Closer
Music: Philip Glass
Choreography: Benjamin Millepied
N.N.
World Premiere
Choreography: Demis Volpi
The Piano
World Premiere
Music: Michael Nyman
Choreography: Jiří Bubeníček
Set Design: Otto Bubeníček
In this ballet evening, Dortmund’s ballet director Xin Peng Wang unites three choreographic works. Three different dance languages that still have something in common: They go to the limit.
Even before his involvement in the movie Black Swan, alongside his wife Natalie Portman and his collaboration with Yves Saint Laurent, Benjamin Millepied – now ballet director of the Paris Opera – was one the best known dancers and choreographers. His artistic language causes breathlessness, for both his dancers and his audience. Closer is worldwide one of the most requested pas de deux.
Demis Volpi, born in Argentina and educated in Stuttgart where he has been working as a resident choreographer since 2013, has always sought entwined paths of dance. With his first dramatic ballet Krabat (2013) he set new standards und impressed his audience with his artificial balancing act between brilliance and experiment. In 2014 he received the “Deutsche Tanzpreis Zukunft” (German Dance Award Future). Together with Ballet Dortmund he once again enters new territories of choreography.
If there is one artist who deserves to be called “exceptional,” then Bubeníček. In 1993, John Neumeier brought him and his twin brother from Prague to Hamburg. Today, he excels as a primary dancer at Dresden Semperoper. The naturally unconventional ways in which he approaches the classic repertoire are mirrored in his language of modern dance and in his choreographies. Specifically for Ballet Dortmund he has arranged his newest creation, inspired by Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning film The Piano. He tells the story of a mute woman living in Australia in the 19th century, at the outpost of civilization. In the midst of brutal plantation owners and disenfranchised aborigines she can only express herself through the piano. Together with the film’s Australian director, Jiří and Otto Bubeníček sought the original setting of the film to find out what art can be for people who find themselves in extreme situations – everything.