The Zurich Ballet 311.
(photo credit: courtesy/Ballet Zurich Joseph Aznar)
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It was a great pleasure to see The Zurich Ballet’s artistic director Heinz
Spoerli set his choreography to three cello suites by J.S. Bach, played live by
Claudius Herrmann. The work is neo-classical and basically abstract, in the
sense that it doesn’t follow a narrative and instead focuses on purely intrinsic
dance issues such as lines and volumes, spatial relationships that are being
manifested in the compositions. The search for abstract neo-classical ballet, in
contrast to the story-based classical ballets of the 19th century, had been
researched extensively by Balanchine decades ago. Of course, as long as the main
instrument in any form of performing arts is the human body, no abstract ballet
is truly abstract.
Spoerli’s vocabulary is rather conservative and tends
to repeat its motives extensively, and maintains similar formal formats for all
three suites.
Although the company arrived with over 30 dancers, most of
the fragments were based on smaller ensembles which gave fitting intimacy to the
piece. The structure and phrasing followed to the letter the inner structure of
the music, leaving little room for surprise. Indeed the duets and smaller
ensembles worked better than the larger formations; except perhaps for the first
large group of female dancers on point, flapping their arms ever so charmingly,
like a bunch of glorious dragonflies.
Obviously the dancers were very
good, particularly the girls, but the company must have been overworked since
the famous Swiss precision was missing in various male scenes. Costume design
worked for the most part, except when the men were dressed in ethnic skirts,
which was out of touch with the piece, as were several choices of the lighting
design.