shifting symmetries
The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper
shifting symmetries Concertante Hans van Manen In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated William Forsythe Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet George Balanchine
PREMIERE 23 DECEMBER 2023 – VIENNA STATE OPERA
about today’s performance »Choreography is a language. It is like an alphabet, and you do not need to spell words that you already know. The meaning of a language is determined by the context in which it appears. The most important is how you speak this language, and not what you say.« What William Forsythe says here about choreography articulates a view of dance that applies not only to his own works, but is equally valid for artists such as Hans van Manen and George Balanchine. The triple bill Shifting Symmetries opens up a dialogue between these three masters, whose unifying element is their consistent, rigorous approach to the art form of ballet. For his 1994 ballet Concertante, Hans van Manen was inspired by the expressive variety, dynamic rhythms and powerful character of Frank Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante to create a choreography in which eight dancers, at times joyfully, at times bristling with eroticism, at times filled with aggression, always full of surprises and yet following their own inner logic, join together to create snapshots of dance. With In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated – created by William Forsythe in 1987 in response to a commission from Rudolf Nureyev for the Ballet de L’Opéra de Paris – a work that fundamentally revolutionised ballet joins for the first time the Viennese repertoire. To the electronic sounds provided by his artistic partner Thom Willems, Forsythe drives classical ballet to the level of absurdity with breathtaking virtuosity, using the pattern of theme and variation and the techniques of deconstruction and manipulation in an atmosphere of eccentric coolness. George Balanchine’s 1966 Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet is a tribute to Marius Petipa and a celebration of ballet. Inspired by the magnificent orchestral version of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet G minor, Op. 25, which Arnold Schönberg composed in 1937 and proudly labelled »Brahms’s Fifth Symphony«, Balanchine created four miniature ballets for a total of 55 dancers: full of elegance in the Allegro, full of romanticism and lyricism in the two middle movements, with intoxicating virtuosity in the finale.
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
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THOMAS MANN DOCTOR FAUSTUS
“For just as little as one can understand what is new and young without being at home in tradition, so, too, love for the old must remain inauthentic and sterile if one closes oneself off to the new, which arises from the old out of historical necessity.”