The Seasons (Die Jahreszeiten): Vienna State Ballet, May 18th, 2022
It is not an easy task to write a critique about a performance during which many members of the audience fell asleep, from which not a few, but many left during intermission (after a nearly 2 hours first part) and at the end of which there was also booing and hissing, a fact that obviously reflects the dissatisfaction of the public and is becoming quite customary (if not a „must") during the Opera's present direction period.
What Ballet is concerned with, it is obvious that the audiences had become quite spoiled during Manuel Legris' 10 years direction period – but this is a thing of the past and a fact of life.
Yes, this is not an easy task and somehow I cannot take Mame Dennis out of my mind (from the theatre play „Mame", 1966) as she talks to a tasteless couple, the „Upsons" about their (terribly) tasteless home: „Dorie, Claude, I can’t begin to tell you what I think of your home!„ - we all know how much “interior design” can say about the souls of House owners… Fascinating!
I do not have the habit of reading anything about a new production before I have seen (and written about) it. This time I made the mistake of reading more carefully the nicely conceived invitation to this performance and „fell" over a sentence which made me wonder. And ponder.
I will try to more or less quote it: „The Seasons: Haydn's music has been accompanying Martin Schläpfer for twenty years... „
Yes, wonder and ponder. What is this all about? I thought. Haydn's music? The theme (The Seasons)? Or about Mr Schläpfer? You will be asking why I am mentioning this but by the way this phrase is constructed, it reveals perhaps much more than was meant to... Where does its emphasis fall upon? „Haydn and I" or „I and Haydn"?
Sadly the unique chance of combining Choir, Soloists and Dancers was quite abortive. Choir and Soloists were hidden in the Orchestra pit adding incredible staging conventionality to a quite formal work of choreography- It took me back to the days of The International Contemporary Dance Festival from Salvador/Bahia (Brazil) during the 70s and in which choreographies like these were extremely “new”, innovative and „en vogue". They are not anymore. And YES, you read it correctly. This was during the 70s. Quite a while ago.
The invitation to this show also included a description of what we were supposed to understand about the production on stage: I believe that if you need words to describe a painting, the focus is not on the painting but on literature. The same applies to Music, to any Art form and definitely also to Ballet. Dance is Dance by itself.
If a colour composition, a libretto, a sculpture, a performance, or a choreography is „perfect" it needs no explaining. There is no need for words to tell us what we are going to see and witness, therefore „making up our mind". This is somehow disturbing and even insulting to a „cogitandi mentis". And it happens with increasing frequency with the present direction.
Perhaps let me explain this much more trivially to you: if you can remember the very commercial film „Pretty Woman", you will remember that she is flown to San Francisco to see a performance of „La Traviata" - and even if she does not know Opera, never heard the music before, has not read „La Dame aux Camelias" and does not speak a word Italian, she is so taken by it, by the feeling and emotion of it, that she can only say at the very end: „It was so good, I nearly peed my pants".
I am aware that this description may appear, especially to our more intellectual readers, quite crass, vulgar and unheard of, but it is just like this. Plainly.
As I have mentioned some time ago, after one brilliant Première in Bratislava, there is always one sentence, sometimes a single word that stays on my mind when leaving a performance. There is mostly no other one which could be better used to express more accurately my feelings and impressions about it. This time is no exception and I can only think of the word „interesting..." (including the three dots of an ellipsis). Yes, „interesting... „.
One thought leads to another and I realized that (musically) the correlation and the assembly line of the (imposed by the schedule) new works is not only enormously impressive (Mahler, Brahms, now Haydn) but also very interesting in its context.
Some people who pass as „Ballet Connoisseurs" love to comment on and criticize the fact that Mr Schläpfer's musical choices are not „Ballet Music". I don't agree with that and, just to give an example, hasn't Béjart done some of his best works with Music that is not „Ballet Music" as his „Mahler Cyclus"? Mr Schläpfer's material choices are, even if quite daring and „a notch above", excellent.
It takes practically MANY months, if not years, of work to choreograph such „gigantic" pieces – and I am presently referring to THE contemporary choreographers of our times. Geniuses as Neumeier, Béjart, Tharp, Tetley, Forsythe...
The long period of conception work to create such a „prestige" work (I mean of course the glorious music), the finishing of it months before a Première, changes here and there, perhaps even a vital change at Opening night: This creative process is fascinating and exciting. A never-ending procedure. Was this the case this time? Once more, as with some other of Mr Schläpfer's choreographic works, this one lacks concept, continuity, and creativity. Of course, it is well-intentioned but it remains dilletantly „interesting"… and very dull!
I don't have to go into that for I have written about all these issues many times in my last reviews and I don't want to risk sounding repetitious as most of his work does (You just have to read my „old" reviews and you'll be completely informed and as far ahead as you are now).
Nevertheless, there are still some points which I have not mentioned before and that remain a question mark:
First, is the newly created position called „Senior Artiste". When I think of this superfluous hierarchical addition to the existing company's hierarchy, I can only think of an Artist with incredible charisma, radiance, technique, physique, projection skills and stage presence – unfortunately none of which are characteristics of Miss Yuko Kato. Every time she enters the scene the audience knows that there's going to be another round of „crouching on the floor"... This makes me wonder (and ponder) again: Are these works meant to endure the passing of time or are they just made to suit some dancers, now?
Second, the very questionable use of pantomime as an explanatory „help" to the recitative – as used in an Oratorio: First I found it quite funny and had even to laugh but then I realized that it was not „meant" to be funny. It reveals a lack of inspiration and an easy „solution" to fill out blanks and gaps.
And third, the anonymity into which Dancers are being thrown into – apart from the question if all the dancers were nearly necessary on stage as some did only a “walk in and out” (as Maria Yakovleva, a principal with the company, during the first part), an attitude which I don't evaluate as quite elegant and could even be understood as insulting. Anonymity… There's no necessity of mentioning dancers' names - they don’t exist individually in works like this - but just to question if the use of soloists and first soloists is really indispensable in pieces like this. Wouldn't it be something special to once have a piece just danced by the corps de ballet of the State Opera and the Volksoper? Just a thought.
Sadly, the Ballet of Vienna State Opera has been reduced, after being for ten years one of the leading companies in Central Europe (if not the leading one) to a „provincial", very amateur-like level.
It is (or was) a company with a very distinguished repertoire - we pay for it with our tax money – but after reading the next Season's Programme, I believe that I am right when saying that it has been changed into a „semi contemporary" one. Whose decision was/is this? And just as an afterthought; if this is really the target, why is a soloist, whose abilities lay practically just on the contemporary side of Dance, leaving the company to join another one? I'll leave you with that.
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