Music and theater traditions blend in a unique production of St Matthew Passion. 41 breathtaking dancers from the Hamburg Ballett unfurl choreographer John Neumeier‘s ballet set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 1727 sacred oratorio for solo voices, choir, and orchestra.
John Sebastian Bachs Matthew Passion has deeply moved me. Bachs musical incarnation of the Passion in both its general and personal aspects created the need in me to find a choreographic equivalent. I am both Christ and a dancer. My whole life, all my thought and feeling are the dance, and choreography is my real language. That is why I have attempted to express my own religious convictions and experiences in choreographic terms and to organize them in artistic form. In my entire career as a choreographer, I have never known a period in which I enjoyed such complete harmony with the dancers, as I have enjoyed throughout the creation of the St. Matthew Passion. It was a period of learning from one another, of experiencing instinctively together the emotion of text and music, of positive cooperation and concentration. Even if this ballet had never got beyond rehearsals and had never been performed, the process of its creation will remain the most profound experience of my working life.
John Neumeier
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Die Glasmenagerie by Hamburg Ballett, John Neumeier