Programme booklet »Visionary Dances«

visionary dances

Ewa Bathelier, Blue

The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper

visionary dances Heatscape Justin Peck Yugen Wayne McGregor In the Upper Room Twyla Tharp

PREMIERE 28 MARCH 2026 – VIENNA STATE OPERA

Laura Fernandez Gromova, Alessandro Cavallo (Heatscape)

Victor Caixeta (Yugen)

about today’s performance

“They have stretched classical ballet and pushed it in new directions. Twyla Tharp was one of the firsts to open this door with her iconic work In the Upper Room. For the first time, she brought together two different worlds: modern and classical. It is a piece that has left its mark on the history of ballet. Justin Peck and Wayne McGregor have found their style in very different ways. They have created their own voices and expanded into different areas. Justin Peck does Broadway, films, he has a very specific American language. Heatscape is one of his most classical pieces. Wayne McGregor has taken classical ballet to the extreme. He has broken the rules. Yugen shows a different side of him, it is very lyrical, moving and fragile. I love this side of Wayne McGregor because he can explore the real depth of an emotion in an abstract way.”

By programming Visionary Dances, Ballet Director Alessandra Ferri not only shows how classical ballet can be anchored in the contemporary but also how alive the art form is. This evening of ballet brings together three choreographers who have each found their own approach to the vocabulary of academic dance and explore the art of ballet and its possibilities for movement in an individual manner.

While Twyla Tharp’s pioneering In the Upper Room celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2026, the choreographies of Justin Peck and Wayne McGregor are younger works that open up dance and visual worlds that are no less varied. As a result, Visionary Dances not only presents three different readings of the language of ballet, but also exciting, powerful yet poetic collaborations between choreographers, designers and both visual and street artists.

ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE

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Chiara Uderzo, Duccio Tariello (In the Upper Room)

a vision for the whole

SARAH CROMPTON

Three works, three pioneering choreographers. But another quality holds this programme of Visionary Dances together. In every case, the choreographer is a collaborator, making a work by inviting in others to create a vision for the whole. In each instance, the result is the imagining of an entire world, the revelation of an atmosphere that is unique.

For Justin Peck, the starting point for Heatscape, from 2015, was the Wynwood Arts District of Miami and the dancers of Miami City Ballet on whom he made the piece. His now wife, then girlfriend, Patricia Delgado, was a dancer with the company, and he had been spending a lot of time in the city.

Heatscape was his first major commission from a company outside New York City Ballet, where he had trained and danced and where he is now resident choreographer.

“At this point, Miami was this exciting, young city, and Wynwood was a big warehouse district, covered in these large-scale murals. The work was very sophisticated in terms of street art, and I was inspired by that, and by the artists I was working with in Miami City Ballet, so I gave myself a challenge of how to blend all that into a new dance. I wanted to explore the explosion of art in this place and the humanity of these dancers and make something that felt like it captured a time, place and energy. It is almost like a photograph of a time, a moving postcard of something that I was feeling. In that sense it’s a very personal work.”

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Peck knew he wanted to use the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as the music. He tends to work by immersing himself in a particular piece of music and he had discovered this little known score by Martinů while he was researching the composer, reading his biographies and trying to make sense of his work.

“It’s part of my process – or my obsession – to sometimes go very deep into the catalogue of a composer, listening to everything that they have written, to find a piece that whispers in my ear. Finding this was like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s slightly imperfect, not played in symphonic programmes, but to me it felt very danceable and surprising. It has a real pulse to it.”

Peck responded to what he describes as a “thorniness” in the score, that suggests transitory encounters, relationships stopping, starting, evolving. As the New York Times noted of the work’s premiere: “Heatscape shows [Peck’s] gift for memorably picturesque, changing group shapes: lines, rings, clusters occur at various points and angles on the stage, registering dramatically.” That sense of change is characteristic. “With a lot of my ballets there’s a made-up sense of place and character, a population of a place from which characters emerge and then get reabsorbed. In Heatscape, the principal dancers of the first movement participate in the ensemble work that happens in the second and third. Ballet is often about hierarchy – once you are a principal, you stay a principal.

This world is a little more fluid which feels like real life, a reflection of who we are today.”

The other key decision Peck made was to ask Shepard Fairey, one of the godfathers of street art, who had made many significant murals at Wynwood, to design the set. “He was my top choice, but a lot of people told me I would never be able to get him to design for ballet. I tracked him down and asked if he would be up for it. He’s someone who is very curious and interested in working for different mediums, entering into different lanes so he jumped at it.” Fairey’s iconic boldly patterned backdrop, of rich red and deep brown, “has so much energy in it before the dancers even move.” The visual landscape it creates sets the tone of the piece.

For Peck, the ability to bring together great artists to collaborate on the realisation of a vision, is one of ballet’s superpowers. “I try to take very seriously the platform that I have not only to make dances, but to invite in other artists to contribute to the experience,” he says. “I have always felt most inspired by the notion of ballet being a meeting point for different artistic mediums and artists who collide and make a cohesive experience for the audience. That goes back to the Ballets Russes and the work of Merce Cunningham and the relevance that had. I feel I have a responsibility to keep that going, in the way that I can. Of course, my work is seen through my personal taste, but I try to think big picture for these ballets. What gives them their unique flavour and variety is collaborating with different artists and different projects, so I love doing that.”

This is a sentiment and an approach very much shared by Wayne McGregor whose works large and small are all characterised by an open-minded assembly of a team of collaborators with whom to explore ideas. “Collaboration keeps you moving,” he says. “It stops you being formulaic. Dance is so collaborative any way.

If you’ve got people who are inspired and inspiring, it is bound to affect your work and infect your practice.”

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A VISION FOR THE WHOLE

More than any other modern choreographer, he draws sustenance from his close involvement with artists in other spheres, actively seeking out people he wants to work with, from Tacita Dean, who designed The Dante Project, to Thomas Adés, who composed it; from Max Richter with whom he has worked on nine projects, and Lucy Carter his regular lighting designer.

When he began to work on Yugen, premiered in 2018, McGregor wrote a letter to the ceramicist Edmund de Waal. “I have a collaborative project I would like to share with you.” That project was a request from the Royal Ballet, where McGregor is resident choreographer, to create a work based on the music of Leonard Bernstein for a programme commemorating his centenary.

He chose Chichester Psalms, one of his favourite pieces, a setting of the biblical verses sung in Hebrew. He’d wanted for a long time to choreograph to a big, choral score, and was attracted to Bernstein’s composition which is an eclectic mixture of Hebrew texts, Broadway jazz and Christian choral music.

“He had this incredible ability to write music that was almost biblical and music that had a showbiz quality, like West Side Story,” McGregor said at the time. “To have an extremely exciting relationship to the orchestra, and compose beautiful melodic lines that were almost childlike. You get this incredible collection of voices, and then the individual boy treble that just transcends everything. That’s the beauty of Chichester Psalms.”

De Waal seemed an ideal collaborator. McGregor was fascinated by the way that de Waal “invests physicality into the way he makes his pots. He listens repeatedly to music while he is making and it informs the way he touches the clay. That analogy between Edmund touching clay and choreographers touching bodies is very, very close.”

There was another point of contact. De Waal, who had never designed for the stage, had grown up with psalms and was working on Psalm, an installation in the Venice Ghetto, exploring themes of exile, shown as part of the 2019 art biennale. Once he had said yes to McGregor, he went into his studio and played the Chichester Psalms very loudly, every Friday, for a year, immersing himself in the music as he played with ideas.

“There’s a huge challenge about having these sacred texts, and you don’t want to design a production that diminishes them,” he explains. Yet both he and McGregor found a way of allowing the limpid beauty of the music to breathe and expand as a serene dance develops around a series of 7-foot-high glass vitrines.

“I wanted to try to create places which the dancers could inhabit, places of refuge and solace,” de Waal says. “When you get several dancers inside one of the vitrines, you get a feeling of being inside a cathedral, or a temple, or a synagogue. A sense of being inside a sacred space.”

The title Yugen comes from a Japanese aesthetic concept, suggesting a beauty and awareness that is too powerful for words. There is a mystery about the notion, a sense of capturing something elusive, and this is reflected in McGregor’s choreography. Sharp, defined movements are banished in a sense of flow; shapes seem to pass through the dancers, all dressed in subtle shades of red. There’s a quiet, profound, grace about the work. “The music lends itself to a liquidity in the body, a much softer relationship, something which is ever transforming and organic,” says McGregor.

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For him, Yugen embodies something more than pure movement. “I don’t think there is such a thing as an abstract ballet because when you see human beings on a stage, you can’t help but invest meaning and relationship,” he says. “In Yugen, there’s almost a rite of passage for a young man that evolved over time as we made the work. You see him in relation to a group, and you see him grow. You might read it as a death, perhaps of his parents, and him opening up at the end and finding a new way to live, but I don’t think it has to be explicit. You just see him change.”

Like Peck, McGregor is also always inspired by the group of dancers who create the piece. “You find the imprint of the individual dancers in the dance itself. It’s not my ballet. It’s our ballet.”

For Twyla Tharp, In The Upper Room, choreographed in 1986, could not have been made without years of experience and thought running through her body and that of dancers with whom she had worked. Her clarity about how In The Upper Room would achieve its effects, how it would look, is clear from her description of the origins of the work in her autobiography Push Comes to Shove. She worked from the start with longtime colleagues, designer Norma Kamali, who provided the distinctive black and red costumes, revealed in layers and Jennifer Tipton who created the smoky lighting from which the dancers emerge, generating effects of visibility and invisibility.

Tharp had recruited her dancers, including her “stompers, those down-home, plainspun folks who move within a vocabulary of parallel movement, driving through space with nothing other than the technique developed through determination”, and her “bomb squad”, the ballet trained dancers who sweep through on pointe “lighter and more elegant, making up for a lack of raw force with the sophisticated technique that has developed over the last 350 years.”

She had more than 50 hours of improvisational material to draw on in the studio.

“Then I went to breakfast at Phil Glass’s house to ask for a new score,” she writes, simply.

“Those were the old days in New York,” she says now. “When everybody lived downtown.”

She had in fact asked Glass to write music for her before, but he had either been too busy, or his fee had been beyond what her company could afford. This time she was determined, suggesting he wrote for half an hour before breakfast every day to produce what she needed.

What she wanted was “a requiem, because it’s a serious piece”. The title, that adds to the sense of a secular mass, came from a Mahalia Jackson gospel hymn that Tharp had been using in the studio while Glass was composing the new score.

It suggested, Tharp said in an interview, “an empty attic, a place of last resort where one takes out one’s treasures and puts them up for very special public view.” Tharp had been thinking about family treasures while she made the piece. She had an image in her head of the ferocious porcelain dragons that guard Zen temples. That in turn made her remember “a family of small black-and-white china bulldogs that were kept in the front parlour of my Gram Bertha’s farmhouse”, passed down through generations of Quaker forbears. She thought of them as she cast long-term colleagues Shelley Washington and Chris Uchida to be her “stompers” “to guard and organize the stage…

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A VISION FOR THE WHOLE

These two women had become the ultimate of what I think of as my power women,” she writes.

In the Upper Room is tied together by a fierce structure, the counterpoising of dual elements: the “stompers” and the “bomb squad”, men and women, light and dark, airy and grounded, static and travelling, contrapuntal and harmonic, all bound together with a ribbon of accumulating force. “The elements are not contrasting, they are an augmentation,” explains Tharp. “One supports the other, one goes where the other does not go. It’s not an opposition, it’s a completion. It’s one of the factors that audiences find rewarding.”

It has become one of her most popular pieces, danced by companies around the world. It is invariably greeted by a standing ovation, as if audiences are propelled out of their seats by its propulsive dynamics. “It’s like a very small snowball that starts rolling down a hill and by the time it gets to the bottom, it’s a huge mass of ice,” says Tharp.

“The dancers give it everything they have got, and they can’t help themselves because they are swept up in the moment. The dancers put out and the piece evolves. You feel it gathering its forces and culminating. You feel it finish itself. People are buoyed by the energy that comes into them from this piece. And that is a process that seems to me is a major duty, responsibility and pleasure of making dances for people.”

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SARAH CROMPTON

“Three works, three pioneering choreographers.

But another quality holds this programme of Visionary Dances together.

In every case, the choreographer is a collaborator, making a work by inviting in others to create a vision for the whole.

