Ballett am Rhein (Germany): Contemporary thoughts and actions!

Contemporary behaviour requires contemporary actions…

…and I was more than extremely glad to be informed about Ballett am Rhein’s actual measures taken during this pandemic.

This is not only “trendsetting” but definitely setting quite a scale for others to follow. Many companies are reacting in similar, intelligent ways. But too many are not… for instance, just to mention the Vienna State Ballet: Apart from not reacting sensibly, trying to change programmed repertoire for the Season (Giselle, La fille mal gardée, Jewels, Swan lake… definitely Ballets that bring “public” to the Opera but Ballets which require a lot of dancers simultaneously on stage) and adapt to actual circumstances, it also put through a première in which the whole ensemble (around 120 dancers) was on stage to see! The Ballet World is still speechless about that… So much to contemporary ways of thinking.

Then, all of a sudden I get a press release from The Ballett am Rhein, a provincial company that has not had any international projection (at least during the last 20 years). Reading it I found out quite a lot of information about what is being done behind the scenes. Information not only about very strict hygiene concepts and security measures but also about the division of its forty-five dancers (it IS a small company) in small groups etc. etc.

Director, Demis Volpi, obviously a young man that goes with the times, honours his previous commitments keeping his invitations of guest choreographers from all over the world. At the moment Aszure Barton is rehearsing “in loco” the piece “Come in” and the great Twyla Tharp (to quote the press department from the Opera am Rhein: “the contemporary dance’s icon from New York”) works with just 20 dancers on the première from “In C”.

Aszure Barton created works for The American Ballet Theatre, The Nederlands Dans Theater, The National Ballet of Canada, The Martha Graham Dance Company, das Bayerische Staatsballett and the English National Ballet. Back in 2005 she was the first choreographer “in residence” at The Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York and created there in 2006 “Come In”, a very poetical and at the same time crucially effective, for Mikhail Baryshnikov and 12 young dancers.

Copyright: Daniel Senzek

Twyla works directly from her Studio in New York through an elaborated and quite ingenious camera system with the company. What else to expect from a real ballet genius that has worked, among others, with companies like The American Ballet Theatre, The Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, The Royal Ballet London, The New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, The Martha Graham Dance Company and with people like Milos Forman, Baryshnikov etc.?

Yes, you may be thinking the same as I do: how utterly necessary it is for Artists to keep continuously and incessantly working - either if they perform and if they dance in front of an audience or not. But the intellectual “frisson” must be given. And this can also only achieved by positively exciting the right nerves of the dancers by working with as many different choreographers, styles, ideas, languages as possible. This is essential.

Demis Volpi. Copyright: Ballett am Rhein

Compared to other companies’ reactions to present times (I am not only speaking of Vienna, where both companies are falling into a kind of conventionality and lethargy) I can only say “Chapeau” to Mr Volpis’ administration and contemporary thoughts. I am surely looking forward to visiting The Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, where I have been for the last time in 1998 (I lived for quite some time in this “wannabe” city) during the administration period of Mr Youri Vámos - but better leave it at that. It’s just “Water under the bridge”.

To make a long story short: Art and especially Ballet, dance has never been a distinguishing mark in the North-Rhine Westphalian mentality (and definitely not at the Ruhr Area - there is in Duisburg a “subsidiary” from The Oper am Rhein) - You just need to read Voltaire’s “Candide” to know what I am talking about - BUT things may be changing and, as it seems, much for the better with Demis Volpi’s new ideas and impulses.

Yes, Contemporary behaviour requires contemporary actions…