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On Toe, Nowhere to Go: Dance in Vienna, Budapest, and Prague
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10772 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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3 / 1993 |
2,398 Words |
| Author
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Leland Windreich
Leland Windreich is a dance writer and historian living in
Vancouver, Canada. |
In the great state theaters of central Europe ballet has historically played the role of stepchild to opera. Under communism, however, the opera ballet establishments in Prague and Budapest gained stature through the infusion of Soviet training of the dancers and the acquisition of the large-scale nineteenth-century classical repertoire. A socialist mandate encouraged as well the creation of new ballets using Czech and Hungarian folk materials and sanctioned the development of evening length dance dramas derived from mythology or classic European literature. Vienna lagged--due to the civil-service mentality of its ballet establishment; a conservative, dance-indifferent management; and a dearth of indigenous creative power. Today, with remarkable changes taking place in both economic and artistic areas in all three cities of the former Hapsburg empire, programming of opera over ballet, however, still involves an average four-to-one ratio for performing dates each year in the theater.
In Vienna a new ballet director, intent on developing a world-class troupe that might have brought the notoriously weary ensemble of the Staatsoper into the twenty-first century, decided in November not to remain through the third year of her contract. In Budapest the National Ballet is currently rudderless, manned by a troika of choreographers and ballet masters who are recruiting for a leader and have not struck out the possibility of bringing one in from abroad. In Prague the Ballet of the National Theater suffered a blow in 1989 when political changes resulted in some bizarre appointments, notably that of the film director as artistic chief of the National Theater's ballet. As a result, about one-third of its dancers resigned. New freedom to work abroad scattered most of them, but an ambitious new project that will provide Czechoslovakia with its first corporate-sponsored ballet company was able to offer competitive salaries to those who stayed in Prague.
During my three-week visit in September and October there were few ballet engagements to distract a busy tourist. In Vienna the single performance in late September of Elena Tchernichova's dazzling new production of Don Quixote was canceled because the opera needed extra rehearsal time on stage for Wagner's Ring Cycle. Ballet press officer Harris Philip, who accompanied Tchernichova to Vienna from New York, revealed how the ballet faction must survive in a bureaucracy-burdened establishment.
"By letting the opera have the house that night we gained three extra dates for ballet during the season," Philip explained. Wheeling and dealing had become part of what appeared to be a
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