In each instance, the result is the imagining of an entire world, the revelation of an atmosphere that is unique.”

heatscape Choreography Justin Peck Music Piano Concerto No. 1 D Major H. 149

by Bohuslav Martinů Musical Direction Gavin Sutherland Stage Design Shepard Fairey Costume Design Reid Bartelme & Harriet Jung Lighting Design Brandon Stirling Baker Staging Michael Breeden, Eric Trope Piano Yoko Kikuchi Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

WORLD PREMIERE 27 MARCH 2015 MIAMI CITY BALLET – THE KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

architecture of dance

JUSTIN PECK IN CONVERSATION WITH NASTASJA FISCHER

In a promotional video for the Miami City Ballet premiere of Heatscape, we see you walking around Miami with headphones on and suddenly dancers appear and start moving as if they were dancing images inspired by the environment you are in. What was the initial inspiration for your piece?

Heatscape was made at a point where I was coming into my own as a choreographer and I was very much curious about exploring the classical ballet form and how to tweak it, subvert it and push it a little further. It was a commission by the Miami City Ballet, one of my first major commissions outside of New York City Ballet. I had built a very close relationship with those dancers and the company, and I wanted to make something that felt distinct for them – not just for who they are as artists, but also for where they existed in terms of place. I made this ballet that created a world inspired slightly by the art scene happening in the Wynwood Art District of Miami. What was so unique about that neighborhood is that it became this explosion of street art, you could walk around and everywhere were these huge murals that had just been made within the last couple of years. It was a new kind of explosion of artwork, and I had never seen any place like that. It was so inspiring, it brought art to JP

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the people, to the public. I spent a lot of time getting to know those artists, who can be seen there, and ultimately wanted to commission one of them to create an emblem backdrop for this ballet. I decided to shoot for the stars and reach out to Shepard Fairey, who is the “godfather” of street art in a lot of ways. To my surprise and delight, he said yes and committed to creating a stage design for my choreography. A lot of the architecture of the ballet is inspired by certain techniques of drawing, painting and patterning. The movement structure became a reflection of what Shepard Fairey painted for the backdrop. There is a lot of interplay between the architecture of the dance and the architecture of his work.

How did you and Shepard Fairey work together on the piece as the art involved in the stage design also inspired the dance?

JP

It was very much a collaboration. We passed a lot of ideas back and forth.

Shepard started by sharing four or five options for what the drop could be. Then I edited what he shared with me or gave him feedback to reach the final composition. That ended up being an in-depth process. He likes to use a lot of repetition with certain symbols in his work. A lot of the building blocks of the backdrop are part of his identity as an artist. For example, there is a bird symbol and that was something Shepard had done in preexisting work, but I really encouraged him to include it because the bird is such a symbol of ballet. In ballet’s history you have all these stories of the Firebird and Swan Lake, the bird is a constant character that exists in ballet. There’s something about the quality of a bird that is ephemeral and fleeting and that quality is so much what it’s like to experience ballet. That was one specific that I wanted to include. Then of course I loved how we evolved the design so that it almost felt like the bottom quarter of the backdrop is its own art mural wall. It reflected what it feels to be in Wynwood.

What is hidden behind the title Heatscape apart from the reference to the hot streets of Miami?

JP

The title was partly inspired by a dance that Merce Cunningham made, called Summerspace. When Merce created that, he described it as a dance that could go on beyond the confines of the stage, space and the wings. I loved that way of thinking about dance. I tried to apply that quality to this choreography in terms of its energy, its expanse. It feels almost like it’s busting at the seams.

You’ve created on Bohuslav Martinů’s Piano Concerto No 1. What inspired you to choreograph on this composition?

JP

I’ve always loved the music of Martinů. He is an intriguing character, and I was really drawn to this Piano Concerto, which he wrote when he was very young. It had so much energy, felt very danceable, and it also defied the period it 15

ARCHITECTURE OF DANCE

was written in. It has a lot of references to composers of the past, there are some Baroque references in there, but then there are moments in the score that feel like way ahead of its time. That was really fascinating to me.

What is your own approach to the classical ballet?

JP

I think of classical ballet as being a language that one can use to compose a dance or to create something. When I make a classical ballet, it’s about how do I use this technique and this alphabet to write something. A lot of people think about classicism as something of the past or of a certain era, but to me it’s a language that we can use in many ways. That’s how I try and think about making a ballet.

It’s a craft-based process, which uses the language to build out a whole world. That extends to not just the steps that the dancers are doing, but also the design, the visual world, the music. Ballet has always been this meeting point for different artistic mediums to come together and create a cohesive experience that exists at a very specific place and time.

You are an artist, who works interdisciplinary. You not only choreograph ballets, but also for musical and film.

JP

I'm lucky that the common factor in all those things is dance and whether it’s theater or ballet, it’s a language that I know how to speak. I’ve always been really fascinated by the expression of these other mediums. I grew up seeing Broadway shows and musicals and of course watching a lot of films so I’m very inspired to participate in the making of those mediums. I never like to be stuck doing just one thing. The diversity of the work is what keeps me alive creatively. Those different mediums balance one another out and I learn a lot from each respective genre that I can bring into the next one. Because they all function a little bit differently and I love that influence as well.

You are part of Alessandra Ferri’s first season as a director of the Vienna State Ballet. What does it mean for you and to work with the Vienna State Ballet for the first time?

JP

It means the world to me that Alessandra Ferri invited me in. It’s a huge honor that my work can be a part of her curation. She is someone that I’ve admired for a very long time. I would watch her perform both on video and live at American Ballet Theatre, I even got to observe how she works as a curator and director at Spoleto Festival. We’ve been engaging with each other and in admiration of one another for so many years, almost decades, and finally we’re getting a chance to collaborate through this new exciting role that she’s taking on. I’m so excited about it. I’ve heard amazing things about the Vienna State Ballet. To share my work with the Viennese audience as one of the most sophisticated audiences is special too.

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JUSTIN PECK

“For me, this ballet is the outcome of taking some ingredients that don’t conventionally belong together, adding some heat, and seeing what sorts of flavors emerge.”

in the pulse of form NASTASJA FISCHER

Born just before the turn of the century, in 1890, in the tower of St. Jacob’s Church in the small town of Polička, Bohuslav Martinů (died 1959) is one of the most important and above all productive Czech composers of the 20th century. As the son of a watchman, he always had a bird’s eye view of his surroundings: “[That view from above has] remained with me as one of the strongest impressions of my childhood and probably [plays] no lesser role in the whole way I look at composition,” Martinů writes in his memoirs. Combining the personal character of his works and his holistic understanding of music with the experiences of his childhood and youth, Martinů created an oeuvre that comprised some 400 compositions across a broad spectrum of genres from chamber and orchestral music to stage works and could be recognised by the composer’s highly individual stamp.

