View From Vienna. - dance review

Dance Magazine, Nov, 2000 by George Jackson

"Dance in Exile," a series about dancers who fled from the Nazis or were interned by them, focuses on the work of a diverse but distinguished group of choreographers active here mostly between the two world wars. Curated with persistence and daring by critic Andrea Amort, the series was conceived prior to the current political situation but, obviously, there is a resonance. In reviving choreography by Gertrud Bodenwieser, Gertrud Kraus, Andrei Jerschik, Cilly Wang, Pola Nirenska, the recently discovered Hanna Berger and others, Austrians are being shown what liveliness was lost when those in power insisted on racial purity and political conformity. Still performing is one of the then-exiled Viennese dancers--Wera Goldman, now of Tel Aviv. For a solo program at the Old Smithy, Goldman, whose features seem as powerful as a classic actor's mask, danced Witch of Endor and reminisced with brio about the Viennese teachers of her childhood.

One of three dance exhibits at the Theater Museum in Palais Lobkowitz was on the exiles of sixty years ago. Another, conceived by contemporary choreographer Willi Dorner and photographed by Lisa Rastl, was on dancers' feet. The third, objects made from toe shoes, was by American artist Louis von Bunt, who resides in Zurich. Because these shows opened simultaneously, a masterly maneuver by the museum's dance curator Jarmila Weissenbock, Vienna's dance personalities of all persuasions came out in force.

At the Staatsoper, as ever, the big ballet ensemble continues to be opera's stepchild. The dancers were busy rehearsing experimental pieces for their upcoming "off" season at the Odeon Theater while performing Nureyev's 1964 version of Swan Lake on their home stage. Supervised by Richard Nowotny and set in Jordi Roig's airy designs (which have replaced Nicholas Georgiadis's dark, weighty ones), Nureyev's Lake seems almost traditional compared to some recent stagings of this classic. Corps and soloists were particularly fine in the beginning, celebrating Siegfried's birthday. The women brought precision to the swan passages of Acts II and IV, but did not demonstrate the same ease as in Act I. Gregor Hatala, a handsome Siegfried despite heavy legs, is most sympathetic due to his dancing and manner. Romanian ballerina Simona Noja, as Odette/Odile, didn't perform with the same panache I've seen in the past. Her husband, Renato Zanella, heads the Staatsopernballett and is its principal choreographer. He had a romance with Vienna, particularly with the opera administration and the critics when he first came from Stuttgart, but this affair has cooled. The critics, who praised his early short ballets, haven't cared for his recent long ones. (Not so the public, for Zanella's latest, Cinderella to the Johann Strauss score, always sells out.) That he has tried to make the ballet troupe independent surely doesn't please his boss Ioan Holender, director of the Staatsoper. Holender is now putting out trial balloons about fewer dancers, not as many performances, eliminating the ballet school (where the Bolshoi ballerina emerita Ludmila Semenyaka has been engaged to teach) and, as next ballet director, the Russian dancer Vienna has taken to its heart more than any other since Nureyev--Vladimir Malakhov. Last year, Holender invited Malakhov to stage La Bayadere for the Staatsoper. For next year, he's asked him to choreograph an original two-acter based on Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera.