the winter’s tale
INGEBORG BACHMANN
“Act out the comedies that make us laugh and those that make us cry.”
The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper
the winter’s tale Ballet in a prologue & three acts Music Joby Talbot Choreography Christopher Wheeldon Scenario Christopher Wheeldon & Joby Talbot Musical Direction Christoph Koncz / Johannes Witt Stage & Costume Design Bob Crowley Lighting Design Natasha Katz Projection Design Daniel Brodie Silk Effects Design Basil Twist Staging Jason Fowler / Gregory Mislin / Jillian Vanstone / Edward Watson Orchestra & Stage Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera WORLD PREMIERE 10 APRIL 2014, THE ROYAL BALLET – ROYAL OPERA HOUSE COVENT GARDEN LONDON IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH THE NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA AUSTRIAN PREMIERE 19 NOVEMBER 2024, VIENNA STATE BALLET – VIENNA STATE OPERA IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE NEW YORK
Brendan Saye (Leontes), Masayu Kimoto (Polixenes), Hyo-Jung Kang (Hermione), Ensemble
about today’s performance
Jealousy destroys the friendship between two kings and sets off a spiral of devastations with dramatic consequences ... Christopher Wheeldon is one of the great storytellers among the choreographers of our time and a versatile artist who straddles the line between serious art and entertainment, working for the ballet stage as well as for musicals and film. For the Royal Ballet London in 2014, he transformed one of William Shakespeare’s last works – the romance The Winter’s Tale, first performed in 1611 and characterised by a highly experimental structure – into a story ballet that is as gripping as it is visually stunning. After Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, he once again commissioned his own score from the British composer Joby Talbot, whose works have given contemporary ballet music significant impetus in recent years. In Bob Crowley’s design – supported by the imaginative interplay of videos by Daniel Brodie, silk effects by Basil Twist and lighting by Natasha Katz – The Winter’s Tale creates a world that puts us under high tension and inspires as much wonder as enchantment: a winter’s tale where tragic and lyrical characters, drama and comedy, dance, music and stage design combine to create a ballet about friendship and love, the destructive power of mistrust, but also the belief in beauty, humanity, forgiveness and transformation.
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
4
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hermione: Come, sit by us, And tell’s a tale. Mamillius: Merry, or sad, shall’t be? Hermione: As merry as you will. Mamillius: A sad tale’s best for winter.
THE WINTER’S TALE, ACT 2, SCENE 1
5
synopsis Prologue Two kings separated as children are reunited in adulthood. One king, Leontes of Sicilia, marries Hermione, giving her a beautiful emerald. They have a son, Mamillius, and are blissfully happy. The other king, Polixenes of Bohemia, visits the court of Leontes. He is delighted to be reunited with his old friend and stays for nine months. By the time of his departure, Hermione is soon to give birth to her second child.
Act 1 THE COURT OF SICILIA It is the day of Polixenes’ departure. The Bohemian court say goodbye to their Sicilian friends. At Hermione’s request, Polixenes agrees to stay on another week. In a flash of jealousy, Leontes becomes convinced that his wife has been unfaithful and is carrying Polixenes’ child. Jealousy turns to rage, and he attacks Polixenes, who flees back to Bohemia. Leontes publicly accuses Hermione of adultery and treason, then has her arrested. This so distresses Mamillius that he falls seriously ill. In prison, Hermione has given birth to a daughter. The head of her household, Paulina, brings the newborn to Leontes, hoping to convince him that the baby is his daughter. Instead, Leontes violently rejects the child, then orders Paulina’s husband Antigonus to abandon it in a remote place. Antigonus sets sail into a brewing storm with the little princess and some treasure, including the emerald once given to Hermione by Leontes. Hermione is brought to trial. She pleads her innocence. But Leontes, now quite mad, refuses to believe her. Dazed and feverish, Mamillius enters the courtroom. When he witnesses the tragedy between his parents, he collapses and dies from distress. Seeing her dead child also robs Hermione of consciousness. She is declared dead and taken away. Leontes is forced to realize the disastrous consequences of his fatal mistake. THE SHORES OF BOHEMIA Battling the storm, Antigonus struggles ashore to abandon the baby princess. His ship is smashed to pieces on the rocks. As he leaves, he is pursued and killed by a wild bear. As day breaks, a shepherd and his son Clown discover the baby girl and the treasure.
SYNOPSIS
6
Act 2 A HILLSIDE IN BOHEMIA. SIXTEEN YEARS LATER The king’s daughter has grown into a young woman with the shepherd who found her and named her Perdita (The Prodigal). She is in love with Prince Florizel, the son of King Polixenes, whom the villagers only know as a shepherd boy. She dances with him under a mighty tree. The villagers arrive for the springtime festival. King Polixenes, who has heard that his son has been cavorting with a shepherdess, sends his steward to spy on Florizel. When his suspicions are confirmed, Polixenes is enraged, and demands to see for himself. At the festival, Perdita is to be crowned May Queen. In honour of the occasion, Father Shepherd presents her with the emerald necklace he found with her on the beach. Polixenes and his steward arrive in disguise, keen to see what Florizel is up to. On witnessing Florizel’s engagement to a mere shepherdess, Polixenes reveals himself. He is furious with Florizel, and condemns Perdita and her family to death. They all flee by boat to Sicilia, pursued by Polixenes.
Act 3 A CLIFFTOP IN SICILIA King Leontes mourns by the grave of his wife and son, watched over by Paulina. Perdita and Florizel’s ship approaches Sicilia. THE PALACE IN SICILIA Perdita and Florizel appeal to Leontes to allow their union, and to intercede with the enraged Polixenes on their behalf. Leontes is enchanted by the prince’s resemblance to his former friend and – remembering his lost children – agrees to help the young couple. Polixenes has followed the fugitives. In trying to prevent the union violently, Perdita’s emerald necklace appears – proof that she is the long-lost princess of Sicilia. Florizel and Perdita celebrate their wedding. As the celebration draws to a close, Paulina leads Leontes to a new statue of Hermione and Mamillius. Full of remorse, the king places his hand on the arm of his son’s statue. Suddenly the monument comes to life: Hermione has survived the shock in the courtroom and has been hidden by Paulina for sixteen years. Hermione embraces Leontes. Paulina brings Perdita, in whom Hermione recognises her daughter. The family is reunited. 7
SYNOPSIS
CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON
“ I love the play of lightness against dark. The Winter’s Tale is a very human story, full of jealousy, horror and ultimately forgiveness.”
turning shakespeare into ballet ANNE DO PAÇO
In 2014 the Royal Ballet London marked William Shakespeare’s 450th anniversary with the world premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s full-length ballet The Winter’s Tale to a specially commissioned score composed by Joby Talbot. Since Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in 1964 and Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, premiered one year later with Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in the title roles, there had been no new ballet adaptation of Shakespeare at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Wheeldon had previously worked on Shakespeare in 2007 when commissioned by Alexei Ratmansky for the Bolshoi Theatre to create a Hamlet fantasia that eventually came to be titled Elsinore for a soloist and four couples to the 3rd Symphony by Arvo Pärt. He developed the idea of exploring the work of the great English writer in an full-evening story ballet in 2011 while working on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and discussed this with the British theatre and film director and then Artistic Director of the National Theatre Nicholas Hytner. Convinced that Shakespeare’s plays are full of “dramatic moments” that are “very well suited to physicality and choreography”, Wheeldon followed the advice of this Shakespeare expert to adapt neither one of the tragedies that are repeatedly presented as dance pieces nor one of the comedies, but to go his own way with a work that is rarely seen on the theatre stage and of which until now no known ballet adaptation exists: The Winter’s Tale.
