since.  The piece was tailored for the clean lines and lyrical elegance of the Paris company, and like so much Balanchine, is quite unforgiving if not presented with utmost precision.  The lines of girls in white against the dark blue background stand out in stark relief, and when the curtain went up on the first movement, there were a few minutes when it was clear that the alignment was not within acceptable parameters.  They settled down, thankfully, but that initial impression of a slight degree of untidiness lingered throughout the first movement, but was dispelled by the remaining movements.  All the soloists were good, but Liudmila Konavolova stood out in the lovely second movement pas de deux for the musicality of her movement, beautifully attuned to the score.  

[Next : 18th November]