Tag Archive: Demis Volpi

Neumeier’s Call for Peace

January 12, 2023

“Dona Nobis Pacem”
Hamburg Ballet – John Neumeier
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
January 05, 2023

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

John Neumeier’s latest choreography for the Hamburg Ballet, “Dona Nobis Pacem” (“Give Us Peace”), is meant to be the crown jewel of his fiftieth season as artistic director of the company. The eighty-three-year-old Neumeier had originally intended to resign in July 2023, but chose to extend his contract for another year in order to ensure the smooth transition of his named successor Demis Volpi, currently the artistic director of the Ballett am Rhein. There are one and a half long years until then – and perhaps Neumeier will renounce his statement that “Dona Nobis Pacem” is to be his last new creation. (more…)

Joint Venture

June 17, 2021

“Come In” / “Inquieto”
Ballett am Rhein / São Paulo Dance Company
Düsseldorf, Germany / São Paulo, Brazil
June 11, 2021 (online)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2021 by Ilona Landgraf

Demis Volpi, artistic director of the Ballett am Rhein, and Inês Bogéa, the same at the São Paulo Dance Company, have known each other for years. This June, their professional relationship yielded a joint video release that featured one ensemble piece by each company. The video was available on the Ballett am Rhein’s YouTube channel from June 11-13 and can be re-watched there from June 18-20.

The Ballet am Rhein contributed a modified-for-2021 version of “Come In”, a piece for twelve men choreographed in 2006 by Aszure Barton for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Hell’s Kitchen Dance. (more…)

Impressive!

July 23, 2017

“Ballet Matinée”
John Cranko School
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
July 16, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

Stuttgart’s John Cranko School has an excellent reputation in the ballet world. In a recent interview, Dutch National Ballet’s Marijn Rademaker talked about the excellent teachers in Stuttgart. I saw quite a few end of the year school performances, but this year’s matinée made me shake my head in disbelief. What outstanding talents has Tadeusz Matacz been training under his roof!

The students’ performance of Leonid Lavrovsky’s “Classical Symphony” could have vied with proper companies. The boys jumped spick and span, landed from tour en l’airs nicely in sync and partnered smoothly. Short Motomi Kiyota of the 6th class was especially intriguing. He soared through the air as if it were his natural space of being. The girls dabbed the choreography onstage, defying weight and gravity and confidently tossed out fouettes. “Classical Symphony” left one with an elevated feeling.

They proved they can also excel in contemporary pieces in “Alrededor No Hay Nada”, new choreography by Goyo Montero, artistic director of the company of the State Theater Nuremberg. (more…)

Changes

June 8, 2017

“Don Quixote”
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
June 03, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

Stuttgart Ballet is facing a time of great change. Just recently, artistic director Reid Anderson announced that the company will part at the end of this season with Demis Volpi, who had been its resident choreographer since 2013. Whether the contract of Marco Goecke, the company’s second in-house-choreographer, will be extended beyond summer 2018 (after which Tamas Detrich will take the reins from Anderson) is still the subject of rumors. What is certain, though, is that this season will be the last for an icon of Stuttgart Ballet. After more than seventy years as dancer, choreologist, coach, ballet master and linchpin for the company, 89-year-old Georgette Tsinguirides will retire in July. (more…)

A Little Summit

July 27, 2016 0 Comments

Stuttgart Ballet’s Festival Weeks: “John Cranko School Gala”
John Cranko School
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
July 23, 2016

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2016 by Ilona Landgraf

Last Saturday’s gala of the John Cranko School was only expected to be the overture for the company’s big final gala on the following day. Yet it proved to be a treat in itself.
How often is new choreography made on students? On the occasion of the Ballet Festival Weeks celebrating Reid Anderson’s twentieth jubilee as artistic director of Stuttgart Ballet, four former graduates choreographed to the music of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”, each one responsible for one season. Marco Goecke’s “A Spell on You”, also created for the Cranko School and premiered earlier this year, was shown again. Guest students from schools in Paris, London, Toronto and Hamburg allowed one to compare training, but first and foremost the event highlighted a feeling of togetherness. The gala was streamed live to the outdoor audience of “Ballet in the Park” in front of the opera house. (more…)