TURNING SHAKESPEARE INTO BALLET
10
Late experimental work First performed in 1611 at the Globe Theatre in London, The Winter’s Tale – along with Pericles, Cymbeline and The Tempest – is one of Shakespeare’s late works that cannot be ascribed to any one single genre and are highly experimental in nature. They are distinguished by a remarkable complexity of plot strands and characters, varied locations and great leaps in time. Featuring convoluted, romance-like events spanning generations and scenes charged with symbols, Shakespeare may have been reacting to changes in public taste following his great tragedies. The title of The Winter’s Tale already alludes to the fairy tale-like nature of its plot, but it also emphasises the analogies between the dynamic of human fate and the cycle of the seasons in the story of a winter that unexpectedly interrupts a happy and peaceful world of summer in the form of a king’s sudden madness, before the family is reunited miraculously after being separated for many years. Shakespeare’s source was the prose romance published in 1588 (and extremely popular in its time) Pandosto: The Triumph of Time by the Elizabethan writer, dramatist and critic Robert Greene. He took the plot structure from this – although events take a different turn as Shakespeare chooses to emphasise different aspects in addition to the exchange of the king’s lands: in Greene the king’s wife Bellaria actually dies, while in a coup de théâtre of which the spectator only becomes aware at the end, Shakespeare’s Hermione has only fainted in the court room and, believed dead, she is then hidden by her lady-in-waiting Paulina. Sixteen years later Hermione is once again able to embrace Perdita, the daughter she believed she had lost. And while a further shadow hangs over the marriage of the two royal families in Greene’s work – Pandosto commits suicide out of despair at his own cruel and violent actions – Shakespeare is able to find a fairy tale-like happy ending. Unlike Greene’s story, The Winter’s Tale believes in the healing effect of time, the power of transformation and the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation. Multiple productions at the beginning of the 17th century testify that The Winter’s Tale initially enjoyed great popularity in England. By contrast, times that held up the three “Aristotelean unities” of action, place and time as the fundamental principle underlying dramatic structure found Shakespeare’s late plays anathema – and as a consequence The Winter’s Tale was largely forgotten and only performed in radically cut versions.
A contemporary classic For Christopher Wheeldon it was just this unconventional structure, alternating between the sombre drama of the Sicilian court and the life-affirming arcadian idyll inhabited by the Bohemian shepherds, the skilful deployment of fairy tale-like improbabilities as well as the melancholy and tragedy within the characters that provided the potential for transposing the play into a dance piece – a choreographic work that styles itself as a contemporary classic, containing all the ingredients of a traditional story ballet: developing characters through soli, pas de deux and ensemble scenes and combining pas d’actions that drive the narrative forward with divertissements that are devoted 11
TURNING SHAKESPEARE INTO BALLET
purely to dance, which in The Winter’s Tale are nevertheless consistently marked by a psychologically based embodiment of character, in which every step has a meaning and every movement is an act of expression. In adapting the libretto Wheeldon decided in consultation with his composer Joby Talbot to cut down the subplots which – by comparison with Shakespeare’s twenty speaking parts – led to focussing on six principal characters: the two kings and Hermione, their children Perdita and Florizel and Paulina, supplemented by minor characters such as Paulina’s husband Antigonus, the prince Mamillius, to whom Shakespeare only gave a few lines, the shepherd and his son Clown, a shepherdess and Polixenes’s steward. Wheeldon also gave a leading role of its own to the corps de ballet, for whom he created expansive and highly ambitious dance scenes above all in Act 2. At the same time, the fact that dance, which is based on the kinetic expression of feeling – unlike language which is able to convey factual information in the form of reporting – is only able to tell a story through representation, gave Wheeldon scope for some highly dramatic scenes in which he makes events visible on stage which are only spoken of in Shakespeare. One example is the beginning of the piece. In Shakespeare, Polixenes announces that after nine months staying at the Sicilian court he will now return home after we have learned from a dialogue between the nobleman Camillo and the court official Archidamus in Act 1 Scene 1 that “Sicilia cannot show himself overkind to Bohemia”, as “they were trained together in their childhoods, and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, have been attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies, that they have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds.” Wheeldon uses this report as a prologue that transports us into the story in a rapid journey through time lasting just a few minutes: a mysterious group of people dressed in black against a winter landscape find their way into a gloomy ring, out of which the two princes Polixenes and Leontes eventually emerge, colourfully dressed and leaping around full of the joys of life. Here, with just a few choreographic “brushstrokes”, all the tensions are exposed that emerge after the two kings have grown up, Leontes has married Hermione, they have had a son, Mamillius, and many years later Polixenes has returned to visit his friend and spent a carefree summer with the whole family, at the end of which Hermione reveals to her husband that she is pregnant again. The relationship between Leontes, Hermione and Polixenes inspired Wheeldon to swirling pas de trois and – extended by playful “interjections” by little Mamillius – pas de quatres. With soft embraces at first, then more angular entanglements and losing their balance more and more, he traces the descent of what begins as a carefree, light and gently floating group of family and friends into catastrophe – doing so in choreographic figures, in which sometimes Leontes and sometimes Polixenes lift the increasingly pregnant Hermione through the air in a highly ambivalent way. In the course of the story, there are two more key points where Wheeldon intensifies the dramatic action by presenting what Shakespeare reports verbally in scenic form: in the
TURNING SHAKESPEARE INTO BALLET
12
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Leontes: How blest am I In my just censure! in my true opinion! Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accurs’d In being so blest! There may be in the cup A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom (for his knowledge Is not infected); but if one present Th’ abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.
