MAESTRI CONTEMPORANEI
BACH-SUITE 3
Choreography: John Neumeier
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach
NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN
Choreography: Eric Gauthier
Music: Modest Mussorgsky
3/4 PRELUDES
Choreography: Richard Siegal
Music: George Gershwin
SONGS OF WAYFARER
Choreography: Jiří Kylián
Music: Gustav Mahler
ALL LONG DEM DAY
Choreography: Marco Goecke
Music: Nina Simone
BAYERISCHES JUNIOR BALLETT MÜNCHEN
When the dancers of the Bayerisches Junior Ballett München – the junior company of the Bavarian State Ballet of Munich – take to the stage, youthful joy jumps from the stage to the audience, lighting up like a spark. Founded in 2010 as the first youth company in Germany, with sixteen members aged between seventeen and twenty, the ensemble is still the largest youth company. Under the direction of Ivan Liška, the ensemble has won the hearts of audiences far beyond the borders of Bavaria. As cultural ambassadors of the Free State of Bavaria and the city of Munich, the company’s talented performers have successfully appeared on stages in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel and Hong Kong.
The youthful verve with which the artists conquer the stage has become a distinctive feature for audiences and critics alike. During their two years with the company, the young dancers undergo intensive training for their professional careers. Former members of the Bayerisches Junior Ballett München are now part of renowned companies such as the Munich State Ballet, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Hamburg Ballet, the Berlin State Ballet and in ballet companies located in Helsinki, Oslo, Prague, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Seoul, Pilsen, Graz, Wiesbaden, Antwerp, Warsaw, Ostrava, Vienna, Greifswald, Hanover, Dresden, Brno, Flensburg and Paris, to name but a few.
Co-operation partners
Heinz-Bosl Foundation
Bavarian State Ballet of Munich
Academy of Ballet of the University of Music and Theatre Munich
Company ambassador
Dr h.c. Irène Lejeune is an ambassador for the Bavarian Junior Ballet in Munich.
BACH-SUITE 3
World premiere performed by the Hamburg Ballet at the Operettenhaus in Hamburg on 2 October 1981.
First performance by the Bayerisches Junior Ballett of Munich as part of a Heinz-Bosl Foundation matinée at the National Theatre in Munich on 14 April 2024.
Choreography and costumes: John Neumeier
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach – Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major (1730)
John Neumeier is best known for his full-length narrative works, symphonic ballets and choreographies set to sacred music. Alongside these works, Neumeier has created a wide range of smaller choreographic works, including the ballet Bach-Suite 3. A neoclassical work with a series of solos, duets and group dances, with a pas de deux to the famous ‘Aria on the Fourth String’ at the centre of the ballet. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major was composed in 1730 and, like most orchestral works of the Baroque era, begins with a sumptuous French-style overture, followed by a suite of dances.
JOHN NEUMEIER
Born in Milwaukee, USA, John Neumeier moved to Europe to study in Copenhagen and at the Royal Ballet School before joining the Stuttgart Ballet in 1963. In 1969 Neumeier became director of the Frankfurt Ballet, before becoming director and choreographer of the Hamburg Ballet in 1973. Neumeier’s choreographic output includes more than 170 works and has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Deutsche Tanzpreis in 1988 and 2008.
NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN
World premiere performed by the Bayerisches Junior Ballett of Munich as part of a Heinz-Bosl Foundation matinee at the Munich National Theatre on 14 April 2024.
Choreography and costumes: Eric Gauthier
Music: Modest Musorgskij – Una notte sul Monte Calvo (1867)
The ballet Night on Bald Mountain by Eric Gauthier is an intense artistic exploration of themes such as passion, power and the relationship between man and nature. To the haunting music of Modest Mussorgsky, vividly describing the witches’ Sabbath on top of a mountain, five couples perform a dynamic choreography, offering a performance rich in nuances in a neoclassical language of movement. Mussorgsky’s enthralling music transports the audience to a fascinating world where reality and fantasy merge.
ERIC GAUTHIER
Eric Gauthier has earned the title of ‘ballet rock star’. In 2006 he founded the Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, which in recent years has worked with internationally renowned choreographers, thus gaining notoriety. The company’s success, celebrated by both the public and critics, is not only due to Gauthier’s charismatic charm, but also to her direct way of addressing the audience and presenting dance evenings that never fail to thrill.
3/4 PRELUDES
World premiere performed by the Bayerisches Junior Ballett of Munich as part of a Heinz-Bosl Foundation matinee at the National Theatre in Munich on 27 November 2016.
