Hollands Meister

The founding of the Nederlands Dans Theater in 1959 opened a new chapter in the history of ballet. Important modern dance stimuli continue to emanate from the Netherlands to this day. Martin Schläpfer has now combined three masterpieces from the repertoire of the Vienna State Ballet by the former directors of The Hague Company – Jiří Kylián, Hans van Manen as well as Sol León & Paul Lightfoot – into a programme that can be experienced at the Vienna State Ballet for the first time in this form.

»Skew-Whiff« puts no limits on the imagination when it comes to playfully trying out a wide range of movements: the outcome is a piece of wonderful fun by the choreographer duo Sol León & Paul Lightfoot. On the other hand, Hans van Manen’s »Adagio Hammerklavier«, a ballet set to Beethoven, is a sublime masterpiece in terms of its concentration and clarity: »Light as a feather and floating, a breeze, a dream of ballet«, writes the dance critic Jochen Schmidt. And Jiří Kylián created a key work of the 20th century with his »Symphony of Psalms«, based on Stravinsky’s composition of the same name. In his characteristically pacey, flowing language of movement, he unfurls a fascinating, spiritual architecture before our very eyes.