Sasha Waltz

IMPROMPTUS

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27 september, h. 20.30

AUDITORIUM CONCILIAZIONE

Sasha Waltz, a key figure on the international scene, is returning to the stages of the capital. The Karlsruhe choreographer conquered this pivotal role with her company, founded along with the young playwright Jochen Sandig, thanks to the ongoing commitment to push back the boundaries of theatre-dance with incursions into art, contemporary music, theatre-installation combining sculpture and movement. With Impromptus (Improvisations), they are presenting one of their most lyrical, poetic and intimate creations of recent years in Rome. It is the other face of an artist often known purely for her corrosive experimentalism.
Not by chance, it is her first choreography based entirely on the classical repertoire instead of on contemporary music, and the choice has fallen to a number of dazzling scores by Franz Schubert. In fact Impromptu is a composition purposely designed to seem to be an improvisation, and in Schubert’s case it corresponds with piano pieces that seem to be rhapsodies but are instead carefully set out to arouse a kaleidoscope of images, feelings and evocations: a journey amidst the most diverse emotions.
Without the narrative restrictions that defined some previous works, far from “illustrating” the music, Waltz reacts to the stimuli of Schubert with a work featuring abstract, interior and sensual portrayals, with rare flashes of light irony. Seven dancers perform solo, in pairs or groups, sketching a world of relations between bodies, with bodies and on bodies in a geometric seduction conceived by Thomas Schenk together with Waltz. Each piece of music corresponds with a separate scene which is secretly linked to the others, which together span great distances.
Of the pieces chosen for this choreography, the Impromptus also feature the addition of some of Schubert’s most enthralling Lieders, and all the music, interpreted by mezzo-soprano Ruth Sandhoff and pianist Cristina Marton will be performed live so that intimate, secret correspondences can be created between dance and dancers.

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Sasha Waltz (Karlsruhe,1963). Between 1983-1987 she studied Dance and Choreography in Amsterdam and New York. A scholarship with Künstlerhaus Bethanien brought her to Berlin in 1992, where she, together with Jochen Sandig, founded Sasha Waltz & Guests in 1993, and the sophiensæle in 1996. From 1999 until 2004 she was a member of the artistic direction committee of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Berlin. Her trilogy “Körper” (2000), “S” (2000) and “noBody” (2002) came into being there. Ending 2004 Sasha Waltz and her company again became independent and realised their first opera “Dido & Aeneas” in conjunction with Akademie für Alte Musik at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Presently the inventory of Sasha Waltz’ works comprises 12 internationally acclaimed major choreographies and films thereof, as well as such projects as “Dialoge” whereby she investigates specific locations and their architecture in collaboration with artists from diverse disciplines. In 2007 Sasha Waltz presents, among other works, two music-theatre choreographies: “Medea” with music by Pascal Dusapin and text by Heiner Müller had its World Première in Luxemburg in May as a feature of the European Culture Capital City 2007. In addition the Opéra de Paris in October 2007 presented the choreography “Roméo et Juliette” by Sasha Waltz to Hector Berlioz’ dramatic symphony.

Music
Impromptu f-Moll Op. 142, Nr. 1, D. 935, Es-Dur Op. 90, Nr. 2, D. 899, As-Dur Op. 90, Nr. 4, D. 899
Des Mädchens Klage Op. 58, Nr. 3, D. 191
Der Wanderer an den Mond Op. 80, Nr. 1, D. 870
Der Doppelgänger Schwanengesang Nr. 13, D. 957
An Mignon Op. 19, Nr. 2, D. 161b
Impromptu Ges-Dur Op. 90, Nr. 3, D. 899, c-Moll Op. 90, Nr. 1, D. 899