Tag Archive: Filipe Portugal

Scratch the Varnish

February 8, 2019

“Bella Figura” (“Bella Figura” / “Stepping Stones” / “Sweet Dreams” / “Sechs Tänze”)
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
February 02, 2019

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2019 by Ilona Landgraf

In September 2017, the Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián was awarded the “Positano Premia La Danza Léonide Massine” for life achievement. Last year, The Hague (his chosen home) celebrated his seventieth birthday by bestowing him with honorary citizenship at a festival in his honor. This March, Kylían will become a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts and will preside over the newly established choreography section of the Académie Française.
In mid-January, a Kylán-homage premiered at Ballet Zurich, created from four pieces that had been developed between 1986-1995. In an interview in the program booklet, Kylían described the pieces as having very different choreographic handwriting and therefore as unrelated. (more…)

Something New?

October 23, 2017

“Nussknacker und Mausekönig” (“Nutcracker and Mouse King”)
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
October 20, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

This season the Opera House Zurich launched a new website, new large black and white portraits of dancers of the company decorate the opera’s corridors and side rooms and it also has a new “Nutcracker”. More precisely, its “Nutcracker and Mouse King”, as choreographer and artistic director Christian Spuck based the story on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original fairy tale of the same title rather than on the sweetened and simplified adaption of Hoffmann’s text Alexandre Dumas père wrote in 1844. The latter served as a libretto for Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s famous ballet to music by Tchaikovsky. Having already created ballets on “The Sandman” and “Mademoiselle de Scuderi”, “Nutcracker and Mouse King” is Spuck’s third ballet on a text by E.T.A. Hoffmann. (more…)

Searching for the Soul

June 16, 2017

“Corpus” (“disTANZ” / “Lady with a Fan”)
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
June 10, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

How does the soul get into the dance? What relationship does the soul have to the body? Such were the questions, Filipe Portugal and Douglas Lee, the two choreographers of “Corpus” tried to explore in their new works. The double bill premiered at the end of May. Portugal, principal of the company, has been choreographing several years now for his Zurich colleagues as well as for Zurich’s Junior Ballet. “disTANZ”, his most recent creation, was the first on the program. Like Portugal, Lee, a Berlin-based choreographer with British roots, is familiar with the company as well. “Lady with a Fan” is his third creation for Ballet Zurich. Both Portugal and Lee choreographed group pieces. (more…)

Can Dance Add to Verdi’s “Requiem”?

January 13, 2017

“Messa da Requiem”
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
January 08, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

In mounting Giuseppe Verdi’s “Messa da Requiem”, the Zurich Opera House is bold but has set its sights quite high. Bold, because Christian Spuck, the ballet company’s artistic director, in charge of choreography and staging, involved the whole house, the entire ballet company, singers and the orchestra. Yet that the project would have weak points was predictable. Spuck himself declared in the program book, that this music needed no visualization. “Merging dance with singing is always prone to failure”, he moreover stated. So why did he try? (more…)

“Swan Lake” – Purged and Restored

February 12, 2016 1 Comment

“Swan Lake”
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
February 06, 2016

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2016 by Ilona Landgraf

Germany’s ballet world can count itself lucky. Alexei Ratmansky works regularly within reachable distance. We had the chance to see his own choreography – “Namouna” in Berlin and “Tanzsuite” at the Semperoper Dresden – and his reconstructions of Marius Petipa’s masterpieces: “Paquita” at the Bavarian State Ballet, followed by “The Sleeping Beauty” at La Scala, Milan. Now the best known ballet of all, “Swan Lake”, has just premiered with Zurich Ballet. It is a coproduction with La Scala where it will be on the schedule from late June onwards.
By chance, one can see swans and seagulls floating on Lake Zurich from the opera house’s balcony. Could there be a better Place for the famous swan story? (more…)

An Attempt to Live Up to an Epic Story

December 10, 2014

“Anna Karenina”
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
November 29, 2014

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2014 by Ilona Landgraf

Adapting a complex novel of remarkable scale for a ballet is a courageous undertaking. Christian Spuck, Ballet Zurich’s artistic director, took up the challenge. “Anna Karenina”, his new work, premiered earlier this season. It is based on Leo Tolstoy’s eponymous novel, more than one-thousand pages of intricate family histories, written within 1873 – 1878. Spuck boiled them down into a two-hour ballet. How did he approach this task and with what success?

