Rathmansky/Welch premiere in Berlin

by Henning Høholt, Fotos: Bettina Stöß

BERLIN/GERMANY: One premiere, two choreographes. Rathmansky/Welch is the name of the new, celebrated production with the Berliner Staatsballet in Schiller Theater, where the State Operahouse are showing productions during the long time that their own home is being restaured (since 2010).

CLEAR

The ballet chief of the Stateballet Vladimir Malakhov was him self on stage dancing in his last production at the Stanton Welch ballet CLEAR, to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach who on Friday evening could have celebrated his 329 years  Birthday. It was a special, but also small part for Vladimir Malakhov in the neoclassic choreography, reminding me a bit of Balanchine, but with Welch remarkable personality behind, and with a humoristic and elegant glimps in his eyes.

The star role was brilliantly performed by the young outstanding Marian Walter, a very handsome and well dancing young first soloist of the company, in addition to Walter 6 other male dancers and in the very last part one beautiful female soloist Elisa Carrillo Cabrera. Very well performed
. But since Welch had focused so much on the male dancers, and in this choreography specially. He could also have let this last role be danced by a male dancer, then we could have had a very good male pas de deux, with enormously good feelings between the two in the last pas de deux.

The costumes by Michael Kors for Celine, was by body coloured pants, who didn´t take any attention away from the dancers movements, and that worked well. Dawn Scannell has together with Stanton Welch made the rehersals with the company.

It had its world premiere in 2001 with the American Ballet Theatre. – It was a beautiful opening of this ballet evening.

The music is, as mentioned, by Johann Sebastian Bach, Concerto for Violine and Oboe in c-minor BMW 1060, followed by 1. and 2. satz from Koncerto for violin g-minor BMW 1056. Brilliant soloists were Thorsten Rosenbusch, violin and Fabian Schäfer, oboe. Conductor Paul Connelly, heading Staatskapelle Berlin
.

NAMOUNA

The second half of the neoclassical ballet evening was the flirting and humoristic elegant NAMOUNA by Alexei Rathmansky. A good friend of Vladimir Malakhov through many years. After being dancer and later ballet chief at the Bolshoy Theatre in Moscow, Rathmansky has been a popular choreographer in the whole world.

– However I still remember when I first time joined a choreography of Rathmansky, it was the Nutcracker at Tivoli in Copenhagen, just before he left the Royal Danish Ballet, in fact that evening with the precense of HM Queen Margrethe II.

It later was followed by another ballet in his opening periode at Bolshoi, where my immediate experience was that, at that time, he could only choreography marching ideas, that i  feeled not was good. I am happy to notice that this has changed. The experience from NAMOUNA was very good. A lot af brilliant smaller and bigger parts, many difficult steps and combinations, and a lot of visually good group work.

Very often it was one male soloist, Rainer Krensletter, with 8-10 female, and then one female soloist with 8 male dancers. It worked very well. The flirting contrast between the two sex.

NAMOUNA was headed by  Rainer Krensletter as the sailor, and his three girls Nadja Saidakova, in the most demanding parts and Elena Pris and Sarah Mestrovic.

The other three leading soloists was Iana Balova, Ulian Topor and Stephanie Greenwald. They all did an excellent job. In addition a well working corps des ballet

. It is a demanding ballet, – perhaps typically american “musical style” full of fun, flirt, elegance and thousand of demandig steps.

For NAMOUNA the well functioning costumes was by Rustam Khamdamov and Marc Happel. However, since this ballet is looking like having a history ballet as background, i feel that mr. Krensletters costumes could have been more elegant, in the whole it looked clumpsy, but as he , himself, is such an elegant dancer it worked well.  Alle the dancers except Krensletter was using matching turbans as wigs.  The delightfull music is by Edouard Lalo. The music is perfect for the ballet
. Was very well performed by Staatskapelle, conducted by Paul Connelly.