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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, 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 emotional vicissitudes, from melancholy to turbulence – 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 for this choreography – new to conservative Vienna, that is – came 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” arrangement by an idol of Schläpfer’s, Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen (1932‑1989).
Van Manen’s creation is a “video ballet,” a fascinating triple 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 her that becomes the proscenium’s background. This is an elaborate exercise, extrapolating Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950), where the hero is transported through the looking glass. The ballerina dances with her back to the public, but the video projections show her from the front. This way, she sees herself as well. There are then video clips of the ballerina with a danseur noble performing in the Wiener Staatsoper’s ballet. This interesting intellectual exercise is enacted to a piano piece by Liszt, Sospiri!
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, as the rest were invented. It was a source of inspiration for German composers of an earlier generation. Mahler opted for this naïve Romanticism instead of his usual, more tortured sources of inspiration.
Between 1888 and 1899, Mahler set over a dozen of these poems to music, either as Lieder or verses in his Symphonies No. 2 and No. 3. He’d planned to use one poem called “Der Himmel hängt voller Geigen” in his Third Symphony, but it was 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 created a host of images that inspired the present choreography.
Despite the music’s apparent cheerfulness due to its pastoral character, there is an undercurrent of anxiety which lends great possibilities to a well‑conceived choreography. Some of the dancers’ positions resembled those of a crouching frog or rabbit. When there is an outburst in the music, the dancers leap. The ballet’s tableaux alternate between two female dancers that seem to be walking in a field, and crowd scenes, varying in size from small groups to the entire ensemble.
As with the symphony, the ballet has no plot. Yet, it’s 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 ultimately alone.
The dance movements were more modern than classical, but despite their modernity they were classically structured, perhaps as 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 choreography) before moving to Vienna to lead the venerable Wiener Staatsballett. This ballet is Schläpfer’s first work for his new home, and it augurs well. Hopefully, the company will maintain its tradition and continue as custodian of Nureyev’s sans pareil choreographies of such classic ballets as Swan Lake and Don Quixote, both admired last season, while continuing to innovate and create its own new works.
Ossama el Naggar
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