Companies

Thunderous

2. May 2025

“Night on the Bald Mountain”
Igor Moiseyev Ballet
Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
Moscow, Russia
April 23, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The stage shook under the stomping jumps of Roman Gavrilov as if to enforce his courtship with Kristina Kuznetsova in the Russian folk dance, Summer. The couple was the first to step onto the stage of the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall where the Igor Moiseyev company presented its program, Night on the Bald Mountain, on two consecutive days. The twelve couples that framed Kuznetsova and Gavrilov in a V-shape wore vibrant traditional garments, a signature feature of their folk-dance repertory. Compared to the performance of Summer I saw two years ago at another Moscow venue, the dancers seemed even more snappy and vigorous. Each step was clean and decisive, and the pace was mind-boggling. The Hopak sequences went on as if the dancers’ legs were inexhaustible. Calling it a lightning opening would be an understatement. (more…)

Full of Spirits

29. April 2025

“The Tempest”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre (New Stage)
Moscow, Russia
April 22, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

For his latest choreography for the Bolshoi Ballet in 2024—The Tempest (after Shakespeare’s play)—Vyacheslav Samodurov again teamed up with composer Yuri Krasavin. Both had already collaborated on the one-act ballet Dancemania in 2022. This time, their cooperation must have been tempestuous. “Vyacheslav Samodurov and I did not get along right away…I still see this play completely different,” Krasavin stated in an interview. While Krasavin believed that he accompanied rather than led the artistic process, for Samodurov, “Music comes always first and the composer is the boss in many ways.” But whoever was the boss, the score (played by the Bolshoi Orchestra under the baton of Pavel Klinichev) was mesmerizing. (more…)

New Takes

25. April 2025

“Stravinsky. Puppets. Dances”
Ballet of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Moscow, Russia
April 20, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The Stanislavsky Ballet’s new double bill, Stravinsky. Puppets. Dances, attracted large crowds, especially because they scheduled only five performances over three consecutive days. The two ballets, Petrushka and The Firebird, were originally choreographed by Michel Fokine for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1911 and 1910, respectively. Both are set to compositions by Igor Stravinsky. The Stanislavsky Theatre presented new interpretations by Kirill Radev (The Firebird)—a former choreographer of the Barcelona Ballet—and Konstantin Semenov (Petrushka)—a dancer-cum-choreographer from the company’s own ranks, whose one-act piece, Through the Looking-Glass I saw in 2023. Both teamed up with stage director Alexey Frandetti (a Tashkent native who later moved to Moscow) and set designer Viktor Nikonenko. The internationally awarded Nikonenko is a puppet maker at Moscow’s State Academic Central Puppet Theater S.V. Obraztsov, which cooperated with the Stanislavsky Theatre for the first time (an exhibition of puppets and photos from the S.V. Obraztsov museum was shown at the Stanislavsky as well). (more…)

A Farewell Triplet

14. April 2025

“Pathétique” (“Divertimento No. 15”/“Summerspace”/“Pathétique”)
Vienna State Ballet
Vienna State Opera
Vienna, Austria
April 09, 2025 (live stream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

Triple bills have become a trademark of the Vienna State Ballet since Martin Schläpfer took over as artistic director in 2020. The latest, Pathétique, is titled after Schläpfer’s newest and last creation. As on previous occasions, the program’s safe and well-tested base was a Balanchine followed by Cunningham’s Summerspace. (more…)

Much story, little dance

26. March 2025

“Édith Piaf – La vie en rose”
Finnish National Ballet
Opera House
Helsinki, Finland
March 15, 2025 (video)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

Two weeks after its world premiere, the Finnish National Ballet streamed its latest piece, Édith Piaf – La vie en rose, live on the online platform Stage 24. Sami Sykkö presented the live stream and conducted several interviews during the break. I was able to watch a recording a few days later.

Javier Torres, the company’s artistic director, assembled an entirely Finnish artistic team for Édith Piaf – La vie en rose. It is choreographer Reija Wäre’s (whose previous work stretches various genres, including opera and street dance, TV shows, and sports events) first full-length production. Composer Jukka Nykänen also has a reputation as a pianist. Jani Uljas designed the set; Erika Turunen, the costumes. (more…)

Family Feeling

20. March 2025

“Dream Team” (“Jardi Tancat”/“The Blue Brides”/“Lickety-Split”/“High Moon”)
Gauthier Dance Juniors
Theaterhaus Stuttgart
Stuttgart, Germany
March 15, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

Is it the laid-back, feel-good attitude of Eric Gauthier, director and choreographer of Gauthier Dance, that makes his company’s performances feel like family gatherings? A sense of family also unites his junior company, which was founded in 2022 and comprises six dancers (three men and three women) from Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, and Taiwan. Their latest mixed bill, Dream Team, premiered in January. It includes two podcasts that fill the breaks the performers take to change costumes. In them, Gauthier chats with his juniors and the choreographers. When talking about their group spirit, the young dancers call Gauthier their boss whereas Gauthier seems like a proud daddy.