The Talent Scout

July 21, 2016 0 Comments

Stuttgart Ballet’s Festival Weeks: “Sketches”
Stuttgart Ballet
Kammertheater Stuttgart
Stuttgart, Germany
July 17, 2016

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2016 by Ilona Landgraf

In Stuttgart the ballet season reached its climax this July. Reid Anderson’s twentieth jubilee as artistic director is being celebrated with a vast program of extras for three weeks. On July 3rd he had allowed insight into his life and career in the talk “Everything you Always wanted to Know…”. The film documentation “Miracles and Superheroes – 55 Years Stuttgart Ballet” received its cinema premiere on July 15th. It was broadcast on television on July 20th. (more…)

Dull Orgy

June 15, 2016 0 Comments

“Salome”
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
June 10, 2016

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2016 by Ilona Landgraf

“Salome” is the second program-filling piece that Stuttgart Ballet’s resident choreographer Demis Volpi has made for the company. “Krabat”, also multi-act, in 2013 was his auspicious first attempt. Last year’s “L’Histoire du Soldat”, part of a triple bill dedicated to Stravinsky, was weak.
For “Salome”, Volpi again gathered the “Krabat” team. Vivian Arnold, Stuttgart’s director of the press, communications and dramaturgy, was in charge of the libretto and the dramatic direction. Set and costume designs are by Katharina Schlipf. Lighting is Bonnie Beecher’s. This time, though, the quartet’s work fell short. (more…)

Re-exploring Stravinsky

March 28, 2015

“Stravinsky TODAY” (“Le Chant du Rossignol”,”L’Histoire du Soldat”, “The Firebird”)
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
March 21, 2015

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2015 by Ilona Landgraf

Stuttgart Ballet’s new triple bill is an all-Stravinsky evening. Three choreographers – Marco Goecke, Demis Volpi and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – explored the exceptional composer’s music for their works. Two ballets are world premieres: Volpi’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” to Stravinsky’s suite from 1919 and Cherkaoui’s “The Firebird” to the Firebird-suite for orchestra, while Goecke presented a revision of his “Le Chant du Rossignol” originally created for the Leipzig Ballet in 2009.
Around a century ago Stravinsky’s unfamiliar, bold compositions set the ballet community abuzz. The scandal the Ballets Russes caused in Paris in 1913 with Nijinsky’s choreography of “Le Sacre du Printemps” has no equal. Stravinsky, Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes – an explosive, cross-fertilizing artistic collaboration. What impact has Stravinsky today? A question raised in the program book, which in the same breath mentions that using Stravinsky’s music already has a long tradition in Stuttgart: “The Soldier’s Tale” was Cranko’s first choreography in Cape Town in 1944. Ten additional ballets by Cranko set to Stravinsky followed, among them “The Firebird” (1964, a production for the Deutsche Oper Berlin) and “Le Chant du Rossignol” for Munich (1968). (more…)

Storytellers

March 13, 2015

“Drei Streifen:Tanz”, Choreographies by Benjamin Millepied, Demis Volpi and Jiří Bubeníček
Ballet Dortmund
Opernhaus Dortmund
Dortmund, Germany
March 07, 2015

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2015 by Ilona Landgraf

“Drei Streifen: Tanz”, Ballet Dortmund’s new triple bill, allows insight into the work of three different choreographers. The pas de deux “Closer” offers a glance into Benjamin Millepied’s artistic work. Stuttgart Ballet’s resident choreographer Demis Volpi presents himself with three short duos. The evening’s second half was reserved for Jiří Bubeníček’s new creation “The Piano”.

“The Piano” is based on the movie of the same name by the New Zealand film director Jane Campion and has been awarded with – amongst others – the Golden Palm in Cannes in 1993 and an Oscar in 1994. Set in mid-19th century it is about a Scotswoman Ada McGrath, who, for whatever reason, has been mute since her sixth year of age. She expresses her inner life mainly through playing the piano. When Ada and her daughter Flora are forced into a marriage with the Britishman Alistair Stewart, a plantation owner living in New Zealand, the piano is the most important part of the luggage. The to-be-wed couple, however, has never met before. Alistair, at first disenchanted by his future wife’s appearance, doesn’t understand the piano’s importance. Seeming to be an unpractical object, it is left at the beach where Ada and Flora had come ashore.

