2023-07-15 16:46:59
So there they are standing on the stage of the Stuttgart State Opera for the finale, cheering with applause: Birgit Keil, 78 years old, 80-year-old Egon Madsen and the ballerina legend Marcia Haydée, who is six years older. Only Richard Cragun, who died 13 years ago, is painfully missing.
The applause is probably even louder, warmer and longer-lasting than in 1972, when John Cranko premiered one of his most beautiful pieces on this stage, which these monstres sacrés have now rehearsed: “Initials RBME”, an abstract ballet about friendship in Shape of the second Brahms piano concerto, in which Cranko dedicated each of the four movements to one of his formative soloists – a homage to his company, which at the time was as ideally positioned as he could have wished for after eleven years of tireless work in the German ballet desert .
But the South African, formed at the London Royal Ballet, only had a year and a half to live. His death at the age of almost 46 was declared in Dublin on June 26, 1973. The charter plane returning from Stuttgart’s third New York tour had to make an emergency landing there because John Cranko was found lifeless in his seat.
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Cranko had literally worked himself to death for his once provincial troupe, which was also proclaimed the “Stuttgart Ballet Miracle” in New York in 1969. That was 50 years ago and it still hovers over this company as a name, image and good spirit, which – with massive political help – managed to preserve its spirit and its continuity at the time.
Numerous talents were to follow
His comrades-in-arms are still present today. Marcia Haydée was ballet director for 20 years from 1976, followed for 22 years by the Canadian soloist Reid Anderson (who, not without problems to this day, also lives with the Cranko heir Dieter Gräfe); the American Tamas Detrich has been the boss here since 2018, who was on stage as a student at the last New York guest performance and, inspired by this, later switched to the Cranko School. And not to forget: the choreologist Georgette Tsinguirides, now 95, who is irreplaceable as the keeper of the Cranko repertoire, who got her first contract in 1945 and was officially retired after 72 years of service. And even the 85-year-old outfitter Jürgen Rose, discovered by Cranko, only created a new “nutcracker” for Stuttgart last November.
Nowhere in the fast-paced, ephemeral world of ballet, which lives only on fleeting, not really tangible movements, is “We are family” as true as it is in Stuttgart. In this way, the memory of an early master, artist, talent discoverer, emphatic person has been kept alive, melancholy, but always with a forward-looking smile, not only for five decades. One has also cemented its status in the dance world.
Premiere of the ballet evening “Remember Me” on July 13, 2023 at the Stuttgart Ballet
Source: Roman Novitzky / Stuttgart Ballet
A talent like John Cranko has never settled here again, although at least three young dancers from his troupe have achieved the highest honors as choreographers and chefs, and radiated and radiated from Stuttgart into the dance world: the Czech Jiří Kylián, who created the Nederlands Dans made theater world famous; the American William Forsythe, who from 1984 prescribed a completely new aesthetic direction for dance at the Frankfurt Ballet, which unfortunately closed in 2004; and finally another American, John Neumeier.
The latter, meanwhile 84 years old, celebrated – strange coincidence – at the same time with his Hamburg Ballet a unique anniversary: 50 years as a choreographer, company manager, school and junior ballet founder. He has thus achieved more than his role model Cranko, who was only granted a short but immensely influential decade in Stuttgart. Neumeier has always returned to Stuttgart, creating important roles for Haydée with “Lady of the Camellias” and “A Streetcar Named Desire”. continuity here too.
The face of dance theater
When John Cranko died 50 years ago, Neumeier was not the only one to discover Hamburg for the dance world map. In Wuppertal, the then 33-year-old Solingen innkeeper’s daughter Philippine “Pina” Bausch began her management of something that quickly caused a sensation in the art world as “dance theater”. She didn’t invent it, but she gave it a face. At the same time, at the beginning of 1973, John Cranko tried something new, pantomime-dance theater-like, in his last piece, “Spuren”, based on the Adagio from Mahler’s 10th symphony.
1967: Marcia Haydée (r.) and Richard Cragun (m.) rehearse in front of John Cranko (l)
Quelle: picture alliance / dpa
It was a failure, not documented after his death. About a third has recently been reconstructed for a Cranko gala in Stuttgart. How exciting it would have been to see what kind of aesthetic path Cranko would have taken alongside the breakthroughs of Pina Bausch, Reinhild Hoffmann, Susanne Linke, Gerhard Bohner and later Johann Kresnik…
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Otherwise, one can only state who emerged from the Stuttgart creative forge and became important for German dance without ever even remotely reaching the rank of Cranko – the neo-classicist Uwe Scholz, who also died tragically early; the missing Daniela Kurz; Marco Goecke, who was recently fired in Hanover; Eric Gauthier, who boldly and creatively set up his own company at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart; Christian Spuck, who from September is supposed to pep up the ailing Staatsballett Berlin; Demis Volpi, who will have the heavy Neumeier legacy in Hamburg pressed on his narrow shoulders from autumn 2025. And the former Stuttgart soloist Bridget Breiner, who will succeed Volpi in Düsseldorf.
A change is also pending at the Semperoper Ballet in Dresden. There the Canadian Kinsun Chan from St. Gallen follows Aaron Watkin, also Canadian and former Forsythe dancer. There has never been so much upheaval in the German ballet world. But nowhere is there a greatness like Cranko. That became painfully clear at this two-part “Remember Me” evening in Stuttgart. It ended with Kenneth MacMillan’s comfortingly abstract Fauré “Requiem”, composed two years after Cranko’s death. Gloriously danced by the still strong Stuttgarters. They have a unique aura of beauty, panache, wit and inventiveness. Ballet in the Spring Tower. Up-to-date and ready to go, humane and skilful. Quite Cranko.
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