Choreography: Richard Siegal
Music: George Gershwin – Three Preludes (1926)
Costumes: Susanne Stehle
When the junior company was founded in 2010, the intention was to create a repertoire of performances to foster the artistic development of dancers in a wide range of choreographic styles. At the time, Richard Siegal was emerging as an exciting new choreographic voice. After contributing some of his pieces to the company’s repertoire, in 2016 Richard Siegal travelled to Munich to create a new work directly with the company’s dancers. Set to George Gershwin’s famous Three Preludes, Siegal created a work that translates every single musical note by Gershwin into movement. Siegal has always been fascinated by syncopation and Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and not only deconstructs common phrases of ballet and movement, but reconstructs them in groups of new movement ideas. The lively and jazzy 3/4 Preludes has thrilled audiences over and over since its premiere in 2016.
RICHARD SIEGAL
Richard Siegal was a member of William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet before founding an interdisciplinary platform for the performing arts called ‘The Bakery’ in 2006. After acclaimed productions for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, the CCN Ballet National de Marseille and the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich, Siegal founded the Ballet of Difference in 2016. The company questions ballet and the position it occupies as a cultural artefact in the 21st century. It uses the question of difference as a starting point and, together with a diverse group of artists from different cultural and aesthetic backgrounds, seeks to demonstrate the relevance of this art form in the contemporary era. Siegal continues to create for companies all over the world, including recent commissions for the Berlin State Opera and the Tanztheater Wuppertal.
SONGS OF WAYFARER
World premiere performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater at the Zirkustheater Scheveningen on 11 July 1982.
Premiere performance by the Bayerisches Junior Ballett of Munich as part of a Heinz-Bosl Foundation matinee at the National Theatre of Munich on 26 March 2023.
Choreography: Jiří Kylián
Music: Gustav Mahler – Canti di un viandante (1883-1885)
Choreographic assistants: Shirley Esseboom, Stefan Zeromski
Set design and costumes: John F. Macfarlane
Lighting design: Kees Tjebbes after Jennifer Tipton
The metaphor of the journey is omnipresent, the theme continues to endure in the search for meaning in the world by artists. Love, in its multiform and constantly evolving nature, has inspired great works such as Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen by Gustav Mahler, a significant contribution to the German tradition of song cycles. Mahler depicts a young man unlucky in love who must wander the world to find solace in the beauty of nature. Jiří Kylián’s 1982 ballet, which is inspired by Mahler’s score, is reminiscent of the choreographer’s earlier, more neoclassical works. Known for his extremely particular musicality, Kylián reflects the nostalgia and torment of Mahler’s score with soft and fluid phrases, interrupted by staccato gestures. Magnificent lifts make the bodies fly in a way that only a master of choreography like Kylián can imagine.
JIŘÍ KYLIÁN
Jiří Kylián began his career as a dancer with John Cranko at the Stuttgart Ballet. He then went on to lead the Netherlands Dance Theatre for over a quarter of a century, creating more than 100 ballets. In 2019, Kylián was appointed a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris. This highly prestigious honour was made even more special by the Academy’s decision to amend its statutes and add a new chair for ‘choreography’.
ALL LONG DEM DAY
World premiere on 13 July 2015 by the Berlin State Ballet School.
First performance by the Bayerisches Junior Ballett of Munich as part of the Bayerisches Staatsballett’s SPHÄREN.01 | Goecke programme at the Prinzregententheater in Munich on 23 June 2023
Choreography: Marco Goecke
Music: Nina Simone – Sinnerman
Lighting design: Udo Haberland
Marco Goecke is one of the most interesting dance creators of our time. From the very beginning, Goecke set out to create a choreographic language completely independent of classical technique and continues his artistic research without compromise. Confronting the audience with groups of frenetic and electrifying movements, his work often appears erratic and overwhelming at first glance. Created for the Berlin State Ballet School in 2015, All Long Dem Day finds a perfect partner in Nina Simone’s 1956 interpretation of Sinnerman. Originally a traditional African-American spiritual song inspired by the book of Exodus, the text describes a sinner trying to hide from divine justice on the day of judgement. Coupling Simon’s cries for forgiveness of transgression with Goecke’s explosive fragments of movement, the relentlessness of All Long Dem Day reminds us that change is not only important but necessary to repair the social, moral and political bonds that wither with the passage of time.
MARCO GOECKE
Long-standing resident choreographer of the Stuttgart Ballet and the Scapino Ballet, associate choreographer of the Nederlands Dans Theater, resident artist of Gauthier Dance and director of the Hannover State Ballet, Marco Goecke has created about 80 works in twenty years. These include works commissioned by many international companies such as Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Vienna State Ballet, the Norwegian National Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet Seattle, the ballet of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, the Berlin State Ballet, the Hamburg Ballet, the Zurich Ballet and the Companhia de Dança in Sao Paulo. Marco Goecke has received numerous international awards, including the 2003 Prix Dom Perignon, the 2005 Culture Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the 2005 Nijinsky Prize, and the 2017 Dutch Zwaan Dance Prize. In 2022 he was awarded the Kylian Ring and the German Dance Prize.