The original title of the program (Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue—quoting a traditional English wedding rhyme that details what a bride should wear for good luck) referred to the selection of pieces. (more…)

Brimful

16. March 2025

“Cipollino”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre (New Stage)
Moscow, Russia
March 08, 2025 (matinee and evening performance)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The boy Cippolino (Little Onion), the hero of Gianni Rodari’s 1957 children’s book Adventures of Cipollino, enjoyed an international career. He was especially popular in eastern countries and a famous cartoon and film figure in the Soviet Union. A ballet adaption by Genrikh Mayorov (1936-2022) entered the Bolshoi Ballet’s repertory three years after its Kiev premiere. Cipollino was revived at the Bolshoi earlier this season and still attracts crowds. Though a children’s fairy tale, adults can appreciate the production, especially when danced at top quality. I saw a matinee attended primarily by children and their parents as well as a sold-out evening performance.

The young Cipollino and his family are members of jovial townsfolk who are anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables—Cobbler Grape, Professor Pear, Godfather Pumpkin, and the Radish family, whose daughter, Little Radish, becomes Cipollino’s best buddy. They’re ruled by the high-handed, eccentric Prince Lemon whose court includes an acerbic guard, ludicrous knights, and the two overexcited Countesses Cherry. (more…)

Dreams versus Reality

12. March 2025

“The Seagull”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre (New Stage)
Moscow, Russia
March 06, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

Almost four years after its premiere in summer 2021, I finally saw Yuri Possokhov’s The Seagull at the Bolshoi Theatre. It was his sixth creation for the company (his seventh and latest, The Queen of Spades, premiered in 2023), and the fourth time, he teamed up with composer Ilya Demutsky. The artistic team included costume designer Emma Ryott (a longstanding collaborator of choreographer Christian Spuck) and set designer Tom Pye (who also created the designs for Possokhov’s Anna Karenina). David Finn contributed the lighting, Sergei Rylko the video design.

Chekhov’s The Seagull is labeled as a comedy, but its humor is bitter at best. Not a single protagonist leads a fulfilled life. Everybody runs after a dream world or tries to construct their realities. Family relationships are strained, and love is unrequited, quickly exhausted, or phony. Possokhov’s interpretation throws more light on some characters, and less on others, and differs in some respects from the original. Irina Arkadina (Kristina Kretova)—an actress in Chekhov’s version, a renowned ballerina in Possokhov’s—is not merely a fashionable yet greedy diva and dysfunctional mother. She shows her empathetic side when she recalls childhood memories with her elderly brother, Pyotr Sorin (Mikhail Lobukhin), whose unrealized dreams of marriage and artistic career Possokhov omitted. Like in the text, events largely unfolded at Sorin’s country estate. (more…)

Human Striving

22. February 2025

“Homage to Uwe Scholz”
Leipzig Ballet
Forum Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg, Germany
February 15, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The Stuttgart-bred Uwe Scholz was in his early thirties when he became the Leipzig Ballet’s artistic director and chief choreographer in 1991. Scholz’s ballets were substantial and had depth, but the extent of his choreographic talent has been undiscovered due to his premature death in 2004. Last weekend, the Leipzig Ballet toured Homage to Uwe Scholz at the Forum Ludwigsburg. The double bill comprised two of Scholz’s symphonic pieces, Seventh Symphony, set to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (1811-1812), and Second Symphony, set to Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 (1847).

For the first time, Leipzig Ballet isn’t led by a choreographer, but by artistic director Rémy Fichet. Fichet, who took the reins from Mario Schröder just this season, danced in Leipzig under Scholz and intends to keep his ballets in the repertory. However, he’s realistic. The company’s standard does not yet meet the requirements of every Scholz piece, he admitted, and the dancers will need time to hone their technique. Perhaps, Fichet can prevent Scholz’s work from sinking deeper into oblivion. (more…)

Effervescent

13. February 2025

“The Merry Widow”
Hungarian National Ballet
Hungarian State Opera
Budapest, Hungary
February 8-9, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The brisk beats that opened last Saturday’s revival of The Merry Widow at Budapest’s opera house promised a peppy performance, and the following two and a half hours delivered brio indeed. Franz Lehár composed the music in 1905 for his popular eponymous operetta, and John Launchbery and Allen Abbot were the first to edit it for the dance stage in 1974. Both worked on behalf of the British choreographer Ronald Hynd who in 1975 adapted the comic operetta into a three-act ballet for the Australian Ballet. Since then, many ballet companies have added it to their repertory. The Hungarian National Ballet premiered The Merry Widow in 2014 with new sets and costumes by the Brit Peter Docherty.