At the Prague Conservatoire, Martinů studied first the violin and then the organ and composition, but he was expelled from the school in 1910 for “incorrigible negligence”. As he was declared unfit for military service, he spent the First World War at home working as a music teacher. Towards the end of the war, he became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic, with whom he would visit Paris for the first time in 1919. Four years later Martinů returned to the French capital to continue his studies and to learn the qualities that would define his subsequent works: “order, clarity, proportion, taste and a precise, sensitive, immediate form of expression, in short: the virtues of French art”, in the composer’s words. In 1940 he and his wife emigrated to the USA, where he worked for leading

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American orchestras. Thirteen years later, Martinů returned to Europe, but the Communist takeover made it impossible for him to settle in his native Czechoslovakia.

Martinů’s artistic creativity was always intensely influenced by the external circumstances of his life. So his compositions contain echoes of the Czech tradition, such as his love of Bohemian and Moravian folk songs. On the other hand, his works are also inspired by jazz, French impressionists such as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and the possibility of integrating folk music elements into art music as well as numerous other musical and cultural trends.

His focus in exploring specific genres was partly associated with certain periods, for example his work on the symphony was his central concern during his years in the USA while the concerto form was the main feature of his time in Paris. The index of his works contains five piano concertos, which were premiered between 1926 and 1939.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 is Martinů’s first composition in the style of neoclassicism, which was one of the prevailing currents in music and painting during his stay in the French capital. The composition is characteristic of that transition: late romantic concepts of sound are combined with sharp outlines, lively rhythms and the neoclassicist formal clarity and ordered structure that would soon become Martinů’s trademark.

While the first movement of this three-movement concerto conveys an impression of energy and almost dance-like tension, the second movement forms its lyrical antithesis. This ethereal, poetic and melancholy sound world is followed by the third and final movement, which reclaims the rhythmic energy of the beginning and from there opens out into a vivid and pointed conclusion.

Martinů’s concerto is no romantic virtuoso piece, but a pulsating organism, an interaction between the solo piano and the chamber orchestra in which clarity, tension and dialogue are predominant. Its motor-like power and transparent structure create a congenial resonant space for dance – precise, lively and constantly thrusting forward.

BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ

“The artist is always searching for the meaning of life, both his own and that of humanity, searching for truth.”

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IN THE PULSE OF FORM

Zsolt Török, Milda Luckuté

Yo Nakajima

yugen Concept, Direction & Choreography Wayne McGregor Music Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein Stage Design Edmund de Waal Costume Design Shirin Guild Lighting Design Lucy Carter Staged by Amanda Eyles, Mikaela Polley Principal Coaching Antoine Vereecken Design Associate Catherine Smith Lighting Design Associate John Lawrence Musical Direction Gavin Sutherland Choir Director Erwin Ortner Boy Soloist Dominik Baumgartner / Alexander Gruber / Matteo Haudek / Alexis Zemtsov Arnold Schoenberg Chor & Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera CO-PRODUCTION BY THE ROYAL BALLET LONDON & DUTCH NATIONAL BALLET WORLD PREMIERE 15 MARCH 2018 ROYAL BALLET LONDON – ROYAL OPERA HOUSE LONDON

poetry in motion EDMUND DE WAAL

Almost 18 months ago, I received a letter from Wayne McGregor. “I have a collaborative project I would like to share with you. Would I be interested in working on a piece based on the psalms?” I love his work. He is one of those figures who seem to thrive on collaboration, joining forces with a kaleidoscopic series of musicians, architects, scientists, writers and visual artists. His Woolf Works at the Royal Opera House, using the writings of Virginia Woolf, had deeply affected me. The letter came out of the blue. I had never worked with a choreographer, never designed for a stage. But I had grown up with the psalms and was planning an installation based around them for the Ghetto in Venice.

I said yes. I said yes and then read the contract. And then I wrote in my notebook that all good collaboration contains risk.

So this is how I found myself at the first rehearsal on a February Monday morning in the Ashton Studio at the Royal Opera House, a top-lit space with grey floors, mirrors, a deep silence. There is a window into a corridor, and faces appear at intervals. Today there are three dancers, Sarah, Matt and Olivia - it should have been four but one is injured, a reminder of the profoundly taxing world that dancers live in. There’s also Amanda, who, miraculously, takes notes of the unfolding movements. And Wayne. I sit on the floor with a notebook, trying to disappear. I start by trying to write down what I see and hear, but that feels too intrusive. So I sit.

Wayne starts with one particular movement. And then he says, “Can you move here?”

He shows, describes and intimates, a long, lithe black shape always in motion around the pair of dancers. It’s a series of touches, an exchange of energy, a pulse. And a con-

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versation of request and enquiry, a checking of aspiration against the particularity of these two people and their own knowledge. I love this. I had expected a more didactic process but this is exploratory and testing. “Keep the air”, he says. “Keep the negative space between bodies? Your hands should be touching the heads of children. This part is like walking in sand. Bless the floor here.”

And after an hour of repetition, there is a minute of dance.

What I’m seeing is ideas in motion, a shape-shifting, a breathing through the flow of images into a language for this new work, Chichester Psalms.

My practice is grounded in the solitary making of pots, but the range of projects I do means that my studio hosts a cheerful ebb and flow of people. However, on Fridays I have the place to myself. It is an essential day when I work out what I’m doing. For the past year I’ve played the Chichester Psalms loudly. And worked on how to stage it, how to help create a place for movement and voice that works with these hauntingly beautiful texts.

The Chichester Psalms were commissioned from Leonard Bernstein in 1965 by the very Rev. Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral. He was a truly unusual Anglican clergyman, a passionate advocate for the place of the contemporary arts in the Church, arguing that there was an imperative to bring the most radical artists, poets and composers into connection with Christianity. In his parish in Northampton in the 1940s, he had persuaded Henry Moore to carve a Madonna and Child and Benjamin Britten to compose an anthem. At Chichester, he initiated remarkable commissions of a painting from Graham Sutherland and stained glass from Marc Chagall. This was visionary stuff.

