Vienna's Opera Ball 2024: Ratmanky's "La Séparation" (Mykola Lysenko), Vienna State Ballet/ Wiener Staatsballett
“Same time, next year": Does anyone still remember this play by Bernard Slade? I do.
And I know why it comes to my mind.
Every time I think of the Opera Ball, which has turned into quite a questionable „Event", I remember „Same time": Not exactly as the play (in which the characters become older as the years pass by) but as in our present reality, in which the media coverage of anything became unprofessional, shrill and strident reflecting a great part of the guests who they are interviewing.
Apart from all this, it is, we must admit, quite a hard task not to be repetitious and boring year after year, while working for an “institution”.
It has been years since I was last at the Opera Ball and, only God knows how difficult it is, to have the patience to watch the „Ball of the Balls" from my Bergère at home to find out what the Vienna State Ballet is up to. I won’t write much anymore about the ORF (Austrian TV-Chanell), except to say that there is an urgent need , among other things, to “re-think” its moderation philosophy.
Copyright: Ashley Taylor / Vienna State Ballet
Well, to make a long story short, the „torture" of watching this year’s mediocre presentation and the long waiting have paid off: Ratmanky's „Touch " was everything I wanted to see.
I will not write about the costumes (by Adeline André) because I cannot hear/read anymore about „Pajamas" - a silly assumption that has been repeated and repeated. Purposedlessly.
Fact is that Alexei Ratmansky has finally achieved what I had given up to await – a new use of the space and the bodies that fill it. On top of this, his choreography is a statement in itself, symbolically and beautifully built to „tell us a story" without words, in pure dance vocabulary about so much that is happening, quite so near, more or less just 500 kilometres from our borders. And after it is finished one thing remains: a signal of Peace.
Unfortunately, the Television's camera work in Austria is (also) quite conservative. Sometimes I have the feeling that everything is being done the same way since the first Opera Ball was televised. This year's ballet would have told „other" stories had it also been filmed from the sides or the „back". Nevertheless, it is more than an improvement compared to the work that was given to us in the last two years. We witnessed choreographic “solutions” no choreographer had ever thought of while using this (quite ungrateful) space. But that is what Ratmanky's „signature" is all about, not only using the music from the Ukranian composer Mykola Lysenko but using the dancers in non-stop motion crossing and filling the room, using the different space dimensions, being everywhere. Unusual for the Vienna Opera Ball, some may think (and hope again for Tiaras, tutús, Princesses and Viennese Bonbons). But for the first time in years, there was a real „cut" with more conservative ways of presenting the Ballet at the Ball Opening. There were frustrated attempts before – as in Renato Zanella's period the male dancers put their trousers down – but that was just a silly „manoeuvre" to get some attention and be mentioned in the local press.
The dancers did a job that perfectly suited the occasion, specially Ketevan Papava, a gifted dancer (who also happens to be incredibly photogenic), Davide Dato, Duccio Tariello, Alexey Popov, Masayu Kimoto, Alice Firenze, Brendan Saye, Eno Peci and very happy and most fortunate last-minute replacement, Alaia Rogers-Maman, who brought into the not very homogenous (girl's) group (the show is televised and we cannot forget that cameras can be quite unflattering) something that was solely represented by lovely Miss Papava: Glamour.
And I truly believe that the Opera Ball, altogether, could do even with lots more (real, classy) Glamour in times like these. Miss Rogers-Maman has plenty of it.
A last remark: The presenters Karl Hohenlohe and Christoph Wagner-Trenkwitz (who remind me more and more every year of the “elderly” two Gentlemen that used to sit in the Muppets Show Theatre box) should also learn to be quiet (as they do while anyone is singing) during the Ballet. Their talking incessantly is not only monotonous but terribly annoying. And disrespectful.
Ricardo Leitner
a t t i t u d e
February 11th, 2024.
