Bavarian State Ballet: The Search for the New
Roland Petit’s “Coppélia” works like a pastel colored pop-up picture book. With the first pull of the curtain, it opens – and technically insanely tricky solo variations with jazzy zest and a lot of coquetry are bubbling up. Especially in comedy, the interpreters have to use all their acting skills. The three main characters Swanilda, Franz and Dr. Coppélius only too gladly from her revue-like roles. Comparable to the Punch and Judy in the puppet theater, they repeatedly address the audience directly and announce the next step of their actions with facial expressions.
Roland Petit’s ballet – premiered in Paris in 1975 with Léo Delibes’ imaginative original composition from 1870 – is above all virtuoso danced entertainment. This has been the case with the Bavarian State Ballet since 2019. At that time, the director Igor Zelensky, who resigned at the beginning of April, had included Petit’s “Coppélia” version in the repertoire.
Margarita Fernandes and António Casalinho shine
In the first two revivals, Margarita Fernandes (16) and António Casalinho (18) shone – Zelensky’s very youngest shooting stars and his latest discoveries. Her debuts as Swanilda and Franz lacked nothing. Even in moments deliberately exaggerated by Petit, they offered a great deal of passion and playful accuracy.
Both young artists come from Portugal and have been training since they were eight years old at the Annarella Sanchez International Ballet and Dance Conservatory in Leiria, which follows the Cuban training methodology. Casalinho casually puffs on a cigarette as Franz – then he starts: downright love-struck in his long jumps and energetic pirouettes. There is also a perfect opponent: Javier Amo, who as the lonely, gallant oddball Dr. Coppélius shakes magic tricks out of his sleeve. He lends powerful impetus to a (mock) duet with his constructed puppet. One can only hope that Fernandes and Casalinho will remain loyal to the Bavarian State Ballet under new management and that they will not be enticed away elsewhere.
Zelensky successor: the cast carousel turns
In the meantime, the scene even likes names when it comes to Zelensky’s successor, after the ballet boss left the state ballet “for private reasons” with effect from April 4th. Christopher Wheeldon would come into question, from whom Igor Zelenksy has already brought two highly successful evening fillers (“Alice in Wonderland”, “Cinderella”) to Munich. He is Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet and is currently working more on Broadway. The international merry-go-round is currently turning a lot anyway, because there are only a few large companies with more than 40 dancer positions.
The Berlin State Ballet hired Christian Spuck from Zurich. Cathy Marston, a renowned choreographer and crisis-tested ex-director from Bern, is moving in there. Like Marco Goecke (currently Ballet Director in Hanover and at the beginning of his training a student at the Munich Ballet Academy), Spuck began his way to becoming the choreographic ensemble leader at the Stuttgart Ballet. The line continuity has already been regulated there. Tamas Detrich will remain ballet director until at least 2028.
For Goecke, Munich would probably be a dream place to live
In Germany, nobody has ever directed a dance company for as long as John Neumeier. After the next season he will give up the intention of his world-famous Hamburg Ballet. After half a century in office. The search for the right person is currently in full swing via the search committee: i.e. parallel to the urgent (due to Zelensky’s resignation) finding a new director for the Bavarian State Ballet.
Could Goecke, who works with dancers’ bodies like nobody else, be able to convince the Bavarian Ministry of the Arts? Unlike Hanover at present, Munich would certainly be a desirable place to live for him.
Until the outbreak of the Ukraine War, Laurent Hilaire – formerly Etoile in Paris – was responsible for the ballet department at Moscow’s Stanislavski Theater. He can be expected to be on the shortlist, as well as Alexei Ratmansky. His management experience at the Bolshoi Theater, creative proximity to the American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet, his general breadth of repertoire and an enormous international reputation and notoriety as a contemporary choreographer and solid connoisseur of the Petipa classics speak in favor of the latter.
But Edvard Clug (successful head of ballet at the Slovenian National Theater Maribor) or Goyo Montero (responsible for the “Ballet Miracle Nuremberg”) should also be up to the task of preserving and expanding the rich repertoire of the Bavarian State Ballet.
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