Bernstein was famous and Jewish, like Chagall. His Young People’s Concerts, where he articulated the inner meanings of music with chutzpah, had given him an extraordinary platform. West Side Story was a storied success. And he had conducted President Kennedy’s pre-inaugural gala and Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” the day after his assassination, later composing the “Kaddish” symphony in his memory, a threnody for extinguished hope. The personal and the national were intertwined. For Chichester, he set six psalms in three movements, to be sung in Hebrew. A boy treble sings solo alongside the choir in an echo of the psalms’ origin as the Songs of David. Bernstein was explicit he had written this part “with boys’ voices” in mind. The work begins with a powerful, declamatory introduction, which translates to: “Awake, psaltery and harp: I will rouse the dawn!” Timpani and a harp explode with the first dramatic sounds. The psalms themselves span the troubled – “Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord” - to the affirmative: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” These psalms keep moving between the singular and the plural, the solitary voice and the tribal. This was my key.

This is personal. I grew up in cathedrals, first Lincoln and then Canterbury, as part of a clergy family. I heard the psalms as part of the day-to-day rhythm of the services: they were embedded in matins in the morning and evensong at the end of the afternoon, the echoes of the great monastic series of eight offices (prayer services) that spanned the day and the night before the Reformation. My brothers and I used to borrow a key at night and explore the cathedral, the floodlights bringing strange itinerant shadows into 25

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the building. One memorable night 40 years ago, we heard the monks from Bec Abbey in Normandy sing the psalms in Canterbury Cathedral for the first time in 500 years.

How music works across spaces, how light moves, became part of my life. I’ve used porcelain vessels to create installations - grouping them in domestic spaces, the dome of a museum, galleries. The choreography of objects, how they work in rhythm and with dynamics of pause and release, is what I do. But when thinking of bodies in space I kept returning to the images of bodies paused in mid-flight - the photographs from the 1950s of the young radical choreographer Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he becomes a kind of graphic mark, like a Chinese brushstroke on a scroll. I wondered if it was possible to create structures for the dancer, places of refuge and pause. They needed to be beautiful, exactingly so. I wanted them to flare into light - to act as light boxes on a stage that has been stripped back to its vast blackness.

They had to be visible to the complex sight lines. And movable - this is a co-production with Dutch National Ballet - and storable and affordable. And ready for first night.

So, over the past year, I’ve been spending time with Wayne both in his extraordinary new space in Stratford in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park - created by the architectural practice We Not l – and getting to know the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. It is less a building and more a story written by Jorge Luis Borges, a labyrinth of skills and knowledge. Get lost and you end up in the armoury; or the dye shop, where vats of colour are being stirred; or in a rehearsal for Carmen, as I did, to my embarrassment.

One corridor ends in baroque gowns, another in dancers stretching, and a lift provides conversations with Koen Kessels, the music director of The Royal Ballet, about the score. Working with Colin Maxwell, the production manager and Lucy Carter, the lighting designer, to understand the spillage of light, or Catherine Smith in the model room to make exactingly precise sets in miniature and figure out the right proportions, has been a formidable exercise in learning how to make this work. Collaborating with the fashion designer Shirin Guild, a friend for 20 years, to think through the colour of this production has been fascinating. For though the psalms are often heartbreaking – they are songs of exile – we kept returning to their essential assertion of life. The spectrum of pomegranate colours – reds, orange and maroons – created using vegetable dyes from villages in Iran brought this depth.

Ideas in motion – at last.

It is going to happen. These dancers, this choir, a single boy. The music and the space.

POETRY IN MOTION

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WAYNE MCGREGOR

“As soon as I decided on the music Chichester Psalms, I knew I wanted to work with Edmund de Waal. Edmund’s work is very physical. He works with his body but through the materiality of clay, and he listens repeatedly to music while he is creating which informs the way in which he touches the clay. I thought this way of working, of how Edmund invests physicality into the way he works, would be important for this piece, and it proved to be a beautiful collaboration.”

“every work I write is really theatre music…”

NASTASJA FISCHER

“You’ve probably heard about the collapse of Skin of Our Teeth – a dreadful experience, the wounds still smarting. I am suddenly a composer without a project, with half that golden sabbatical down the drain. Never mind, I’ll survive.” With these words Leonard Bernstein wrote to the composer David Diamond in January 1965 to complain about his failed dream of adapting Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth into a musical, which he had wanted to achieve during a hiatus from his position as Music Director of New York Philharmonic together, among others, with his most important artistic partner Jerome Robbins. What sounds like a defeat at this moment would soon transform itself into a rare creative opportunity to use music Bernstein had intended for Broadway as the basis for a concert composition.

Two years earlier, in 1963, Bernstein had received a request from Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral in England, whether he might like to write a work for the choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester, which produced a festival together.

Although Hussey had originally only commissioned music for the Second Psalm, Bernstein now – after the cancellation of The Skin of Our Teeth – found fresh inspiration for the melodies he had already written for the musical: “Dear Dean Hussey, I was very close to writing you a sad letter to inform you that I could not find a work for your festival within me when suddenly a conception occurred to me that I find exciting. It would be a suite of Psalms, or selected verses from Psalms, and would have a general title like

“EVERY WORK I WRITE IS REALLY THEATRE MUSIC…”

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Psalms of Youth. The music is all very forthright, songful, rhythmic, youthful. The only hitch is this: I can think of these Psalms only in the original Hebrew. I realize that this could cause additional difficulties with the preparations; but the more important question is whether there might be problems of an ecclesiastical nature. To put it another way: are there fundamental objections to singing in Hebrew in your cathedral? If not, please let me know soon so that I can start work immediately and deliver a working score to you by the beginning of April. The orchestration would follow around a month later. If there are objections I need to know soon – for obvious reasons. It would make me sad, but I would understand.”

Hussey had no problems with Hebrew being sung in his cathedral, so Bernstein began composing his Chichester Psalms – he had discarded the original title Psalms of Youth because he feared it would evoke the impression of a simple composition. Sections of the material that had been created for The Skin of Our Teeth, such as the opening movement and the lyric theme of the second movement, were echoed in the new work, a three-part choral piece that would become one of Bernstein’s most popular concert compositions.