THE WINTER’S TALE, ACT 2, SCENE 1
court scene we see Mamillius’s fatal collapse when confronted with his father’s madness and the harm suffered by his mother, and in the last act – unlike in the play – Wheeldon makes the reconciliation of Leontes with his long-lost daughter Perdita visible on stage. In addition to transforming the story into a ballet, one of Wheeldon’s central concerns in exploring Shakespeare was to tap into the moments of linguistic poetry that can provide dance with energy to generate original images, forms and movements of its own. Certainly one of the most impressive dance evocations of such a poetic metaphor is Leontes’s expression of disgust through the image of a spider that has fallen into a drink: if it is swallowed accidentally, unwittingly, the poison goes unnoticed, but as soon as anyone becomes aware of it, “cracks his gorge, his sides, with violent hefts”, as Shakespeare puts it. Wheeldon translated the image of the spider into a convulsive, contorted hand with which the ever increasing “poisoning” through jealousy finds its way through the body. This choreographic leitmotif is introduced in Act 1 at the climax of the celebration dance scene with the entire court when Hermione suddenly places not only Leontes’s hand but also that of Polixenes on her pregnant belly – a simple gesture with which Wheeldon shows the reason for Leontes’s jealousy. After this, his movements lose all their soft, flowing qualities, they appear uncontrolled and jerky. That this represents a view of what is inside the Sicilian king’s mind is shown by the abrupt lighting change that places Leontes in the glare of a cold spotlight while all the other dancers are caught in a freeze – a dramaturgy that skilfully superimposes perspectives that leads in the following scene to an ambiguous choreography once again reinforced by a lighting design of bright and darkness: while Hermione and Polixenes stroll through a sculpture gallery, Leontes, who is spying on them, believes that every glance between them, every innocent touch is proof of his wife’s infidelity. A lyrical pas de deux between Hermione and Polixenes is interrupted the moment Leontes steps into the light by erotic scenes between the two of them arranged as shadow plays. Here Wheeldon impressively shows the manic visions that poison everything and repeatedly take possession of the king and his fears that others “will hiss me to my grave” as a cuckold and “contempt and clamour will be my knell”. The scene is given additional dynamism when Leontes turns around the classical statues in Bob Crowley’s set design that are initially only seen from behind and appear to depict mythological scenes, revealing them to be erotically lascivious statues. With movements that seem to be trapped within his own body, deforming classical lines, his arms twisted behind his hunched back and limbs pulled apart by rapid jumps, a king is presented on stage who will ultimately no longer shy away from brutal violence against his own wife. Wheeldon demands an unusually broad spectrum of expression from the dancer representing Hermione. After we encounter her first as an untroubled, loving, open-hearted hostess and a caring and warm-hearted mother to Mamillius and the unborn Perdita, her vocabulary changes at lightning speed in Leontes’s jealous visions to sensual and lecherous deception. In the courtroom she ultimately appears as a tragic heroine who not only submits herself to the destructive power of her husband but defends her innocence in a manner that is both touching and emancipated in a movement language based on contractions.
TURNING SHAKESPEARE INTO BALLET
14
A Bohemian arcadia With his choreography of the shepherds’ world Wheeldon not only creates a cheery and colourful contrast to the emotionally fraught gloom of Act 1 but also in ballet terms re-establishes harmony as a symbol of an arcadian “innocence”. If the fictional geography of a Bohemia located on the sea underlines the fairy tale-like character of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Wheeldon goes even further, imagining a pastoral utopia characterised by peace, freedom, beauty and joie de vivre, in which his Bohemia scene echoes the purely dance-based dramaturgy of the “ballet blanc” of a Romantic ballet, albeit without the customary monochrome colour scheme or focus on the ballerina. Instead, it alternates in highly virtuosic fashion between the young lovers Perdita and Florizel, various grouped arrangements of the corps de ballet and some very physically demanding solo interludes. The vocabulary consists of classical steps and movement sequences including piqués, fouettés, grands jetés and sauts de chats. By contrast, the duets between Perdita and Florizel are notable for their arabesques, the pose that has acquired a semantic charge that goes far beyond its decorative qualities and, more than any other in Romantic ballet, has become a dance metaphor for longing and desire. Only when Polixenes enters with his Steward in search of Florizel does this celebration of dance that is consistently regenerated by the music inspired by the on-stage band come to an abrupt end – though not without comedy in a game of disguise in which Polixenes and the Steward secretly mingle with the crowd in order to thwart Florizel’s liaison with the supposed shepherdess. And there are also comic touches in the manner in which Perdita and Florizel use their determination, humour and considerable humanity not only to bypass all the obstacles that stand in the way of their love but also finally to dispel the ghosts of madness from Leontes’s court leaving the path clear to a happy ending.
The Power of Forgiveness There is one more character involved in the ultimate resolution of all the story’s complications – doing so with a power all her own and a touching modesty: Hermione’s lady-in-waiting Paulina. She represents a consistent line through the narrative and is the leading character who creates connections at key points in the action. Paulina not only saves and hides Hermione, she is also the one who recognises Perdita by Hermione’s emerald necklace, placed in her basket as a baby when she was abandoned on the Bohemian coastline by Antigonus – a task that would end fatally for Paulina’s husband, eaten by a bear while his ship was smashed on the rocks in a storm. Paulina is another person who has suffered existential misfortune as a result of Leontes’s madness and yet she decides to keep a protective eye over the self-doubting king. This is shown not only by their meeting at the end of Act 1, but most importantly by a remarkable pas de deux in Act 3 at the grave of Hermione and Mamillius, in which – apart from a few consoling gestures by Paulina – despite their synchronicity of movement, 15
TURNING SHAKESPEARE INTO BALLET
the two never touch. In a twosome without any physical contact Wheeldon finds the appropriate expression for a deeply serious relationship of shared suffering. The moment right at the end, after Leontes has realised that Hermione is still alive, she has forgiven him and they have found their lost daughter, when he leaves Paulina to remain alone at the foot of Mamillius’s grave, is not the only one Wheeldon places in his version that resists an entirely happy ending. Unlike in the fairy tale, where everything will be alright again – in the words of the critic Mark Monahan – he shows on a “tightrope between light and dark, levity and profundity, classicism and modernity, embracing more or less every fundamental human emotion along the way”, that a destructive lack of trust, jealousy and madness always leave behind their scars. In Wheeldon, Leontes is also aware of this, as he stands in front of the statue of his dead son Mamillius. And Hermione knows it too. In their final pas de deux together she draws on her solo from the traumatic courtroom scene – a powerful last word from a woman who in Shakespeare has nothing more to say to the husband she has won back about the possibility of drawing new strength from their ability to forgive.
“Shakespeare ballets are first of all creative outgrowths of the works on which they are based, meaningful in their own terms. They may also be forms of investigative critical response, ways of thinking about meaning in poetic drama.” DAVID FULLER
TURNING SHAKESPEARE INTO BALLET
16
don’t be afraid of complex stories
ANNE DO PAÇO IN AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON
You are one of the few contemporary artists who have successfully revived narrative ballet with pieces such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2011), The Winter’s Tale (2014) and Like Water for Chocolate (2022). What is your fascination with storytelling through dance? My relationship is with the audience. How can I make work that connects with them? Audiences are fascinated by the poetic abstract form of oneact ballets, but as humans we are in love with story. I love the challenge of creating a dance language that clearly conveys emotion and plot – dances that carry character through a story arc. These are challenges I enjoy as a dance maker. I love to take the audience on a journey. CW
17
DON’T BE AFRAID OF COMPLEX STORIES
The ballet of the romantic era uses a strictly coded vocabulary to drive the action through pantomime. In the 20th century, there were significant developments in the field of storytelling, which were particularly influenced by modern dance and dance theatre. Can dance still be a good storyteller today? CW
Yes, of course I believe it can. I grew up with the great ballets of Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Sir Frederick Ashton. Pantomime was replaced with integrated storytelling. The steps conveyed the emotion. This is what I try to do with my work: not be afraid of complex stories told through dance. Each step acts as text and the emotion then comes naturally from the individual performer, emerging from the movement rather than pasting it on top. As far as we know, The Winter’s Tale has never been choreographed before. How did you get the idea to turn it into a ballet? CW
It was proposed by my friend Sir Nicholas Hytner, a brilliant Shakespearean director. At first, I was a little afraid of the complexity and density of the plot. At its heart though, it is a very human story, full of complexities, jealousy, horror and, ultimately, forgiveness: emotions we can all associate with in one way or another. I love the play of lightness against dark and that The Winter’s Tale shows us that there is still hope for people who have caused others pain through their actions. Emotion can often blind us to reality, but forgiveness is far more powerful than hatred. You not only choose rather neglected pieces for the ballet stage. You also commission the music for them. What does the music for a ballet mean to you? CW
The music is everything. Without music that dives deep into the story there is no successful story ballet. Music does more than just describing the action. It must get to the heart of the emotion. How did you come to know of Joby Talbot? CW
Joby Talbot and I worked successfully on a one-act abstract work for my company Morphoses in 2009. There was so much magic evident in his writing that a drama unfolded within the abstract world I was creating. I thought him perfect to capture the zany fantasy and beauty of Wonderland and so we began a fruitful collaboration. Joby knows how to write situation, emotion and character-driven music. He has worked on a number of film scores as well as writing very successful concert hall music and beautiful choral works. He brings an incredible knowledge of world music and loves to incorporate rare and exotic instruments into his orchestration.
DON’T BE AFRAID OF COMPLEX STORIES
18
How would you describe your collaboration? Did you tell him what you need? Or did he first compose his own work, which then became the basis for your ballet? CW
We always begin by sitting down and plotting a synopsis together. With The Winter’s Tale we were assisted by Sir Nicholas Hytner who made a suggested version of the story and was certain that some of the problems of the play could possibly be solved in dance. Once we have settled on a version of the story, we create a breakdown of timings and events. Key moments of drama and emotion, where a solo may occur, where a corps dance or a pas de deux. From there Joby goes away and begins to paint the sonic world that I am to make the ballet to, and a new score is born. We now know each other so well and share a sort of shorthand when we create together. Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale is one of his late works. It is not a drama, not a comedy, but belongs to the genre of romance. How does that affect your ballet? CW
It is both a drama and a comedy and, yes, very much a romance. This allowed us so much scope for variety within the work and offered two contrasting worlds, six principal roles, and lots of opportunity for the corps de ballet to have a significant presence within the ballet. In your scenario, you have reduced the number of Shakespearean characters and omitted some plot details, such as questioning the Oracle of Delphi. What did you find essential in Shakespeare’s piece for the telling of your story, and what was of less interest to you? CW
Interestingly, in the play the key moments of drama happen offstage and are commented upon by the people of the court. This, of course, cannot happen in the ballet. There is no commenting on or offstage: the drama must be shown in order to understand it has happened. This made for some very dramatic onstage moments. In the end it became clear that we would have to thin out some of the secondary characters and focus on these larger peak moments of drama and the key players to make it work. We could not be afraid to show the death of Mamillius, the mistreatment of Queen Hermione by Leontes and her death. Some of the complexities of the plot were simplified and some of the minor characters omitted, as we quickly realised while working on the scenario that we had to concentrate on the main roles in order for the piece to work as a ballet. How should we imagine your interpretation of Shakespeare’s play in a ballet? Have you worked specifically with the text and translated it into 19
DON’T BE AFRAID OF COMPLEX STORIES
dance, or have you worked with a minutage, sketching out the basic atmosphere and important pillars of a scene? CW
Both. Of course, Shakespeare wrote some terrific plots, but there is much to be mined from the poetry itself. There are lots of fantastic and very physical images within the text of the play, clues to the movement language. That is the challenge of staging Shakespeare in dance: how to do more that reduce it to plot, and capture some of the richness of the prose in the movement storytelling. Your figures are very precise studies. How would you describe the language of movement you use to draw the characters? CW
It is hard to describe the language other than classical ballet infused with inspiration from other dance forms. I tend to look for the shape, the step itself that communicates the moment or emotion. Of course, I also try to find motifs that are recognisable as character traits. As an example of that, Leontes has a spidery hand that signifies the infection of unexplained jealousy through his mind and body. It is unusual for a dance piece that a central protagonist, Hermione, is carrying a child. How did you choreograph for this character with a pregnant belly? CW
Well, I was inspired by how so many female dancers continue to take class and rehearse in the late stages of pregnancy. Still jumping and turning on pointe in class. So I figured that it was fine for Hermione to remain very physical well into her pregnancy. We created a prosthetic belly that we rehearsed with to help find the right shapes and weight shifts of the movement. Act 2, with the shepherds’ spring festival, is a grand dance celebration, like the divertissements in romantic ballet … CW
… and the corps the ballet is the real star! It is a festive jamboree and one of the most exciting acts for an ensemble to dance.
Joby Talbot’s music here works with echoes of folk music, which – like Shakespeare’s fictional Bohemia – cannot be located geographically or culturally but is a kind of fictional world music. How do your dances respond to this? CW
Similarly I explored a language with folk references, but that did not locate us in a specific place. Bohemia is our imagined place with echoes of the farmlands of England, Eastern Europe and even America.
DON’T BE AFRAID OF COMPLEX STORIES
20
At the London world premiere, the characters were portrayed by strong performers from the Royal Ballet – notably Edward Watson as Leontes. What is most important to you when selecting the cast and restaging the piece? CW
Of course I look for dancers I feel can capture the essence of the characters but embody them in their own way. With each revival, productions take on a new life. The Winter’s Tale is an extremely hard ballet to dance but offers the dancers challenging roles that develop over the course of the evening. The design is very elaborate and fascinating to look at. What must the stage for a ballet by Christopher Wheeldon be able to do? CW
Leave lots of space to dance but take the audience on a magical journey. Nobody else does this quite like the brilliant Bob Crowley. Bob captures the essence of the play, the human and magical qualities, and then contemporises them without removing the classical elements. He never updates, just reimagines. Suddenly you are thinking to yourself “of course this is what Wonderland, or Bohemia, or Northern Mexico looks like” but the Bob Crowley way. We always start the design process together with an empty black model box and begin to build the worlds with simple, clear but poetic ideas. He always says to me “I leave the space open and clear for you, you tell the story here” and he ends up doing a beautiful job of telling the story around me. We go hand in hand. What are your next projects? Will there be another story ballet soon? CW
I just opened a new ballet in Australia about Oscar Wilde, so no new story ballet this next year – but the following year: yes, a big new one for The Royal Ballet. I have just decided on the theme. It is exciting!
21
DON’T BE AFRAID OF COMPLEX STORIES
mysteries of human life
FRANK GÜNTHER
In commentaries on The Winter’s Tale, writers’ judgements are clearly influenced by their expectations of what a Shakespeare play is: they anticipate the usual sort of realistic stage world and another Macbeth, and instead they get a kind of Elizabethan manga. There is a definite faultline here in Shakespeare’s writing. But it would also be a definite error to believe that Shakespeare was only concerned with creating a crude collection of surprise effects. Shakespeare had already explored exemplary situations of individual lives in a terrible world in his tragedies, placing his characters under a microscope until they were enlarged to superhuman size; and in the process he had reached the limits of what was performable. This ultimately took him into such dark territory that there was no element of hope or any form of “logic” to brighten up the worlds he described: the “good” Cordelia is exposed to the indifference of fate along with her “evil” sisters – no higher justice prevails any more, there is no grace or redemption to make sense of things, that might alleviate the grey despair in the wasteland of that lightless Lear world. Destruction is all, the end of mankind seems to have been reached. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods.
MYSTERIES OF HUMAN LIFE
22
They kill us for their sport”, is one of the nihilistic summaries King Lear has to offer. Faith in the power of humanitas has gone, and in Timon of Athens it has corrupted into hatred of all mankind. There was nothing more to think or to write. “Rien ne va plus.” Shakespeare kept on writing nevertheless – only differently. In his last four plays – Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest – he embarked on a new path, both in terms of style and content, that found a different way of exploring the puzzles and mysteries of fragile human lives in a murderous world. He was no longer concerned with the penetrating examination of an existential episode in the individual life of one character as the “realistic” representation of a complex world: that had been done, it had been achieved as never before and did not bear repeating. Shakespeare’s reflective enquiries into what man and the world are all about now sought a different approach: an attempt to capture such a human life in its entirety – a complete life in its convoluted threads “from the cradle to the grave” – a life flowing through time. After the dismal worldly and human nadirs to which his tragedies took him, his late plays seem like an attempt at recapitulation, an effort to reconsider and readdress the issues: is that horrific darkness actually the whole truth about the world? What are the superindividual cycles and movements in which such a life unfolds over the period of time nature grants it? What higher powers and forces can be seen over an entire lifetime and what principles can be recognised in them? What failures and successes can be established, what omissions, sins and vindications will end up being recorded in the great machinery of existence? How can we distinguish between what is important and unimportant, what remains as essential and substantial from the confused comings and goings of a human life – irrevocably subject to time the destroyer and death the annihilator? And undeniably intertwined with such questions is the ethical question: how, and in what terms, can one lead such a life condemned to mortality with decency? These are questions about “life itself” and “mankind itself” of the kind that someone asks – looking back and remembering – having embarked on the final chapter of life’s journey: reviewing and taking stock are now on the agenda. There is a search for the “meaning” that the whole thing might have – or not. These are questions that are asked in works written in old age. It is in the nature of the beast that the personal answers woven into such works are often diffuse and cryptic, they are coded in metaphor, allegory or symbols: they tell things poetically rather than realistically. Piecing together the chaotic stories of Shakespeare’s late plays in linear fashion does not reveal much; instead, we need to read them interpretatively and observantly from a conscious distance: what is called for is an approach like the one for “reading” and interpreting images – especially symbolic images.
23
MYSTERIES OF HUMAN LIFE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Leontes: Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career Of laughing with a sign? – a note infallible Of breaking honesty – horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing? Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing; The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing; My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings, If this be nothing.
THE WINTER’S TALE, ACT 1, SCENE 2
Brendan Saye (Leontes)
Masayu Kimoto (Polixenes), Ensemble
Brendan Saye (Leontes), Ketevan Papava (Paulina)
x
Eno Peci (Father Shepherd), Ioanna Avraam (Perdita), Davide Dato (Florizel), Duccio Tariello (Clown)
Hyo-Jung Kang (Hermione), Ensemble
← Ioanna Avraam (Perdita), Davide Dato (Florizel)
Davide Dato (Florizel)
Davide Dato (Florizel), Ioanna Avraam (Perdita), Masayu Kimoto (Polixenes), Brendan Saye (Leontes), Ensemble
new music for the ballet stage ANNE DO PAÇO
Long-term artistic partnerships can often arise out of chance meetings – and this was what happened with Joby Talbot and Christopher Wheeldon. When creating his ballet Chroma in 2006, the choreographer Wayne McGregor was inspired by some music by the British composer, who had established himself as a brilliant multi-talent, shifting between film scores, orchestral and chamber music and large-scale choral works. The world premiere was part of a triple bill by the Royal Ballet in London that also included a work by Christopher Wheeldon. Hearing the work that had inspired his colleague aroused Christopher Wheeldon’s curiosity in Joby Talbot, who then showed him his film music for The Dying Swan – a commission from the British Film Institute in 2002 to create a new score for the 1917 silent film by the Russian director Yevgeni Bauer. The Dying Swan was not the first film for which Joby Talbot had composed a new soundtrack. In 1999 he had created a score for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 classic The Lodger. With the story of the mute dancer Gizella, whose sensational interpretation of the “dying swan” not only brings her fame but also leads to her murder as a result of the conflict between two rival lovers in Bauer’s film, Joby Talbot had composed a ballet world that fascinated Christopher Wheeldon. “Chris saw the movie and asked me whether he could adapt some of that music for an one-act ballet for his own company Morphoses.”
NEW MUSIC FOR THE BALLET STAGE
34
JOBY TALBOT
“ The words in Shakespeare are kind of everything. Creating a ballet based on one of his pieces means telling a story for an entire evening with dance and music, without being able to recourse to words. For me as a composer, this is the hardest challenge I can imagine.”
