Short Summary
In 1993, the Swiss choreographer Heinz Spoerli accepted the challenge of meeting Bach’s Opus summum for the piano with dance – and created one of his major works:
A dance drama built out of music-making with the body about human beings, their joys and fears, loneliness and desires, allegiances and quarrels, youth and age. Goldberg-Variationen is an 80-minute panorama of life which is juxtaposed here with a ballet choreographed by Ohad Naharin – also performed by the Vienna State Ballet for the first time – Tabula Rasa.
Ohad Naharin is one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary dance: an artist who loves extremes. Born in the Israeli kibbutz Mizra in 1952, he left his homeland at the age of 24 when he was invited to go to New York by modern dance icon Martha Graham. He danced in Maurice Béjart’s Ballet du XXe Siècle, and from 1990 to 2018 ran the Batsheva Dance Company, based in Tel Aviv, developing an entire technique of movement for them, Gaga, a method of »training the senses to be receptive«, created out of the need to be able to communicate with dancers on a deeper level.
As a Ballet Director, Heinz Spoerli made Basler Ballett, the Ballett der Deutschen Oper am Rhein and finally the Zürcher Ballett leading companies in Europe and created a comprehensive œuvre as a choreographer. He choreographed the Goldberg-Variationen in 1993 for his company in Düsseldorf. The Vienna State Ballet will present the work with a new stage and costume design devised especially for Vienna.
In 1742, Johann Sebastian Bach gave his Goldberg Variations the simple title Piano exercise consisting of one aria with various variations – and it is a fascinating compendium of variations, canons and fugues. In 1993, the Swiss choreographer Heinz Spoerli accepted the challenge of meeting Bach’s Opus summum for the piano with dance – and created one of his major works: a dance drama built out of music-making with the body about human beings, their joys and fears, loneliness and desires, allegiances and quarrels, youth and age. Goldberg-Variationen presents an 80-minute panorama of life which is juxtaposed here with a ballet choreographed by Ohad Naharin – also performed by the Vienna State Ballet for the first time – Tabula Rasa, to the eponymous piece by the composer Arvo Pärt. The Israeli’s works are declarations of love to the body in movement full of freedom, strength, eroticism and wildness, but also of purity, tenderness and vulnerability. The term »tabula rasa« comes from an ancient philosophical idea and describes human beings as a »blank page«. Ohad Naharin takes one of these and writes on it his explorations of the self and the body in the form of touching, kinetic-meditative experiences.
Goldberg-Variationen presents an 80-minute panorama of life which is juxtaposed here with a ballet choreographed by Ohad Naharin – also performed by the Vienna State Ballet for the first time – Tabula Rasa, to the eponymous piece by the composer Arvo Pärt. The Israeli’s works are declarations of love to the body in movement full of freedom, strength, eroticism and wildness, but also of purity, tenderness and vulnerability. The term »tabula rasa« comes from an ancient philosophical idea and describes human beings as a »blank page«. Ohad Naharin takes one of these and writes on it his explorations of the self and the body in the form of touching, kinetic-meditative experiences.
Impressions of the Choreographies
