Mahler, Bernstein, Neumeier - John Neumeier and the Hamburg Ballet - Cover Story

Dance Magazine, July, 1998 by Sybil Shearer

JOHN NEUMEIER'S HAMBURG BALLET DANCES TO MAHLER AND BERNSTEIN WHEN IT APPEARS AT LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 98, FROM JULY 14 THROUGH 18.

For twenty-five years, Milwaukee-born John Neumeier has dominated the Hamburg dance scene in the same way that St. Petersburg-born George Balanchine dominated the dance scene of New York City. Each worked as a foreigner in a land that suited his style, although he was neither born nor brought up there. New York City is a place of bright sun glinting off hard surfaces. Its tempo is fast, its atmosphere sharp. There is no mist and no wind like the one on the prairies near where Neumeier was born, or off the North Sea in Europe where he instinctively found his place. In New York City, Balanchine stripped dance to its essentials, to the reality of good design through the medium of fine dancers trained in the classic style. New York City is cool. Hamburg is warm. It is a city full of trees, beautiful parks, waterways, and bridges. Each man was suited to the environment where destiny had placed him, and each survived and flourished.

New York City, which has not seen Hamburg Ballet perform Neumeier's choreography in thirteen years, will have an opportunity to appreciate his virtuosity this month when the company appears at Lincoln Center Festival 98, dancing to Mahler (All Our Yesterdays) and Bernstein (Bernstein Dances). All Our Yesterdays will include ten songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, as well as Mahler Fifth Symphony. Bernstein's instrumental, vocal, and orchestral pieces provide the score for the evening-length Bernstein Dances, set against a backdrop of Reinhart Wolf photographs of New York City, with costumes by Giorgio Armani. "Serenade," its finale, is set in a Manhattan penthouse and features three couples in evening dress and a mysterious odd man out. This sophisticated marvel in U11C of Neumeier's best works.

Primarily a choreographer of dramas, Neumeier possesses a phenomenal command of lyricism. In his "abstract" piece, Mahler Fifth Symphony, the sweep of bodies across and around the stage, born out of hidden thoughts an ideas that generate these flowing, rhythmic patterns, is also drama. It is the ideals of a society--man in relation to the forces of nature, men in relation to women. I have never seen lifts like these before anywhere--the men seem to soar into space through the women without actually leaving the ground. They become one being, not just a strong man lifting an agile woman. This is a large crowd movement; not individuals, rather trends or directions.

Although he preserves the basic tenets of dance, where movement speaks in relation to music, Neumeier is not limited to standard concepts of tradition, classic danse d'ecole steps and gestures, or the usual avant-garde multimedia. He choreographs in his own movement style, but with classically trained dancers who can also act, who can embody meaning and emotional impact in a lyrical manner. Because they can think beyond themselves, his dancers are superb instruments. His works, often full-evening, three-act affairs, are large movement dramas and quite wonderful theater.

Some critics have compared Neumeier's work to operas or to symphonies, to plays and even to films--especially after seeing close-ups in a video of a live performance. (Significantly, the spoken word is not missed because the action is so completely felt and thought out in creation and then projected in performance.) In Neumeier's opinion, however, his work is closest to poetry, "through rhythm, saying something in a direct way but not in a chronological descriptive way, rather ways that would multiply the dimensions of the story." The traditional and the avantgarde, the two opposing forces in dance, both work in his choreography--his range carries him from a Nutcracker to a whole new interpretation of Stravinsky's Sacre.

I met Neumeier in 1960 when he was at Marquette University, studying with Father John Walsh, who ran the theater department where dance was also taught. Father Walsh, who had seen my first ballet, Within This Thicket, had called me and said, "May I have four hours of your time?" He proved so fascinating, however, that we spent eight hours together. "I have a pupil who I would like to have work with you," he said. "Will you look at him?" I said I would, and he introduced me to eighteen-year-old Neumeier. I could see right away that he was a talented and unusual person, mature for his age but very modest. He had been training at the Stone-Camryn School of Ballet in Chicago and was a very good dancer. I was not teaching anymore. I simply put him in my second ballet, Fables and Proverbs, to premiere in an upcoming performance in Chicago. Among the first press notices it earned him was one from Claudia Cassidy, the feared critic of the Chicago Tribune: "A slender, dark boy named John Neumeier made you watch him without trying. I am very much afraid he is a dancer."

Later he was called to the army, and when he returned in 1962 be said, "I would like to choreograph." My company was too small for two choreographers, so I told him he should go far away, see the world, learn as much as he could about movement--create out of his ideas in his own way. This was a huge, vague order, but he knew what I meant, and he did it, in his own way, with spectacular results.