(more…)

Fostering Ballet’s Future

December 15, 2014

Noverre Society Stuttgart
Stuttgart, Germany
December 2014

The dance critic Horst Koegler once compared him with a F1 World Champion who – second to none – has held his title for more than half a century: Fritz Höver, founder and longstanding chairman of Stuttgart’s Noverre Society. How would the Stuttgart Ballet have developed without Höver? Back in the early 1960s no one knew John Cranko in Stuttgart, not even Stuttgart Opera’s general director Walter Erich Schäfer. It’s hard to believe these days but in the late 1950s Stuttgart’s audience had not yet acquired a taste for ballet. The genre’s main function, since 1957 in the hands of artistic director Nicholas Beriozoff, ex-dancer of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, still was to take part in opera productions. Beriozoff, paving the way for the company’s ascent, put considerable effort in promoting ballet. It was due to the relentless persuasive power of Höver, that the young Cranko was invited to Baden-Wuerttemberg’s capital. In 1960 Cranko staged his first work in Stuttgart, “The Prince of the Pagodas” which had premiered three years earlier atNich The Royal Ballet. One year later he took over the reigns of “The Stuttgart Ballet”. (more…)

Where’s this route taking them?

May 2, 2014

“Wayfarers”
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
April 25, 2014

Stuttgart Ballet’s innovative energy seems unstoppable. Some days ago this season’s third premiere, “Wayfarers” went smoothly, a fourth will follow this month and the annual evening of the Noverre Society, featuring young choreographers, is yet to come. “Wayfarers” is a triple bill consisting of two world premieres, Edward Clug’s “No Men’s Land” and Demis Volpi’s “Aftermath”, framing Maurice Béjart’s “Songs of a Wayfarer”, a work familiar to the Stuttgart audience.

Sparing neither trouble nor expense, both new creations had new music. Slovene Milko Lazar had been commissioned for the music of “No Men’s Land”. His suite of five movements for cello and full orchestra, belonging to the field of minimal and postmodern music, evokes an energetic, martial atmosphere. Only a cello solo by Zoltan Paulich provided a little lyricism amidst the unvaryingly pulsing rhythm. (more…)

Stuttgart’s Bewitched Ravens

February 20, 2014

“Krabat”
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
February 14, 2014

Terrifying things happen in “Krabat” by Demis Volpi, resident choreographer of Stuttgart Ballet. It is the story of a beggar boy apprenticed along with eleven other fellows to a mill master who is an evil magician. Only a young girl’s love for Krabat, the central boy, finally breaks the magician’s power.
This, Volpi’s first program-filling ballet, is based on a novel of the same name by Ottfried Preußler (1923 – 2013). Born in Bohemia, Preußler wove his experiences during World War II, including five years spent in Russian captivity, into the story. However, he set the plot in the 18th Century, during the Great Northern War (1700 – 1721) in Lusatia. The mill represents a place where humans are scorned and killed, literally ground, as the millstones not only pulverize grain but also human bones that are regularly delivered by the Grim Reaper – a figure even the mill-master/magician dreads.

(more…)

Who’s as Big?

October 17, 2013

“Made in Germany”
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart Schauspielhaus
Stuttgart, Germany
October 10, 2013

Once upon a time the label “Made in Germany” conveyed craftsmanship and reliability. Innovation, novelty and experimentation weren’t features associated with this phrase in any primary way. Now, Stuttgart Ballet has proven the opposite. “Made in Germany” is the ever so self-confident title of the company’s new ballet program which premiered earlier this month. A mixed bill of twelve little pieces, specially created for the dancers of Stuttgart Ballet by nine choreographers, it serves as nibbles for various tastes. In addition to these miniatures, a vast number of works have been made for the company since Reid Anderson’s directorship began in 1996: more than eighty, seven of them program-filling story ballets. Where else can one find such fertile creativity alongside the careful guardianship of tradition?

Crucial for spotting new choreographic talent is Stuttgart’s Noverre Society. Founded during Cranko’s era, it annually gives as yet unknown choreographers the opportunity to show their creations to an audience. For six of the current evening’s choreographers the Noverre presentations were the doorway to the big stages for which they have subsequently been making work. (more…)