The Last Ball...
Eno Peçi's „The last Ball“ - The Origen Cultural Festival: A look back to last July: „The last Ball“ at Julierturm (Switzerland).
The Origen Cultural Festival takes place yearly in Riom since 2006.
Unable to attend this awaited performance of Mr. Peçi's last work, I could follow some critics and comments that were displayed in the internet. Here a short report about this interesting event „just for the record“. But before starting, I would like to point out that I much admire Mr. Peçi's rich, vast vocabulary and the way in which he is very "choosy" - one that does not tend to "put everything he knows" in every single choreography (like many choreographers do) but carefully selects what is most appropriate to that exact piece of work. I like that.
Even though there was lots of talk about this „Happening“ during the Culture Festival, the around 100 guests did not know exactly what to expect of this evening. One thing was sure: there would be no „cliché Ball“ like the Viennese one at the Opera in those alpine altitudes...
Director, Mr. Giovanni Netzer, invited in fact the audience to dance (funnily described in a swiss critic as „Schwof“!) and some pairs waltzed around the floor but after half an hour the professional dancers took over.
A new work by the choreographer with a new combinaton of dancers from the Vienna State Ballet.
Nikisha Fogo, Fiona Mc Gee, Madison Young, Mila Schmidt, Andrey Teterin, Jakob Feyferlick and Arne Vandervelde - all of them, without exception, young, motivated, promising dancers – proceded during the next 1 ½ hours to portray the „Rise and Fall“ of the last Tsar, Nicholas II from Russia.
Special attention was given to the costumes – very clever and inspired use of Joan Mc Gee's Vintage Shop – and to the use of Schostakowitsch's music (Note of interest: a original radio recording of Nicholas II was also used!)
The flexible use of the stage – first at the audience's height gave the possibility of different interpretations on different levels: first the court telling us the story of the daughters, Alexey's hemophilia etc. but all of a sudden the movements were frozen and the stage rose to show another reality of the russian court: a poor Siberian farmer family...
This most interesting use of different levels reminded me strongly of the play „A wedding dress“ by Nelson Rodrigues, a work practically unknown outside Brazil. In this work there are three levels (the stage ist built in three floors actually: Reality/present, memory/past and hallucination!). I like the idea of having many possibilities of telling the same story...
As mentioned before I could not attend this event but I would like to present here a piece of Mrs. Ruth Spitzenpfeil's original critic in German published on July 6th last.
„Alles in allem erlebte man im Julierturm ein gekonnt inszeniertes Stück zeitgenössischer Ballettkunst, tänzerisch erstklassig präsentiert von grösstenteils blutjungen Solisten. Es war ein Erlebnis von Körperlichkeit und Leidenschaft, die kaum jemand kalt liess – umso mehr, als man im Rund des Julierturms so nah am Geschehen ist wie sonst kaum beim Ballett. Jeder Atemzug der Tänzer war zu hören. Weniger eindeutig zu spüren war der Hauch der Revolution. Das Volk im Untergeschoss erhob sich nicht gewaltsam gegen die Herrschenden. Die Zarenfamilie ereilte der Tod, das Gemetzel war aber nur angedeutet. «Wir führen das Publikum sanft in den Abgrund», hatte Netzer bei seiner Einführung gesagt. Ob er deswegen den Dress-Code Schwarz vorgegeben hatte? Der Effekt dieser Vorgabe war nicht gerade umwerfend. Manche Besucher haben nur ungern auf eine historische Ballrobe verzichtet.“
All Pictures' Copyrights: Alice das Neves
