Magnificat

Ballet choreographed by Heinz Spoerli on the music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Broadcast live on the 9th of February at 8 PM on the Channel MEZZO

WÄRE HEUTE MORGEN UND GESTERN JETZT
If today were tomorrow and yesterday were now

Form : Ballet by Heinz Spoerli
Created at the Opernhaus Zürich on 25 April 2009

Duration : 70 minutes without intermission

Stage : Opernhaus Zürich

Dates : February 9 at 8 PM

Composer : Johann Sebastian Bach

Musical direction : Marc Minkowski

Choreography : Heinz Spoerli
Set design : Peter Schmidt
Lighting : Martin Gebhardt

What to believe in godless times?

The Zurich Ballet dances in the today and tomorrow with Bach

By Andrea Kachelriess

A visit to Heinz Spoerli in Zurich is always an unforgettable lesson in musical matters. His new piece “Wäre heute morgen und gestern jetzt” (if today were tomorrow and yesterday today), danced by the Zurich Ballet at the Opera on Saturday for the first time, centres around Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat, the hymn of praise to God’s omnipotence sung by Mary after she learns that she is to give birth to Jesus Christ. Although it is altogether suited to forming the basis for a ballet by virtue of its unusually short sections, it cannot fill an entire evening. The creative head of the Zurich Ballet has accordingly prefaced it with other Bach works which, starting with the Allemande from the Partita for flute in A minor and the Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 in G major, allow him to trace the path leading to the hymn of praise over two decades.

To be sure, the approach is educational and academic but, like every good teacher, Heinz Spoerli is a magician, who uses sleight of hand to make us forget theoretical tedium. And so it is that we experience 70 astonishing minutes in which dance and music fuse to a degree which, since the death of Uwe Scholz, is to be found only in Zurich. It is a performance in which images, ideas and thoughts run together without needing narration, without a pause and without any chance to applaud in between – but that is not the only reason for the ovation at the end.

Melancholy in the garden of desires

When the curtain rises we see a fabulously beautiful place, a set in which Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard might also be staged. Ladies in white dresses sit on white cubes; white Chinese lanterns float by like celestial orbs of light; a background projection creates lines as in a magnetic field. It is a garden full of wishes and hopes – and yet drenched in a mysterious melancholy. Nor can it quite break up a group of merry girls, no matter how they form up into beautiful still life groups, pivot in their short swinging dresses or kick high backwards and forwards. The gentlemen join in with high, double spins; their powerful dancing will remain more varied than that of the women throughout the performance.

And then it is there: the colour black. Heinz Spoerli’s set designer Peter Schmidt lowers metal tubes down that assign two cones of light to the dance of the pair and later grow into an enchanted forest illuminated in blue. Galina Mihaylova and Filipe Portugal very tenderly allow their bodies to get out of balance. Their leotards are beguiling, their gestures desperate. Do they tell of sin, of betrayal?

The power of art shows itself almost weightlessly

Marc Minkowski conducts the singers and musicians of the International Opera Studio and the Zurich Opera (which calls itself Orchestra La Scintilla in this formation and is conducted by Ada Pesch) in such a way that sources of friction are introduced into the sublimity of Bach’s music. That soon clearly points to the fact that Heinz Spoerli is focusing on very basic questions. What to believe in in godless times?

Respect for all faiths, for belief itself, is always maintained in the dancing, but there is also doubt with regard to death, mention of which is constantly made, particularly in the Magnificat section, which is bathed in shades of mauve and yellow. Like Bach’s music, Heinz Spoerli’s dance aspires upward, he elevates the figures, never makes them small. This upward tendency has already been hinted at in front of the drawn curtain by the two elongated boards which, when a dancer enters, float away at the movement of a hand. As is usual in Zurich, there is abundant dancing on points, with contorted extremities and exaggerated motions only seldom braking the neo-Classical flow or drawing it downwards. The lifts are particularly effective in this performance, the anyway over slender Zurich dancers in their delicate batik dresses seeming altogether weightless.

Heinz Spoerli’s new ballet strives to lift limits – just as time blurs in the title, just as through our voices mankind penetrates into the divine realm in Bach’s music. For all the moments of reverence, the Swiss choreographer has succeeded in creating a stimulating and entertaining performance, one which helps even doubters to have faith: in the power of art.

Translation: J & M Berridge

links: www.opernhaus.ch, www.spoerli.ch