Next to the triangle between Anna Karenina (Viktorina Kapitonova), her husband Alexei Karenin (Filipe Portugal) and her lover Count Alexei Vronsky (Denis Vieira), Spuck also portrays the other protagonists’ love affairs as well as other lesser characters: Dolly’s and the unfaithful Stiva’s messed up marriage (Dolly: Galina Mihaylova, Stiva: Arman Grigoryan) as well as Kitty’s and Levin’s tentative approach to each other, their wedding and apparently happy rural life (Kitty: Katja Wünsche, Levin: Tars Vendebeek). Princess Betsy (Giulia Tonelli), a socialite with dubious morals, and her companion (Wei Chen) – a wimp whom she makes look like fool – are featured as is the rigid Countess Lidia Ivanovna (Eva Dewaele), Alexei Karenin’s later life partner. The settings include those of Moscow’s and St. Petersburg’s high society, the Karenin’s home, a farm harvest with hands at work (Levin’s environment), the famous horse race, Anna’s and Vronsky’s sojourn in Italy and, of course, some train journeys to get from A to B plus Anna’s last fatal encounter with a train. (more…)

Lifeworlds

December 5, 2014

“Forellenquintett” (“A-Life“, “Wings of Wax“, “Forellenquintett“)
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
November 28, 2014

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2014 by Ilona Landgraf

A high-tech artificial world confronting vivacious goings-on of trouts in a streamlet – that is roughly the basic point of Zurich Ballet’s triple bill “Forellenquintett”. The middle piece, a thought-provoking reflection about human hubris, about the shattered dream of commanding nature, is the connecting link between both extremes.

“A-Life“ is Douglas Lee’s first choreography for Zurich Ballet. “A-” stands for “Artificial”. Artificial life is an object of research but also an art movement. In both cases computer simulations, robot technology and biochemical knowledge is used to focus on processes in life systems. Lee was interested in what happens when people, emotional beings, are confronted with the digitalized, abstract world; how, for example, an installation determines the movement of dancers. (more…)

Dark times for the love

June 18, 2014

“Romeo and Juliet”
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
June 15, 2014

Christian Spuck, formerly Stuttgart Ballet’s resident choreographer, is in his second year at the helm of Ballet Zurich. “Romeo and Juliet” was his first work for Zurich in 2012. A challenging and appealing task for the newly assembled company back then and a chance for Spuck to contrast with Stuttgart’s Cranko heritage. Spuck deemed Jürgen Rose’s set design for Cranko’s version of “Romeo and Juliet” as too sweetish for the story’s hardship and aimed for more emotional authenticity. He got to work with set designer Christian Schmidt and costume designer Emma Ryott. Did he finally come up with a new, convincing approach? (more…)

The Recurring Chance to Awaken the Beauty

April 18, 2014

“Sleeping Beauty”
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
April 13, 2014

Having the Royal Ballet’s gorgeous production of Marius Petipa’s “The Sleeping Beauty” in mind (with Alina Cojocaru in the title role), I faced Mats Ek’s modern version, currently performed by Ballet Zurich, with mixed feelings. A drug-addicted Aurora seemed to be an all too tasteless twist on the iconic fairy tale. The Zurich company, however, disabused me. Ek’s “Sleeping Beauty” provided around two hours of fascination during which I kept my eyes glued to the stage to miss no single detail. (more…)

Murder as the Last Resort.

December 2, 2013

“Woyzeck”
Ballet Zurich
Forum Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg, Germany
November 28, 2013

“Woyzeck” is Christian Spuck’s second work of choreography based on a piece by the German writer Georg Büchner. In 2008 Spuck already had staged the comedy “Leonce and Lena”, two years later the gloomy “Woyzeck” premiered in Oslo. Formerly resident choreographer of Stuttgart Ballet and since 2012 artistic director of Ballet Zurich, Spuck literally brought “Woyzeck” home. Büchner, who died well ahead his time in 1837 at the age of twenty-three due to a typhus infection, spent his last month in Zurich and moreover was buried there. Yet “Woyzeck”, the last piece of his small oeuvre, couldn’t be finished. The handwritten fragments later were assembled and underwent several edits. (more…)