This year, on October 19, we celebrate World Ballet Day. The organizers, The Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, and The Australian Ballet announced that will be an impressive number of events streamed online, including shows, rehearsals, workshops, interviews with great choreographers and dancers.
One of the very known and representative ballet institution for the Central & Eastern Europe is Vienna State Ballet, is one of the main participants of this year World Ballet Day celebration. This is why Ballet Magazine Romania kindly invites you to find below an very inspirational interview with Martin Schläpfer, ballet director and chief choreographer of the Vienna State Ballet.
Also read:
World Ballet Day 2021! 50 companies from across the world are celebrating, half of them from Europe
Martin Schläpfer, Vienna State Ballet: To keep our creative output alive, we turned to digital media for performance opportunities
How has Covid19 changed your company’s normal routine – by which I mean rehearsals, programs, shows?
Photo: Andreas Jakwerth, Wiener Staatsoper
Martin Schläpfer: Contrarily to some other companies, we were privileged to be allowed to continue working during the entire season. Luckily, we were able to start and finish our season fairly ‘normally’. Thanks to the commitment of both houses who organized extensive testing and an elaborate covid prevention concept, we performed four of our programs in front of a live audience.
During the lockdown months, we of course had to adapt. It was important for the dancers’ artistic and physical development that we keep training and rehearsing, which we did in smaller groups and with revised working hours. To keep our creative output alive, we turned to digital media for performance opportunities.
Our first premiere – Mahler, live – happened online and was live streamed. We also published shorter studio videos on our social media channels and streamed several past and current productions via the Wiener Staatsoper Live platform.
What are your plans for the future? Do you believe that things could be again like before the pandemic or has the situation changed forever?
Martin Schläpfer: Right now I just want to concentrate on working – sharing the passion about this art form with others, creating, coaching, teaching, etc – as there were no tomorrow. Out of this the future will form itself naturally. We must try to learn something from this – as a society – as an individual.
Is there something new about this year’s celebrations?
Martin Schläpfer: As last year, we will use streaming to provide insights into the daily work of the Vienna State Ballet. The broadcast will start at 13 pm CET on Facebook & Youtube
Photo: AshleyTaylor, Wiener Staatsoper
What are your headlines for 19 October?
Martin Schläpfer: Our streaming highlights include a rehearsal with Marco Goecke for his new creation that will have its world premiere on November 14th at the Wiener Staatsoper as part of the triple bill Im siebten Himmel. Furthermore, I want to give the community an insight to a rehearsal for my ballet Ein Deutsches Requiem.
Next to our worldwide stream we offer two live events at the Wiener Staatsoper: the exclusive artist talk of Vienna State Ballet’s official supporter’s circle Ballettclub centers Onegin on ballet and opera stage. In the evening we present the Robbins-Balanchine-Balanchine programme A Suite of Dances.
Do you have a message for the dancers for this special day? And for the audience?
Martin Schläpfer: Let us celebrate the magic of dance!
MARTIN SCHLÄPFER was born in Altstätten in Switzerland and studied ballet with Marianne Fuchs in St. Gallen and at the Royal Ballet School in London. Among his most important teachers were Maryon Lane, Terry Westmoreland, David Howard, Gelsey Kirkland and Peter Appel. In 1977 he was taken on by Heinz Spoerli as a member of the Basler Ballett, where he quickly progressed to become one of the company’s most charismatic soloists. An engagement with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet also took him to Canada for a season. With the Dance Place, which was set up in 1990 in Basel, he created an initial basis for his intensive work as a dance teacher, which was complemented by his studies with Anne Woolliams in Zurich. In 1994 he set up the »Visions of Dance« foundation.
His appointment as Director of the Bern Ballet in 1994 marked the start of Martin Schläpfer’s intensive work as a choreographer and ballet director. In a very short time he transformed the ensembles he directed – the Bern Ballet (1994 to 1999), ballettmainz (1999 to 2009) and the Ballett am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg (2009 to 2020) – into companies each having a distinctive style of their own, as confirmed by accolades in the international press, multiple awards and huge popularity with audiences. For example, the Ballett am Rhein has been chosen as »company of the year« four times in succession between 2013 and 2017 by the critics’ survey carried out by the magazine tanz, as well as thrilling audiences not only on its two home platforms in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, but also during international guest appearances in Europe, Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Oman. Since the 2020/21 season Martin Schläpfer has been ballet director and chief choreographer of the Vienna State Ballet.
Martin Schläpfer’s choreographic works comprise over 70 ballets which have been created for his ensembles. In addition, he has created world premieres for the Bayerisches Staatsballett München, Het Nationale Ballet Amsterdam and (in 2020) for the Stuttgart Ballet. His »Forellenquintett« has been performed by the Ballett Zürich, and a number of his works have been staged by the BallettCompagnie Oldenburg. With Jean-Philippe Rameau’s »Castor et Pollux« at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein he also directed opera for the first time in 2011/12. In 2012, Martin Schläpfer returned to the stage as a dancer for Hans van Manen’s pas de deux »The Old Man and Me«. In 2014 the Dutch choreographer created the world premiere »Alltag« for Martin Schläpfer as soloist. In 2017 he was guest choreographer and teacher at Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto.
Having won the Prix de Lausanne as »Best Swiss Dancer« in 1977, Martin Schläpfer went on to win numerous awards as a choreographer and director, including the Kunstpreis Rheinland-Pfalz (2002), the dance prize of the Spoerli Foundation (2003), the Prix Benois de la Danse (2006), the Gutenberg Medal of the City of Mainz (2009), the Theatre Prize of the Düsseldorfer Volksbühne (2012) and the German theatre award Der Faust in 2009 and 2012. In 2013 Martin Schläpfer received the Swiss Grand Award for Dance and in 2014 the Taglioni European Ballet Award of the Malakhov Foundation in the »Best Director« category. In 2014 he was chosen as »Düsseldorfer of the Year« by center-tv. His full-length ballet »DEEP FIELD«, with a commissioned score by Adriana Hölszky, was nominated for the Prix Benois de la Danse 2015, and in the same year he received the Music Prize of the City of Duisburg. The magazine tanz named him »Choreographer of the Year« in 2010, and he received the same award in 2018 and 2019 from the critics’ survey of the magazine Die Deutsche Bühne. Martin Schläpfer has been a member of the North-Rhine-Westphalian Academy for Sciences and the Arts since 2017. In 2018 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Großer St. Galler Kulturpreis in 2019.
A number of Martin Schläpfer’s works have been recorded for television (ZDF, Theaterkanal, 3sat, arte, SWR, WDR, SRF). Directed by Annette von Wangenheim, the film portrait »Keep the flame – don’t pray to the ashes« (good!movies) was made in 2016. Available as a DVD is also his ballet »Swan Lake« with the Ballett am Rhein (EuroArts) and, from October 2021, Martin Schläpfer’s first choreography for the Vienna State Ballet »4« (Unitel). His conversations with the journalist Bettina Trouwborst were published by Henschel-Verlag in 2020 under the title »Mein Tanz, mein Leben«.