Chichester Psalms juxtaposes vocal part writing associated with Christian church music, including homophony and imitation, with the Judaic liturgical tradition. The Hebrew language has a direct influence on the character of the music, however, at every juncture it is also a peaceful appeal by Bernstein. Each of the three movements combines one complete psalm with extracts from another. Stylistically the work is unmistakeably Bernstein: with lively rhythms, influenced by echoes of jazz, and at the same time open and accessible. His Chichester Psalms, firmly rooted in tonality, are hopeful and life-affirming, though in retrospect Bernstein observed: “I spent almost the whole year writing twelve-tone music and even more experimental things. I was happy that all these new sounds were emerging, but after around six months of work, I threw it all away. It just wasn’t my music; it wasn’t honest. The end result was Chichester Psalms, the most accessible, B-flat major-ish tonal piece I’ve ever written.”

With Bernstein conducting, the composition was given its world premiere on 15 July 1965 with the New York Philharmonic. The English premiere in Chichester took place two weeks later. By combining religious tradition with the great dramatic energy and narrative power that are consistent features of Bernstein’s music, Bernstein confirms his own admission that: “Every work I write is really theatre music.”

LEONARD BERNSTEIN IN A LETTER TO WALTER HUSSEY

“I am pleased with the work, and hope you will be, too; it is quite popular in feeling (even a hint, as you suggested, of West Side Story), and it has an old-fashioned sweetness along with its more violent moments.”

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“EVERY WORK I WRITE IS REALLY THEATRE MUSIC…”

chichester psalms Urah, hanevel, v’chinor!

A’irah shahar!

First Movement Psalm 108, Verse 3 Awake, psaltery and harp!

I will rouse the dawn!

Hariu l’Adonai kol ha’arets.

Iv’du et Adonai b’simha.

Bo’u l’fanav bir’nanah D’u ki Adonai Hu Elohim.

Hu asanu, v’lo anahnu.

Amo v’tson mar’ito.

Bo’u sh’arav b’todah, Hatseirotav bit’hilah, Hodu lo, bar’chu sh’mo.

Ki tov Adonai, l’olam has’do, V’ad dor vador emunato.

Psalm 100 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness.

Come before his presence with singing.

Know ye that the Lord, He is God. It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise.

Be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.

For the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting.

And His truth endureth to all generations.

Adonai ro-i, lo ehsar.

Bin’ot deshe yarbitseini, Al mei m’nuhot y’nahaleini, Naf’shi y’shovev, L’ma’an sh’mo.

Gam ki eilech B’gei tsalmavet, Lo ira ra, Ki Atah imadi.

Shiv’t’cha umishan’techa Hemah y’nahamuni.

Second Movement Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, For His name's sake.

Through the valley of the shadow of death, of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, For Thou art with me.

Thy rod and Thy staff They comfort me.

CHICHESTER PSALMS

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Psalm 2: Verse 1–4 Lamah rag’shu goyim Why do the nations rage, Ul’umim yeh’gu rik?

And the people imagine a vain thing?

Yit’yats’vu malchei erets, The kings of the earth set themselves up, V’roznim nos’du yahad And the rulers take counsel together Al Adonai v’al m’shiho.

Against the Lord and against His anointed.

N’natkah et mos’roteimo, Saying, let us break their bonds asunder, V’nashlichah mimenu avoteimo.

And cast away their cords from us.

Yoshev bashamayim He that sitteth in the heavens Yis’hak, Adonai Shall laugh, and the Lord Yil’ag lamo!

Shall have them in derision!

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Ta’aroch l’fanai shulchan Neged tsor’rai Dishanta vashemen roshi Cosi r’vayah Ach tov vahesed Yird’funi kol y’mei hayai V’shav’ti b’veit Adonai L’orech yamim.

Psalm 23 Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies, Thou annointest my head with oil, My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy Shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.

Adonai, Adonai, Lo gavah libi, V’lo ramu einai, V’lo hilachti Big’dolot uv’niflaot Mimeni.

Im lo shiviti V’domam’ti, Naf’shi k’gamul alei imo, Kagamul alai naf’shi.

Yahel Yis’rael el Adonai Me’atah v’ad olam.

Third Movement Psalm 131 Lord, Lord, My heart is not haughty, Nor mine eyes lofty, Neither do I exercise myself In great matters or in things Too wonderful for me to understand Surely I have calmed And quieted myself, As a child that is weaned of his mother, My soul is even as a weaned child.

Let Israel hope in the Lord From henceforth and forever.

Hineh mah tov, Umah na’im, Shevet ahim Gam yahad

Psalm 133, Verse 1 Behold how good, and how pleasant it is, For brethren to dwell. Together in unity.

CHICHESTER PSALMS

Cassandra Trenary, Victor Caixeta, Davide Dato & Ensemble

Ensemble

in the upper room Choreography Twyla Tharp Music Philip Glass Costume Design Norma Kamali Lighting Design Jennifer Tipton Staging Shelley Washington

WORLD PREMIERE 28 AUGUST 1986 TWYLA THARP DANCE – MURRAY THEATRE AT RAVINIA, HIGHLAND PARK, ILLINOIS

a hybrid of dance styles IRIS FREY

She is one of the most influential choreographers of the second half of the 20th century and has long been an icon in the world of dance. To this day the tirelessly creative Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than 160 works – as well as ballets, TV specials, Hollywood films, Broadway shows and ice dance routines – and has received numerous awards, including a Tony, two Emmys and the “Golden Lion” at the 2025 Biennale Danza di Venezia for her life’s work. From her choreographic beginnings in the radical avantgarde in the mid-1960s to her artistic peak, applying forms of expression from popular culture in the 70s and 80s in the especially vibrant New York art scene of the time, her work has been highly unconventional and transcended the boundaries of various dance traditions. She chopped up traditional movement material from classical ballet and modern dance and reassembled it afresh – supplemented by elements from the everyday, social dances and Broadway influences together with some subtle comedy and a certain coolness. Her choice of music also spans a similarly wide arc that stretches from pop hits, songs by Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys to compositions by Bach and Haydn and on to the minimal music of Philip Glass. The spaces she has created for were similarly unconventional and diverse. For example, she showed her early pieces in industrial spaces, museums and outdoor public spaces. When she began creating for major ballet companies, she also chose conventional performance venues such as the New York State Theater and City Center. Her pieces are abstract but always atmospheric, focussing on the movement which – seemingly chaotic – suddenly falls into a precise structure. “Chaos is only momentary. Everything fits”, is how Tharp described this in The New Yorker.

