BADEN-BADEN
Delicate souls and dynamic neoclassicism: “The World of John Neumeier” dance festival to bring literature and music from America to the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus.
Hamburg has just bid him farewell with long celebrations and many tears after fifty-one record-setting years, and the renowned tanz magazine honored him with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Now John Neumeier will once again be delighting Baden-Baden in his latest role as curator and impresario: From September 26 to October 13, “The World of John Neumeier” festival will take place for the third time with an ample supporting program throughout the city.
This year’s thematic focus is especially close to the master’s heart, namely the literature of his native USA. Neumeier will be bringing along his adaptations of Tennessee Williams’s most famous dramas, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. It is the Hamburg Ballet’s first guest performance under the new direction of Neumeier’s young successor Demis Volpi, who has brought in some new personalities to join the beloved Hamburg dancing stars. For this year’s guest company, Neumeier has invited the Joffrey Ballet from Chicago, the city where he stepped on stage for the very first time. The company, which looks back on a rich history, has not been seen in Europe for a long time (and never in Baden-Baden!) and, in its three-part evening, will also be contributing to the festival’s theme with three German premieres.
The festival opens with the ballet workshop on September 26, where Neumeier will be joined by the Hamburg dancers in explaining how to translate Tennessee Williams’s dialogues and powerful emotions into choreography. At the dance studio in front of the Kurhaus bandshell (28.9, 12 pm) the motto will once again be “dancing along” instead of “watching,” and at the salon dialogue in LA8 Seite 2 von 3 (29.9, 2:30 pm), the festival director will meet with Ashley Wheater, the leader of the Joffrey Ballet. Wheater is an eloquent conversationalist with a great sense of humor who has a lot to say about the differences between new- and oldworld ballet. New works will showcase both graduates of the School of the Hamburg Ballet in Absprung – Choreographers for Tomorrow (Kongresshaus, 3.10, 5 pm) and the National Youth Ballet of Germany: The young dancers will present a new work by Edvin Revazov, the Hamburg Ballet’s longtime First Soloist, at the Theater am Goetheplatz (3.10, 7 pm, 4.10, 8 pm) and with Sybil Dances, will recall John Neumeier’s first engagement (1960–1962) in Sybil Shearer’s company.
A Streetcar Named Desire became world-famous not only as a stage play, but also as a film starring Marlon Brando. Tennessee Williams tells the story of the fragile Southern beauty Blanche DuBois who, after great losses, seeks comfort from her sister in New Orleans – where she meets her sister’s brutal husband Stanley Kowalski. With blurred flashbacks and the nightmarish portrait of a soul on the brink of collapse, with delicate tones by Sergei Prokofiev and Alfred Schnittke’s overpowering First Symphony, this dance drama is one of Neumeier’s most captivating ballets. The Hamburg Ballet will be dancing A Streetcar Named Desire in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden from October 4 to 6.
In The Glass Menagerie, which the Hamburg Ballet will be presenting on the second weekend of October (11.–13.10), dreams are also shattered by reality, but here much more quietly: the fragile Laura arranges glass figurines and escapes to the cinema, her dissatisfied brother Tom would like to be an artist and hides his homosexuality, and their overpowering mother dwells on the past.
This intense chamber drama, in which Tennessee Williams himself makes a personal appearance, evolves into a purely American score by Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Ned Rorem. Performed live in the Festspielhaus by the Philharmonie Baden-Baden.
The Joffrey Ballet will be bringing along an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic Of Mice and Men, current Zurich Ballet director Cathy Marston having adapted the novella about California farm workers for the Chicago troupe three years ago. The atmospheric music was commissioned from James Bond film Seite 3 von composer Thomas Newman. With the dynamic, whirring Hummingbird by British choreographer Liam Scarlett and the melancholy autumn piece Golden Hour by French choreographer Nicolas Blanc, the company will feature two neoclassical ensemble pieces to magnificent minimal music – first Philip Glass’s Tirol Concerto and then the Symphony Under the Trees‘ Voices by Italian composer Ezio Bosso.
Further information and tickets: www.festspielhaus.de/en