Christopher Wheeldon subsequently went on to use this composition as the basis for his piece Fool’s Paradise, which was also seen with the Vienna State Ballet in 2015/16 – and its world premiere in 2007 laid the foundations of an extremely creative collaboration that has continued ever since, so far producing four evening-length productions, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale, Like Water for Chocolate and Oscar©, with another major project currently planned for the Royal Ballet in London. Joby Talbot describes composing for films, especially silent films, which – like dance – are non-verbal, as “the best training I could have had writing narrative ballet music: You learn so much about storytelling. In a silent movie, the role of the music is kind of taking the lead, being in front of the action. In ballet, the great challenge for the composer is to give the choreographer and the dancers the basis to build a whole narrative, the drama and the architecture of a full-evening piece. The music provides the framework, but as a composer I also have to be careful not to overwhelm the choreography and get in the way.” From their intensive reading of William Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale, Christopher Wheeldon and Joby Talbot devised a scenario together that hung on the major emotional points of the story while finding the timing for the dance at key dramatic moments from real-time movement. Joby Talbot remembers: “When we were looking for the music for Leontes’ sprouting jealousy, Chris stood up, spun around the room, sat back down again and asked me: ‘How long did that take?’ ‘45 seconds’, I said. ‘OK, 45 seconds!’ – sometimes it’s as simple as that.” When creating musical space for all the essential features of a ballet – soli, pas de deux and ensemble scenes – but also evoking atmospheric moods, for example in the music for the storm at the end of Act 1 or the shipboard chase at the end of Act 2, Joby Talbot also demonstrates his dramaturgical skill, cleverly using leitmotifs that not only provide precise musical descriptions of the characters but also operate in a manner familiar from Richard Wagner’s music dramas: “Thus Hermione’s theme sometimes weaves around that of her daughter Perdita whom she has never known until the end of the tale. There’s something about them that no one on stage is supposed to know – but the music knows!”, Joby Talbot explains. The contrasting worlds around which Shakespeare’s play is structured – a Sicilia that is not remotely sun-kissed but cold and dark, and idyllic, natural Bohemia – are reflected in the score in a subtle interplay of instrumental timbres between an orchestra in the pit where the classic cast of wind and string instruments is supplemented by percussion, piano, celesta and harp and an on-stage band. This represents both an ensemble at the Bohemian court and the peasant band that plays at the spring festival in Act 2 and gives the musical atmosphere its own unique flavour. Just as Shakespeare’s Bohemia is not a real place, but a fictional one set by the sea, in writing music for the band Joby Talbot’s priority was not to reproduce a sound of genuine folk music, but to evoke an imaginary land without a specific geographical identity, for which he chose a selection of instruments from different regions around the world: “the Indian bamboo flute called Bansuri, which has a beautiful kind of vocal quality, a dulcimer, an accordion and percussion from Africa and South America. When this music is played for the dance in Act 1,
NEW MUSIC FOR THE BALLET STAGE
36
it is like a breath of fresh air coming into the austere palace of Sicilia. And it’s partly this kind of sensuous music that Leontes sees his wife dancing to that is the beginning of the problem that causes all the drama”, says Joby Talbot. In his use of the band within the score for The Winter’s Tale, Joby Talbot employs a familiar film music technique: differentiating between diegetic and non-diegetic music. “Diegetic music is music that the characters in a film are meant to be hearing in their real life, for example when they went to a club and dance. Non-diegetic music is the underscore that accompanies the action and is not heard by the characters in the film. You know: a person goes swimming in the sea, and we hear ‘do-om ... do-om ...’. So in The Winter’s Tale, the music that the on-stage band plays, is diegetic music, that the dancers know they are dancing to. The music that is coming from the pit is the non-diegetic, like a soundtrack that accompanies the action. Finding the right balance between the two was a very fun but also challenging thing to do”, admits Joby Talbot. Weaving together these two spheres not only gives the score interesting sonic layers, but also a special dynamism and the worldwide collection of instruments for the spring festival in Act 2 – in Christopher Wheeldon’s words, not just a celebration of dance but also “a celebration of love” – creates a utopian sound that goes beyond black-and-white thinking to offer a vision of border-crossing community through diversity. With his scores for Christopher Wheeldon, Joby Talbot has succeeded in reviving the composition of evening-length ballets, a form that had increasingly retreated into the background during the 20th century. The music he writes is music for the ballet stage, for the theatre, which is the product of an intensive and equal collaboration between choreographer and composer.
37
NEW MUSIC FOR THE BALLET STAGE
“ romeo, we must have you dance” NASTASJA FISCHER
William Shakespeare’s works are full of dance and movement: Oberon and Titania are reconciled by dancing, Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time at a ball, satyrs dance in The Winter’s Tale, nymphs and reapers in The Tempest. Alan Brissenden, author of the monograph Shakespeare and the Dance published in 1981, notes that the English bard uses dance both as a visual image and as a dramaturgical device in order to emphasise the connection between harmony, virtue and revenge, order and disorder in the world: “Dance is an important element in Shakespeare’s plays and its significance is due in particular to its value as a symbol of harmony. The dance is used as part of the Shakespearian stage picture in a variety of ways and far more often than the ‘play within the play’ […] When he finds material for imagery in the dance it is almost always with full recognition of its symbolic value so that it contributes to the theme of a particular play or group of plays or to the presentation of the character with which it is associated. […] He was thus able to use the dance as a visual image of harmony and order in the world, and it is a movement towards that harmony, that resolution of disorder, which is the essential basis of his plays.” In this way actual dance scenes or performances not only decorate Shakespeare’s works, but verbal and metaphorical references to dance become part of their dramatic structure. Mention should be made here of Prince Florizel from The Winter’s Tale, who finds perhaps the most beautiful dancing description for his beloved
“ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE”
38
Perdita: “When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’th’ sea, that you might ever do nothing but that, move still, still so, and own no other function.” And of Duke Senior, who tells the lovers at the end of As You Like It: “Brides and bridegrooms dance your happiness away.” It is therefore hardly surprising that in return dance artists and choreographers have studied Shakespeare since the 18th century especially following the emergence of a new genre – the ballet d’action – and countless ballets based on his works have been created to this day: “When ballet became an independent art from during the 18th century, Shakespeare’s works were among the first literary sources that choreographers (then called ballet masters) transposed into dance. Since then, Shakespeare’s plays have inspired more story ballets than the works of any other author. In addition to the ballets that were directly based on Shakespeare’s plays, there have also been, throughout the history of ballet, a number of ballets that draw on adaptations of his works, such as rewritings of his plays, operas, and musicals”, the literary and dance scholar Iris Julia Bührle writes. Between the 16th and 18th centuries the art of ballet evolved from an aristocratic court culture into a public art form, performed under royal patronage in theatres for a paying public. The stories that were now presented on stage, although shrouded in an aristocratic aura, celebrated authority and nobility less and less and increasingly championed a humanity that was constantly resisting the rules and conventions which that authority maintained. As in Shakespeare, since the late 18th century the art of ballet has shown worlds on stage with room for a wide variety of characters and figures – appearing alongside kings and princesses or even replacing them: “The emergence of ballet for a public audience, with its narratives and characters geared to such an audience, marked the beginning of a complicated exchange back and forth between the worlds of ballet and Shakespearean drama, as Shakespeare and ballet became reciprocal influencers. Story-telling ballets obviously need stories to tell, and for the most part look for them in the realm of literature, although occasionally stories are created specifically for them. As ballet moved from court to public theatre and its subject matter adapted to its new audiences, it did not take long for the ballet world, where dance and music narrate stories from the heart and through the emotions arising from both challenging and challenged relations, to take notice of what Shakespeare could offer them”, the historian and literary scholar Nancy Isenberg explains. The ballet masters Jean-Georges Noverre, who was described by his contemporaries as the “Shakespeare of the dance”, and Gasparo Angiolini may have been the first dance artists of that period to explore Shakespeare, as they both choreographed ballets focussing on the figure of Cleopatra. While Noverre’s Cleopatra was performed in 1765 at the court of the Duke of Württemberg in Ludwigsburg, the premiere of Angiolini’s La Morte di Cleopatra took place fifteen years later at la Scala in Milan. In both cases, the source of their inspiration has not been completely proven to be Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and both differ from Shakespeare’s play in terms of content. The first proven creators of Shakespeare ballets were in 1785: Noverre’s pupil Charles Le Picq, whose Macbeth, billed as a “new heroic ballet founded on Shakespeare’s historical play”, was performed in London to music by Matthew Locke, and Eusebio Luzzi, who premiered Romeo and Juliet in Venice to music by Luigi Marescalchi. In the years that followed 39
“ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE”
a host of Shakespeare titles would be found among European ballet productions: in 1788 Francesco Clerico produced Hamlet, also in Venice, in 1812 Louis Henry created a Hamlet ballet in Naples and performed it again four years later in Paris as probably the first Shakespeare ballet in France. 1834 saw the premiere of Jean Coralli’s The Tempest – albeit with a plot that was inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The tragedies in particular encountered difficulties with both audiences and critics, according to whom Le Picq’s Macbeth received only moderate reviews in London. Not only were English audiences unaccustomed to seeing serious and tragic stories presented in a ballet, the attempt to render Shakespeare’s tragedies in a wordless art form were regarded by many as unsuccessful: “But what action can convey the sublime ideas of Shakespeare’s language! The attempt is profanation!”, was how the Morning Herald reacted to that production of Macbeth, for example. To this day the relationship between text and choreography, word and movement remains a complicated one and the question of whether and how dance as a speechless medium can communicate the verbal complexity of Shakespeare’s verses continues to occupy both choreographers and dance scholars in equal measure. The difficulty of translating Shakespeare’s convoluted plots and texts into movement encouraged many ballet creators of the 19th century to look for material that could be transposed into dance more easily. Here Bührle states that: “Shakespeare ballets became rarer after the first two decades of the century, and their creators took great liberties with the plays they adapted. They often made them conform to ballet conventions of their time, which made it easier for the audience to understand the action. Moreover, choreographers tended to add female characters and female ensemble scenes, which corresponded to the requirements of the genre and the prevailing fashion of the Romantic ballet. Choreographers often mixed Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean sources and invented the rest of the plot themselves. Italy remained the country with the largest number of Shakespeare ballets that we still have traces of, and there were also a number of ballet adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in Copenhagen, at the Paris Opera, and in Saint Petersburg, where Marius Petipa choreographed the first known ballet based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1876.” Either consciously or unconsciously, the era of Romantic ballet in the 19th century drew inspiration from Shakespeare’s works. His plays were now being translated across an ever wider geographical area of Europe, which prompted writers, librettists and choreographers to adapt Shakespeare’s material to their own artistic needs. Themes, plot devices, descriptions of roles and character traits from Shakespeare’s world all found their way directly or indirectly onto the ballet stage. In La Sylphide we can recognise elements of Romeo’s character in James, who turns his back on his lover all too quickly in order to be with the sylph, just as Romeo’s affections shift from Rosalinde to Juliet. For both characters, the story will not end happily. The romantic spirits of the air, whether they are the sylphs in La Sylphide or the wilis in Giselle have features in common with the witches in Macbeth, who arouse desires – whether sexual or political in nature – leading to madness and live beyond the reaches of society in the forests. Giselle also has characteristics in common with Hamlet’s Ophelia, in both cases heartache leads to
“ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE”
40
madness, but one can also see the qualities of a Juliet in her. This is hardly surprising as Heinrich Heine and Victor Hugo – both of whom were great sources of inspiration for Théophile Gautier, the librettist of Giselle, – each published studies of Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Maidens and Women (Heine) and William Shakespeare (Hugo). In the 20th century Shakespeare experienced renewed popularity on the ballet stage. The English writer found his place among others in one-act ballets such as Bronislava Nijinska’s Hamlet (danced by the Ballets Russes in 1934) and Frederick Ashton’s The Dream (first performed by the Royal Ballet London in 1964 and regarded to this day as one of the most successful adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, along with the versions by George Balanchine and John Neumeier), but also in choreographies that chose a more abstract approach and did not follow a linear narrative such as Kenneth MacMillan’s Hamlet-inspired Sea of Troubles (in 1988 for Dance Advance). Above all, however, it has been the story of the tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet that has inspired ballet artists since the mid-20th century and still holds a fixed place in the ballet repertoire around the world. In 1940 Romeo and Juliet was premiered to music by Sergei Prokofiev in a choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky in Leningrad. The immense success of this work was also based on Prokofiev’s music, which provided a consistent through-line for the creation of new versions. His use of leitmotifs and a narrative style that makes the nature of a scene or character clear immediately enables the story to be experienced and felt and both plot and atmosphere to be communicated. Originally created for the Kirov Ballet, it first attracted considerable attention on an international tour by the Bolshoi Ballet with Lavrovsky’s choreography. Other choreographers followed with their own versions: Birgit Cullberg created a one-act version in 1944 to Prokofiev’s suites, Tatiana Gsovsky presented a ballet of Romeo and Juliet to Prokofiev’s music in 1948 in East Berlin, Frederick Ashton followed in 1955 for the Royal Danish Ballet, and in 1977 Rudolf Nureyev choreographed the work for the London Festival Ballet. The list could go on and on, but it was the choreographies by John Cranko and MacMillan that have inscribed themselves on our cultural memory to this day. While Cranko focussed entirely on the individual tragic lovers and ended his ballet with their double suicide without the concluding reconciliation of the two families and social commentary, for MacMillan, inspired in many respects by Cranko’s version, Juliet is the “main character,” who makes the decisions, while Romeo is “swept off his feet by love”. MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet is therefore perhaps “the archetypal Shakespeare ballet” (Lynsey McCullouch) and remains a signature work of the Royal Ballet London, where it celebrated its premiere in 1965. “The second half of the 20th century saw the emergence of a new type of ballet which I have described […] literature ballet. Choreographers, by combining classical ballet with elements of contemporary dance and ‘natural’ body language, managed to create an expressive movement language that characterised figures and situations and their evolution. It allowed them to realise what Noverre and his contemporaries had intended: transpose complex narratives from literature into movements”, is how Bührle explains an essential period in the history of ballet in the last century, which also influenced how it treated Shakespeare. Two choreographers working in German-speaking countries, who were masters of literary ballets and created iconic works were the South African 41
“ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE”
Cranko, who achieved great success not only with his version of Romeo and Juliet created for Stuttgart Ballet in 1962, but also with a brilliant comic version of The Taming of the Shrew, and John Neumeier, who choreographed countless works after Shakespeare in a constant search for the essence of drama, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but also unusual material for dance such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night. “Adaptations, re-creations, replications, and reductions enrich our understanding not only of current and past dance practices, but of their performative strategies and material conditions. The choreographic attention given to Shakespeare’s writings since the mid-20th century brings a full-bodied listening that engages with the text through a variety of idioms, devising and production techniques, singular responses, choreographic inquiries, and interrogations”, McCullouch writes, pointing out some of the fundamental techniques that ballet artists have used to engage with Shakespeare. The relationship between dance and literature is continually being re-examined and the question of the text is central to this. Whether this is analysed word for word and translated into movement or the body is juxtaposed against it, whether dance retells the story with the language of movement or has the potential to externalise subtext and inner feelings, countless visions and interpretations of Shakespeare’s works have been and continue to be created in ballets. Precisely because of their diverse worlds and emotions, their human and fantasy qualities, they remain an inspiration. And it is not only the classics and box office hits like Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream that are repeatedly created afresh, choreographers also tackle the author’s more experimental works, such as Alexei Ratmansky, who choreographed The Tempest for American Ballet Theatre in 2013 and Christopher Wheeldon, who in The Winter’s Tale does not shy away from using technology to accomplish complicated events or stage directions such as: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”
“ROMEO, WE MUST HAVE YOU DANCE”
42
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Florizel to Perdita: What you do, Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I’d have you do it ever: when you sing, I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms, Pray so, and, for the ord’ring your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you A wave o’th’ sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that, move still, still so, And own no other function. Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens.