Numerous influences led to her now incomparable style. At first, she trained with the greats of modern dance such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor –

A HYBRID OF DANCE STYLES

36

in whose company she also danced for two years – whose influences included physical intensity, especially of the torso, and movement in space. In 1965, she founded her own company, Twyla Tharp Dance, and created her very first piece, which only lasted around four minutes and was unusual and ambiguous: Tank Dive, performed in 1965 in New York, in Room 1604 at the Hunter College Art & Art History. Alongside four non-dancers, Tharp herself appeared – at first in pumps, then in outsized wooden shoes that she used as a springboard for her exaggerated diver’s poses. The title reflected Tharp’s belief that “becoming a successful choreographer is equivalent to the chances of successfully diving into a thimbleful of water from a great height”. The remarkable success of her works that soon followed exceeded all her expectations. Another important context for Tharp’s early works in the 1960s was the Judson Dance Theater movement, named after the Judson Memorial Church in New York, a venue to which choreographers including Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs belonged, who made a significant contribution to the definition of postmodern dance and were characterised by their openness to experimental forms and using everyday movements as material for dance. As part of the avantgarde scene Tharp created early minimalist works such as Re-Moves and Twelve Foot Change, which were both performed at the church in 1966.

She also took great inspiration from the relaxed body posture and rhythmic, almost »grooving« movements of jazz dance and Broadway traditions, similar to those that Jerome Robbins also adopted in his choreographies.

Later Tharp would increasingly turn towards classical ballet and worked with major companies including American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. Here the influence of the neoclassical, highly musical and clearly structured style of George Balanchine was especially marked. Tharp achieved her breakthrough in 1973 with Deuce Coupe, her first big commission and the first crossover ballet, in which she merged the classical Joffrey Ballet with her own modern ensemble to songs by the Beach Boys and humorously showed off the strengths of each group. Another milestone was reached in 1976 with Push Comes to Shove for American Ballet Theatre and its star Mikhail Baryshnikov, who led his way through the piece with great wit. Tharp had already created works in which she combined classical and popular styles of music – here it was a ragtime with Haydn’s Symphony No. 82 – but this was the first piece of this kind to be produced by a major ballet company.

In the Upper Room Another now iconic work by Twyla Tharp, In the Upper Room, had its world premiere on 28 August 1986 in the Murray Theatre at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois – one of North America’s oldest open-air music festivals. It was the first piece that her company Twyla Tharp Dance performed with a new line-up after a strenuous year on tour followed by a one-year break during which they appeared in the Broadway production of Singin’ in the Rain. It represented a fresh start with its unique blend of choreography, music, costumes and lighting together with classical ballet and modern dance – 37

A HYBRID OF DANCE STYLES

highly visible through the use of pointe shoes on one side and sneakers on the other – creating an energetic and at the same time transcendent experience for the audience and the dancers.

Tharp commissioned the American composer Philip Glass – one of the leading pioneers of minimal music – to write the score. Having achieved global fame in 1976 with his opera Einstein on the Beach, for which he had collaborated with the American choreographer Lucinda Childs, Glass is similar to Tharp in operating across a variety of artistic domains and as well as composing operas, symphonies and concertos, has also written music for films, including The Hours (2002) – nominated for an Oscar in common with two of his other film scores – and dance, notably Dance by Lucinda Childs (1979) and Glass Pieces by Jerome Robbins (1983). His score In the Upper Room is divided into nine movements (“Dance I–IX”) of varying tempos and instrumental textures with an overall duration of some 39 minutes, fits entirely within the minimalist tradition and is a classic example of Glass’s style: with repetitive patterns, clear rhythms and slowly growing layers of sound. Coupled with the dance, an extreme, continually growing energy develops along with an almost hypnotic effect. The sound of the chamber orchestra-like cast of string and brass instruments is supplemented by a soprano voice and a keyboard. Powerful trumpet and bright flute sounds, lyrical violin melodies and driving keyboard rhythms build to a grand finale. “The music hints at things, but I tried to leave a lot of space for the dance to happen,” states Glass, “in that way the dancers complete it, fill it in.”

In keeping with the structure of Glass’s composition, Tharp created an energetically charged, athletic choreography in nine sections, characterised by constant movement, as well as varying dynamics and moods, whose seemingly opposing elements complement one another and nevertheless fuse harmonically into a whole. For In the Upper Room Tharp had brought back former members of her company but also hired some additional ballet dancers, from New York City Ballet, for example. Due to the hybrid of dance styles resulting from the diverse backgrounds of the 13 dancers, they were divided into two groups: the six down-to-earth “stompers” and the classically trained ballet dancers – yet these are in no way ethereal, but also powerful. The three female ballet dancers appear on pointe, two of them – the so-called “bomb squad” – mostly in unison and with particular speed and athleticism. A special role is assigned to the “cross-over woman”, who links the modern and the classical worlds throughout the piece – first in sneakers, later in pointe shoes. Shelley Washington, a leading figure in the original cast as one of the »stompers«, a member of Twyla Tharp Dance of many years and now responsible for staging the piece at the Vienna State Ballet, remembers that “it produced a very special energy. It united different styles, different people and everyone had their own place, their identity in the ensemble. My favourite line is: We were always together – but maybe not always in unison.”

Twyla Tharp makes the greatest possible physical demands of the dancers – they are hardly ever still, and the timing is extremely complex. At times they move in an athletic, almost combative manner, at others more gently and lyrically – yet there is no pause, the energy is constantly driven forward until it culminates in an almost ecstatic finale.

A HYBRID OF DANCE STYLES

38

Modern dance movements close to the floor, loosely swinging arms, steps that only seem hinted at and not fully danced and bodies that fall out of their axis contrast with classical ballet poses, virtuosic leaps and turns and acrobatic lifts. Everyday movements such as walking or running (backwards) appear alongside elements from tap and social dances, such as tango-like postures. There are also positions from boxing and yoga – such as the “warrior” and the “downward-facing dog” – which Tharp herself practised.

