Hamburg Ballet: Death in Venice

(Photo by Holger Badekow. Lloyd Riggins and Edwin Revazov. Courtesy Orange County Performing Arts Center.)

Hamburg Ballet: Death in Venice
Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall
Sunday, February 18, 2007, 2pm

Must admit, when they announced last year that Death in Venice was to be one of the ballets on Hamburg Ballet's tour program in Orange County I scratched my head and wondered how in the world it would work as a ballet. The novella of the same name by Thomas Mann - which I read in comparative literature class a few years ago - was a dense, deeply introspective literary work: the great novelist Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice with a bad case of writer's block, where he falls in lust/love with a young boy he sees on the beach. He spends much of the novella observing the boy, and the writing winds around the novelist's thoughts. There wouldn't be much to put on stage in a ballet, I thought... the movie version by Luchino Visconti had lots of close up shots of Aschenbach and long panning shots of scenery. A ballet usually needs movement, right?

Well I suppose thats why I'm not a choreographer and John Neumeier is - and a right interesting one at that. Neumeier's ballet adaptation of Death in Venice is a very free adaptation, but he so interestingly explores the novella's themes and ideas that the adaptation works. Our novelist Aschenback is now choreographer Aschenbach; the main events - experiencing creative block, traveling to Venice, meeting the boy Tadzio - are played out on stage in the manner you'd think, but the introspective and thoughtful moments are played out, tableaulike, behind him or as dream ballet sequences. (They arne't dream ballets like the ones in American in Paris, don't worry..)

It helps immensely to have read the novel, or at least the program notes, when watching this ballet. Actually, it more helps to have read both. That is probably the ballet's biggest fault - while it's a totally fascinating spectacle to me and anyone who has read the book, approaching it cold will likely have you scratching your head wondering what all the fuss on stage is about (my companion hadn't read the novella; she found it engaging, but didn't understand why many moments were such a big deal).

Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching this. The ballet passed in front of me as a long montage: images flowed across the stage and the story seemed to flow by in Neumeier's imagery.

Another reason, a big reason, why I enjoyed the performance so much was the company itself. Really, really wonderful dancing and acting all around. That's been the principal highlight of the week: from the top of the company to the bottom, everyone is not a good dancer from a technical standpoint but also a wonderful stage performer as well. It gives each ballet a sense of unity and totality; the ballets are whole theatrical evenings because everyone on stage is participating in a drama. In theatre this feat perhaps wouldn't be so impressive, but in dance story ballets - especially in large repertory companies (ahem, Kirov) - tend to be assembled piecemeal, with different parts and cast rehearsed separately... so many a corps de ballet has showed up on stage looking lost or unengaged. This is definitely not the case with Hamburg, and I loved that I was watching dance theatre as much as I was watching great dancing.

Lloyd Riggins danced the choreographer Aschenbach, a role that required him to be on stage for nearly the entire ballet. He inhabited the indignant choreographer at the beginning, and perfectly showed his character's changing, self-doubting and confused state as the ballet progressed - all the while performing difficult and athletic choreography for the whole 2 hr 30 min ballet. Edwin Revasov played Tadzio, with floppy blonde hair and a hunky, tall physique. The way he ran around on stage, he reminded me of Ashton Kutcher: boy-like in a tall grown-up's body.

Review from Lady of the Camellias earlier this week here, and SF Ballet over the weekend here.