From sneaker to pointe shoe

In its second State Opera premiere, the Vienna State Ballet encounters three extraordinary dance artists. Justin Peck, Wayne McGregor and Twyla Tharp explore ballet and its possibilities in movement in their own individual ways, creating visionary dances for a contemporary ballet art form.

In order to establish an art form in the present or even the future, one has to deal with its past. Ballet and dance have a rich heritage, which in turn inspires and can be an exciting basis for the art of choreography today. So it seems only logical that the new ballet evening Visionary Dances concludes with the work that became an iconic piece in the ballet canon after its premiere in 1986 and celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2026: Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room. As one of the most important contemporary choreographers, Tharp has developed a versatile oeuvre since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, which includes choreographies not only for pure dance, but also for Hollywood films, Broadway and figure skating.

"Tharp's diverse choreographic manifestations - as a radical avant-gardist in the mid-1960s and later as the first 'modern' dancer to choreograph for ballet, musicals and figure skating - challenged high culture's assumptions about the role of the artist as a particularly sensitive witness to the truths of human existence. Her self-proclaimed interest in 'begging, borrowing and stealing' as well as her subversive experimentation with the expressive forms of popular culture highlighted her as the rebellious founder of a new hybrid form of dance," writes Susan Foster in The Signifying Body: Reaction and Resistance in Postmodern Dance.

Foster thus refers to Tharp's flair for exploring boundaries in complex choreographic adaptations of various movement motifs and understanding the body as an expressive means of expression. Step material from everyday life such as walking, modern dance, ballet, jazz and tap dance and even sports - such as boxing - found their way into her rich vocabulary of movement, which has permanently changed the audience's visual experiences and aesthetic perceptions.

In the Upper Room, premiered with her own company Twyla Tharp Dance, is an example par excellence of Tharp's art of dance: to the commissioned composition of the same name by Philip Glass, classical meets modern athleticism, pointe shoe meets sneaker, raw power meets extraordinary grace - all characterized by immense physicality and liveliness. The idea behind it is simple: a choreographic exploration of contrasting elements on a stage within a work. This concerns not only the vocabulary of ballet and modern dance, but also decisions about directions, movement architecture and emotional approaches. The driving rhythms of Philip Glass thus lead to an intoxicating dance, which in its staged "looseness" is characterized above all by a choreographic-mathematical precision.

The American choreographer and two-time Tony Award winner Justin Peck, whose work will be performed with the Vienna State Ballet for the first time, is also drawn to interdisciplinary work. appointed as the second choreographer in the history of the New York City Ballet in 2014 as resident choreographer of this renowned ensemble, he has since not only made a name for himself in the international ballet cosmos, but has also successfully staged and choreographed for film and on Broadway:

"I am fortunate that the common factor in all these things is dance and, be it theater or ballet, this is a language I know how to speak. I've always been fascinated by the expressiveness of other genres. I grew up watching Broadway shows and musicals, and of course I've seen a lot of movies, so it really inspires me to be involved in the creation of works from other genres. I don't like to do just one thing. The variety of work is what keeps me creatively alive. The different arts balance each other out and I learn a lot from each genre that I can bring to the next. They all work a little differently and I love that mutual influence."

Peck's choreographies are unmistakable and characterized by originality, lightness and freshness, without ever being banal or simple. In his works, modern-looking ballet movements meet a highly musical complexity. And Peck's catalog of works - perhaps inspired by Twyla Tharp or the former Associate Artistic Director of the New York City Ballet Jerome Robbins - also contains the odd sneaker mixed in with the pointe shoes.

His creation Heatscape, created for the Miami City Ballet in 2015, opens the Triple Bill Visionary Dances and heralds an evening full of sparkling energy. Inspired by the street art-filled streets of Miami's Wynwood Art District, which are visually reflected in the set design by artist Shepard Fairey, Peck has his dancers wake up in front of a large, colorful prospectus that takes up the entire stage backdrop. As if the artwork brings them to life, or at least inspires them to move, Peck choreographs large, fast and harmonious ensemble scenes in geometric formations to Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů's Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra No. 1 - "lines, circles and groups emerge in different places and at different angles on the stage, creating impressive accents" - as well as an intimate pas de deux reminiscent of ephemeral Romanticism.

The middle section of Visionary Dances is dedicated to the British choreographer Wayne McGregor. His choreography Eden | Eden already caused a sensation at the Vienna State Opera in 2017. Now, with Yugen, the Staatsballett ensemble is immersing itself in a completely different world created by the choreographer: Yugen evokes a changeable beauty through simple means. This term, derived from Japanese aesthetics, stands for the work, which explores that mysterious, profound grace through the relationships of eleven bodies on stage. Inspired by Leonard Bernstein's evocative Chichester Psalms, Wayne McGregor, in collaboration with ceramic artist and writer Edmund de Waal, has created a clean, pared-down stage aesthetic, complemented by costume designs by Shirin Guild and a lighting design by long-time collaborator Lucy Carter.

Bernstein's life-affirming composition - an eclectic mix of Hebrew lyrics, Broadway jazz and Christian choral music - provided McGregor with the inspiration to give the unfathomable and mysteriously subtle beauty that lies in every body a form of visualization through dance: "It is an extraordinarily powerful work, it is organic and allows for fluidity in the body, a soft and subtle relationship to movement that constantly transforms as the piece progresses," says the choreographer about his choice of music.

Wayne McGregor, knighted by King Charles III in 2024, is undisputedly one of the most pioneering and influential British choreographers. With his radical, cross-genre innovations, the artist has permanently changed the language of contemporary ballet. The starting point of his work is always a tireless curiosity about movement - its structure, its intelligence, its creative potential. This interest repeatedly leads McGregor into productive border areas between art, science and technology, from whose dialogues multi-layered, often surprising works emerge that have been setting standards in the international dance and performance landscape for more than three decades.

From sneaker to pointe shoe -
Visionary Dances shows how alive the classical vocabulary is and always will be in the dialog between past and present.