THE WINTER’S TALE, ACT 4, SCENE 4
43
KOLUMNENTITEL
CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON – Choreography & Scenario Christopher Wheeldon is one of the world’s most renowned choreographers and directors. He trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet in 1991. Since 1993, he was a member of the New York City Ballet and was promoted to Soloist in 1998. In July 2001, he was named NYCB’s first Resident Choreographer. Since then, Christopher Wheeldon has created and staged productions for many of the world’s major ballet companies. He is Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet where he has created many works, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale, both of which were co-productions with The National Ballet of Canada. In 2012, his ballet Cinderella premiered at Het Nationale Ballet. He has also choreographed for the Metropolitan Opera, created ballet sequences for the feature film Center Stage (2000) and Sweet Smell of Success on Broadway (2002), created a special excerpt for the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, and was the Artistic Director for the Fashion Forward exhibition in Paris at La Musée des Arts décoratifs (2016). Among other career highlights are The Nutcracker reimagined for the Joffrey Ballet, Corybantic Games at The Royal Ballet, a re-staged version of Cinderella for the English National Ballet, and Like Water for Chocolate for The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Oscar© is his latest fulllength ballet for The Australian Ballet which premiered in 2024. In 2014, Christopher Wheeldon directed and choreographed the Broadway musical version of An American in Paris, which had productions in Paris, New York, and London. Most recently he directed and choreographed MJ The Musical (2022). Each won four Tony Awards earning him two for “Best Choreography”. The latter is currently on Broadway, touring America, in London’s West End, and will open in Hamburg and Sydney. His many other awards include two Tony Nominations for “Best Director”, an Outer Critics Award for “Best Choreography” and “Direction”, the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, the American Choreography Award, the Dance Magazine Award, multiple London Critics’ Circle Awards, the Léonide Massine Prize, the Benois de la Danse, and Olivier Awards for his ballets Aeternum and Polyphonia. Christopher Wheeldon was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and is an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom and resides in New York City.
BIOGRAPHIES
44
JOBY TALBOT – Music & Scenario Joby Talbot was born in London. He studied composition with Brian Elias and at the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College before completing his Master at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Simon Bainbridge. His diverse output includes operas, full-length ballets and contemporary dance works, large and chamber choral and vocal works, orchestral pieces, concertos and film scores. Chroma (2006) for Wayne McGregor and the Royal Ballet was Talbot’s first major collaboration with a choreographer, followed by Genus (Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, 2007) and Entity (Random Dance, 2008). His score for Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the first full-length work commissioned by The Royal Ballet in twenty years and has since become a classic. In addition to The Winter’s Tale, which won the Prix Benois de la Danse in the composition category in 2015, Talbot also collaborated with Wheeldon on Tide Harmonic (2009), a score originally created for choreographer Carolyn Carlson, and Fool’s Paradise (2007), based on Talbot’s silent film score The Dying Swan. This was followed in 2022 by the music for Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate for the Royal Ballet in collaboration with American Ballet Theatre; in 2024 the duo premiered another full-length work, Oscar©, with the Australian Ballet. Following the great success of Everest, Dallas Opera also premiered Talbot’s second opera, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, in 2023. His choral works include The Choral Path of Miracles (2005), a 60-minute a cappella journey along the Santiago pilgrimage route. Among the many renowned ensembles and festivals that have performed Talbot’s works are the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Calder Quartet, the King’s Singers, the Britten Sinfonia and Britten Voices, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Independent Opera and the BBC Proms, Norfolk and Norwich Festivals and Barbican’s Weekend of New Music. Talbot’s extensive experience in composing for the screen is evident in projects such as his scores for the BBC comedy series The League of Gentlemen, the feature films The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Garth Jennings, 2005) and Closed Circuit (John Crowley, 2013) as well as new silent film scores for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr. At the Vienna State Opera Talbot’s score for Wheeldon’s ballet Fool’s Paradise was performed as part of the Vienna State Ballet’s premiere Thoss/Wheeldon/Robbins in the 2025/16 season.
45
BIOGRAPHIES
Culture moves you. OMV and the Vienna State Opera have a long-standing partnership. Our commitment goes far beyond the stage. We actively support young people and projects for new talent and provide access to art and culture for young people. Together we are shaping an inspiring future. Find all partnerships at: omv.com/sponsoring
imprint The Winter’s Tale Christopher Wheeldon Season 2024/25 PUBLISHER Vienna State Opera GmbH, Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna General Director: Dr. Bogdan Roščić Administrative Director: Dr. Petra Bohuslav Director & Chief Choreographer Vienna State Ballet: Martin Schläpfer Financial Director Vienna State Ballet: Mag. Simone Wohinz Editing: Mag. Anne do Paço, Nastasja Fischer MA, Mag. Iris Frey Design & Concept: Fons Hickmann M23, Berlin Image Concept Cover: Martin Conrads Layout & Type Setting: Miwa Meusburger Producer: Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau PERFORMING RIGHTS For the choreography © Christopher Wheeldon For the music by Joby Talbot © Bosworth Music Group Berlin for Chester Music Ltd. TEXT REFERENCES About today’s performance, the texts by Anne do Paço and Nastasja Fischer (English translation: David Tushingham), the interview with Christopher Wheeldon and the quotes by Christopher Wheeldon and Joby Talbot are original contributions for this program. Reprint only with permission of the Vienna State Ballet/Dramaturgy. Inner Cover: Ingeborg Bachmann: Böhmen liegt am Meer. Werke, Vol.1: Gedichte. Ed. by Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum & Clemens Münster. © Piper Verlag GmbH Munich 1978 (English translation: Frank Beck, taken from: Bohemia Lies by the Sea. PN Review 228, Vol. 42 No. 4, March–April 2016) / pp. 5, 15, 25, 60 & 61, 65: William Shakespeare: Das Wintermärchen. Bilingual Edition. German by Frank Günther. Munich 2006 / pp. 6 & 7: The synopsis is a revised reprint from the program: Christopher Wheeldon: The Winter’s Tale. The Royal Ballet London, Season 2017/18 / p. 16: David Fuller: Shakespeare and Dance. In: Paul Edmondson & Peter Holbrook (Ed.): Shakespeare’s Creative Legacies: Artists, Writers, Performers, Readers. London 2011 / pp. 22 & 23: Frank Günther: Aus der Übersetzerwerkstatt (English translation for this program: David Tushingham). In: William Shakespeare: Das Wintermärchen, loc. cit.
PHOTO CREDITS Cover: Eckart Hahn: TOUCH (2014) © Bildrecht Vienna 2024 The scene photos were taken by Ashley Taylor and Sofia Vargaiová (pp. 30/31 & 32) at the dress rehearsal on 9 November 2024 at the Vienna State Opera / pp. 9 & 44: © Ashley Taylor / p. 45: © Anna McCarthy Rights owners who could not be reached are requested to contact the editorial team for the purpose of sub sequent legal reconciliation.
wiener-staatsballett.at