A dance experience for our virtual times: with “Beethoven-Ballets”, Stuttgart Ballet paid homage to the famous composer in a live-streamed performance.
Choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti delights in these extremes and the irrepressible power that lie in Beethoven's music. “I know many people say you can't dance to Beethoven well,” he explains. “But that's not true for me. Beethoven's music is so strong, deep and expressive. It really speaks to us. It's wonderful for dance!” In one of his very first works, Bigonzetti choreographed Beethoven's last string quartet. For his world premiere Einssein (“to be one with”) he is taking on movements from three different sonata: “This music fits to loneliness,” says Bigonzetti, “especially in this global situation. We will all need to rediscover our intimacy – and this music makes that pal- pable. For Beethoven, you should learn to listen anew, then you hear something very special, something primordially human.”
The movements Bigonzetti has chosen for Einssein are virtually exemplary of Beethoven's character – as if the choreographer wanted to embrace precisely what others consider undanceable. The Andante from the penultimate piano sonata op. 109, for example, is entitled “Singing, with the most heartfelt feeling”, but then abruptly quickens the tempo again and again – suddenly the mood of the piece changes to “allegro viva- ce”, i.e.: chasing. A great challenge for the pianist, and even more so for the dancers. But Bigonzetti knows how to unite opposites, in his choreographies he switches from playful, almost revue-like passages to deeply passionate ones.