Walking Mad / Kleines Requiem (Rescheduled from 2020-05-01)New production

Hans van Manen is one of the late 20th century’s ballet legends. The Ballett Zürich has now added another of the Dutch choreographer’s masterpieces to its repertoire – Kleines Requiem, created for the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) in 1996 and set to the eponymous work by Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki. As if they were pacing along the paths of their lives – now sedately placing one foot before another, now running full of energy – in this ballet, three female and four male dancers move through the space. In ever-new configurations of male-female pairs, they unfurl the inexhaustible cosmos of human feeling and coexistence before our very eyes.

For the first time, the Ballett Zürich is to dance a piece by the Swedish choreographer Johan Inger. After a successful career at the Nederlands Dans Theater, he was director of the Cullberg Ballet in Sweden until 2008. He now works as a freelance choreographer all over the world. Walking Mad was premièred by the NDT in 2001. The stage is dominated by an enormous wooden wall, which separates and connects the individual situations and figures in a disturbing drama of relationships. Bizarre, surreal and clownish, the dancers move to Maurice Ravel’s famous Boléro – but the initially comical hustle and bustle descends inexorably into the abyss.