Docherty designed a long workbench stuffed with books and champagne (shadowed by a wall-sized replica of the national coat of arms) where the staff of the Pontevedrian embassy in Paris shuffled papers, boozed, and stood at attention as soon as the anthem sounded. The small Balkan state of Pontevedrian was bankrupt, but its geriatric ambassador, Baron Zeta, had a bailout plan. If his first secretary, Count Danilo Danilovitch, married the Pontevedrian millionaire’s widow, Hanna Glawari, her money would refill the state coffers. (more…)

As It Should Be

1. February 2025

“Peter and the Wolf”
Jugendkompanie of the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera
NEST (Künstlerhaus Vienna)
Vienna, Austria
January 26, 2025

Last December, the Vienna State Opera opened a new venue for its young audience in a side wing of the Künstlerhaus, around 550 yards from the Vienna State Opera. The venue was previously a home for the city’s independent companies but was rebuilt thanks to private funding and a grant from Austria’s Ministry of Education, Science, and Research. The theater’s steep auditorium ensures visibility of the stage for even the shortest audience members. Although I was told that its name, NEST, is an abbreviation of “New State Opera,” it reminded me of a bird’s nest.

Despite sunny early spring weather, last Sunday’s matinee was well attended by both children and grown-ups to see the premiere of Peter and the Wolf, (more…)

Striking Similarities

30. January 2025

“kaiserRequiem”
Vienna State Ballet & Volksoper Wien
Volksoper Wien
Vienna, Austria
January 25, 2025

kaiserRequiem, the Volksoper Wien’s latest premiere, is a joint production of the State Ballet Vienna and the singers, choir, and orchestra of the Volksoper. The piece intertwines the sixty-minute chamber opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis), composed by Viktor Ullmann in 1943/44, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in D minor (K. 626). Both pieces feature death, which overtook both composers while working on them. Mozart died in December 1791 before finishing Requiem. Requiem had been commissioned, and when Mozart died, his wife, Constanze, assigned its completion to Franz Xaver Süßmayr, her husband’s former pupil. Being of Jewish parentage, Ullmann and his wife were deported to the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt (in today’s Czech Republic) in September 1942. It was a showpiece ghetto to promote the allegedly successful resettlement of Jews, so Theresienstadt had a department for so-called “leisure activities,” such as sports, theater, lectures, and reading. Ullmann worked there as a composer, music critic, and musical event organizer. The premiere of his opera The Emperor of Atlantis was scheduled for Theresienstadt’s stage but was canceled after the general rehearsal. Perhaps the piece’s highly political sarcasm, though subtle, did not slip the notice of the ruling powers, but that’s only speculation. (more…)

Aerial Ballet

16. January 2025

“Möbius”
Compagnie XY
Forum Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg, Germany
January 10, 2025

The northern French company Compagnie XY is a group of forty acrobats who specialize in lifts. Nineteen of them perform in Möbius, the troupe’s fifth and latest piece created in collaboration with the French choreographer and dancer Rachid Ouramdane. Last weekend, it toured at the Forum Ludwigsburg.
Möbius opened sedately and silently. One by one, the barefooted artists walked on either side of the auditorium toward a stage equipped only with gray-greenish flooring. They stood scattered across it, motionless, gazing sternly at the audience. The first percussive beats set them in motion. They stretched their arms sideways like birds ready for take-off, and a blink of an eye later, the first bodies soared in the air. Pushed by multiple interlocked arms that served as a living trampoline, they flew from one group to the other, often adding extra thrilling saltos and other aerial acrobatics. (more…)

Back in 1892…

16. January 2025

“The Nutcracker”
Perm Ballet
Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre
Perm, Russia
December 31, 2024 (live stream)

Like all Russian ballet companies, Perm Ballet, one of the country’s leading troupes, presented The Nutcracker during the Christmas season. Their version is by Alexey Miroshnichenko, artistic director of the Perm Ballet since 2009, and premiered in December 2017. I watched the live stream of the performance on New Year’s Eve.

Miroshnichenko relocated the fairy tale to the St. Petersburg of 1892 (where Petipa’s The Nutcracker had its world premiere at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre) where the dusky streets were bustling. Traders with vendors’ trays offered hot drinks and sweets, sleighs crossed pedestrians’ paths, and anticipation put a spring in everyone’s step.

(more…)

The Hub

4. January 2025

“The Nutcracker”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre
Moscow, Russia
December 31, 2024 (live stream)

During this year’s Christmas sermon, my pastor asked which moment should best represent Christmas. The Christmas dinner? The lighting of the candles? Or, perhaps, unwrapping the presents? For me, this moment was the moment during the Bolshoi Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker when the newlywed Marie (Elizaveta Kokoreva) and the Nutcracker Prince (Artem Ovcharenko) were lifted by their court toward the star at the top of the Christmas tree. It was the climax of their spiritual journey and of Yuri Grigorovich’s choreography for which I had been waiting since I last saw his Nutcracker live in Moscow in 2022.

Two live streams on December 30th (evening performance) and December 31st (matinee) enabled a vast audience to follow the heroes’ journey. To meet the demand, the number of cinemas offering live broadcasts grew from one hundred to three hundred in December. Most were located in Russia, but cinemas in Belarus, Armenia, and the United Arab Emirates also participated. I was able to watch the matinee on the Bolshoi’s vk video platform. (more…)