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Mahler and Terpsichore Vienna
Staatsoper
06/18/2025 - & June 23*, 2025
Live
Hans van Manen (choreography), Franz Liszt (music)
Olga Esina/Claudine Schoch*, Marcos Menha/Eno Peci* (dancers)
Shino Takizawa (piano)
Keso Dekker (costumes), Bert Dalhuysen (lighting), Balázs Delbó (camera)
4
Martin Schläpfer (choreography), Gustav Mahler (music)
Adi Hanan, Sinthia Liz (dansers), Ensemble & corps de ballet of Wiener Staatsballett
Florina Illie (soprano), Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Patrick Lange (conductor)
Florian Etti (sets), Catherine Voeffray (costumes), Thomas Diek (lighting)
Live: E. Peci, C. Schoch (© Wiener Staatsballett/Ashley Taylor)
Mahler’s music, as marvelous as it is, is not what comes to mind when I think of dance in general and ballet in particular. Though there have been ballets choreographed to his Third Symphony by John Neumeier, the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony by both Maurice Béjart and John Neumeier and several choreographies of Das Lied von der Erde by Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier, Antony Tudor and Heinz Spoerli, Mahler’s music – characterized by swings from the melancholy to the turbulent – is not conventionally ballabile. Hence my interest in seeing how the Wiener Staatsballett, one of the world’s most prominent ballet companies, would face such a challenge.
The novel idea of this choreography – especially novel to conservative Vienna that is – ecame into being as the venerable ballet company has a new director, Swiss choreographer Martin Schläpfer (b.1959). The short ballet that opens the evening is another « new » choreography by an idol of Schläpfer’s, Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen (1932‑1989).
Van Manen’s creation is a « video ballet », a fascinating introspection of a ballerina as we see her, as she sees herself and as she sees the public. Her accomplices are a danseur noble, a pianist and a cameraman. The ballet begins with the cameraman pointing the camera at the public. When the ballerina appears on stage, he films her and we have a twofold visual, the actual ballerina and the projection of the ballerina that becomes the proscenium’s background. This is an elaborate exercise; an extrapolation of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950), where the hero goes through the looking glass. The ballerina dances with her back to the public but the video projections shows her from the front. In this fashion, the ballerina sees herself too. Then there are video clips of the ballerina with a danseur noble dancing in the Wiener Staatsoper’s ballet. This interesting intellectual exercise is danced to a piano piece by Liszt, Sospiri!.
4 (© Wiener Staatsballett/Ashley Taylor)
The main work, 4, is a choreography of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. As one of the Des Knaben Wunderhorn symphonies (the others are Symphonies No. 2 and No. 3), nature is an important element in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Des Knaben Wunderhorn was a collection of poetry published a century earlier, purporting to be genuine German folk poetry but it was only partially so; the rest being invented. It was a source of inspiration for German composers of an earlier generation. Mahler opted for this naïve Romanticism instead of his more usual, tortured, sources of inspiration.
Between 1888 and 1899, Mahler set over a dozen of these poems to music, either as Lieder or as verses in his Symphonies No. 2 and No. 3. He had planned to use one poem called “Der Himmel hängt voller Geigen” in his Third Symphony but it was much too long. Thus, the poem was renamed “Das himmlische Leben” and used as the last movement of the Fourth Symphony. The bucolic setting of this symphony creates a host of images that inspired the present choreography.
Despite the music’s apparent cheerfulness due to its bucolic character, there is an undercurrent of anxiety which gives great possibilities to a well thought out choreography. Some of the positions of the dancers resemble those of a crouching frog or rabbit. When there is an outburst in the music, there is a leap. The ballet’s tableaux alternate between two female dancers that seem to be walking in the fields and crowd scenes varying in size from a small group to the entire ensemble.
Like the symphony, the ballet has no plot. Yet, it is clear that Schläpfer uses Mahler’s music to point to the fragility of the human condition. We, as individuals – represented by the two dancers – interact with others and with society at large – the tableaux with crowds – in different modes, some jubilant, others less so. However, we are eventually alone.
The dance movements were more modern than classical, but despite their modernity they had a classical structure, perhaps this is a subtext in which Schläpfer declares his intentions. After all, for over a decade he was the Director of Düsseldorf’s Ballet am Rhein, known for its innovative choreographies, before moving to Vienna to lead the venerable Wiener Staatsballett. This ballet is Schläpfer’s first choreography for his new home and it augurs well. Hopefully, the company will maintain its traditions and continue to be the custodian of Nureyev’s sans pareil choreographies of the classic ballets such as Swan Lake and Don Quixote, both admired last season, but it will also innovate and generate its own, new, creations.
Ossama el Naggar
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