Throughout 2020, Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday is celebrated all across the world. The composer is one of the most widely played musical artists and his 3rd Symphony is a piece of World Musical Heritage. The impulsiveness and rhythmic energy of Beethoven’s music has always been attractive to dance. And the State Ballet, too, will turn to the composer’s work in 2020/21. Ludwig van Beethoven began his career as a concert pianist. His improvised cadences are legendary. As a composer, he allowed room for instantaneous ideas, while at the same time striving – often over many years – for their strict thematic elaboration.
This development of musical form became style-defining for the history of music. The State Ballet will focus on three different ballets created to the maestro’s music. Jiří Kylián created Gods and Dogs for the early String Quartet op. 18 Nr 1, a piece that is still very much indebted to Viennese Classicism. Kylián’s ballet, which was premiered at the Nederlands Dans Theater in 2008, scrutinises the way that clothes reflect our vulnerability. From nappies to bandages to costumes, clothes serve to hide our sensitivities.
Inspired by Beethoven’s equally revolutionary and harrowing journey through life, Lukáš Timulak explores the composer’s biography in his piece Eroica, created in 2010 for Göteborg Ballet. Especially the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament illustrates Beethoven’s dramatic predicament as he faced the loss of his most important sense, his hearing. The driving, purposeful dynamics in Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the Eroica, are another important facet of the ballet. Set designer Peter Bilak highlights both the restless dynamics and the looming danger.
The third piece of this evening, Moonlight, is a new creation by the young choreographer Juliano Nuñes, who created his first ballet while he was a dancer with Ballet Flanders in 2017 and presented it at the International Choreographic Competition in Hanover. Moonlight is his first commissioned work in Germany.