The nine sections of the piece present the two groups of dancers exploring the space in a variety of configurations and formations. Most of the time, they either dance one after the other or side by side without interacting directly, each appear to dance for themselves. A central role is played by two female “stompers” who – like guardians of the space – open and close the piece and repeatedly extend their arms as if to introduce the individual dancers. Section six is the only one in which the groups truly mix, two “stomper” ladies dance with two male ballet dancers. This brings a new energy, and one could say equality between both the styles and the sexes. In the final section, all 13 dancers are united on stage for the first time. Movements from the previous parts are repeated and interspersed with new material. The energy intensifies further and further, the soprano voice rises once more, until everyone disappears into the darkness. Shelley Washington summarises: “Even if you’re not on stage right then, you cheer the others on. It’s like an Olympic relay race: one person starts running, hands the baton on, and the next person carries on running. The piece only lasts around 39 minutes, and is very demanding. But once you’ve internalised the music and steps, you have a feeling of great freedom.”

A significant component of the work are the costumes by the American fashion designer Norma Kamali that contrast loose-fitting black- or blue-and-white striped shirts and blouses knotted above the navel, trousers and pleated skirts with bodies, short skirts and socks in glowing red. When Kamali saw the dancers in rehearsals taking off layer after layer of training clothing, she was inspired to incorporate this into her design, so in the course of the piece items of clothing that are worn underneath, such as red bodies, are revealed, which the gentlemen sometimes roll down over their waistbands. The red pointe shoes of the female ballet dancers also became a trademark by contrast with the light sneakers of the “stompers”. Also essential to the unique effect of the piece, which is danced on an empty stage, is the special fog-permeated lighting design by Jennifer Tipton, which creates an almost endless seeming depth and breadth, making the dancers appear almost “out of nowhere,” as Tharp has said. The fusion of movement, sound and lighting ultimately creates an almost trance-like atmosphere, a feeling of being elevated – like being in an “upper room”.

Twyla Tharp and Jennifer Tipton won the Olivier Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Dance” in 1991 for In the Upper Room. The piece has long become established as one of the central works in the repertoires of many major ballet companies around the world, including the American Ballet Theatre, Het Nationale Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and now also the Vienna State Ballet.

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A HYBRID OF DANCE STYLES

Timoor Afshar, Giorgio Fourés, Hanno Opperman

biographies

JUSTIN PECK – Choreography Heatscape Justin Peck is a two-time Tony Award winning director, choreographer, filmmaker, and dancer based in New York City. He is Resident Choreographer of the New York City Ballet and has developed and created over 50 stage and theater works that have been presented on stages around the world, including Lincoln Center, the Palais Garnier, Sydney Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Broadway. His creations for the dance world have been performed by companies all over the world, including the Paris Opera Ballet, Australian Ballet, Dresden Semperoper Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Boston Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, LA Dance Project, Dutch National Ballet, Joffrey Ballet among many others.

Peck works extensively as a filmmaker. He is credited with directing music videos for The National, Chris Thile, and Dan Deacon; choreographing the 2021 film West Side Story in collaboration with director Steven Spielberg; choreographing the 2023 film Maestro in collaboration with director, writer and actor Bradley Cooper; and being commissioned by the New York Times to direct 10 films celebrating the best acting performances of the 2018 year.

Peck celebrates the art of collaboration and is honored to have worked across mediums with a wide array of luminaries, including Sufjan Stevens, Raf Simons, Elizabeth Moss, Steven Spielberg, Caroline Shaw, Jeffrey Gibson, Renee Fleming, Shepard Fairey, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Sondheim, Shantelle Martin, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Humberto Leon, Bradley Cooper, Nico Muhly, Jackie Sibblies Drury, John Baldessari, Dries Van Noten, Damien Chazelle, Jack O’Brien, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Marcel Dzama, Chris Thile, and Jody Lee Lipes.

Peck danced with New York City Ballet from 2006 to 2019, eventually achieving the rank of soloist in 2013. He has performed a vast repertoire of works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Alexei Ratmansky, Lynn Taylor-Corbett, Christopher Wheeldon, and many others.

Peck’s is a three-time Tony Award recipient for Best Choreography for the Broadway productions of Carousel (2018), Illinoise (2024) and Buena Vista Social Club (2025); as well as a recipient of the National Arts Award (2018), the Golden Plate Honor from the Academy of Achievement (2019), the Bessie Award for Outstanding Production for Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes (2015), the World Choreography Award for the film West Side Story (2022), and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for the musical Buena Vista Social Club (2024).

BIOGRAPHIES

42

WAYNE MCGREGOR– Choreography Yugen Sir Wayne McGregor CBE is a multi-award-winning British choreographer, director, curator, and author. He is Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, encompassing creative collaborations in dance, film, music, visual art, technology and science; a touring company of dancers Company Wayne McGregor; and learning and research programmes. McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale, and is regularly commissioned by, and has works in the repertories of the most important dance companies around the world.

He choreographs for theatre and opera houses, for film productions such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Parts 1 and 2), for bands including Radiohead and The Chemical Brothers, as well as for fashion houses and major live events. His long-standing artistic collaborations – among them with Margaret Atwood, Max Richter and Olafur Eliasson – exemplify his interdisciplinary approach.

His recent works include the full-length ballet MADDADDAM, based on Margaret Atwood’s novel trilogy; UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey; and Deepstaria, a sensory, meditative dance-and-sound experience reflecting on emptiness and mortality. On the Other Earth, which premiered in July 2025 at the 19th International Festival of Contemporary Dance of La Biennale di Venezia Venice, is the world’s first post-cinematic choreographic installation – a radically new experiential format that refracts, evolves and reimagines dance performance in strikingly original ways. On the Other Earth also featured as part of Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies, the landmark exhibition at Somerset House in London and McGregor’s highly anticipated debut book, WE ARE MOVEMENT, a radical exploration of physical intelligence that invites readers to rethink what it means to move, feel, think, and live, was published by Bloomsbury Tonic in January 2026. At the same time, his choreography for ABBA Voyage continues to captivate global audiences with its groundbreaking avatar staging.

McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, has Honorary Doctorates from The Royal College of Art London, Plymouth University, University of Leeds, University of Chester, and UAL, and is an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association. He has won four Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards, two Time Out Awards, three South Bank Show Awards, three Olivier Awards, a Prix Benois de la Danse and two Golden Mask Awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance and in 2021 was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne. His Majesty The King Charles III appointed Wayne McGregor a Knighthood in the 2024 Birthday Honours List.

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BIOGRAPHIES

TWYLA THARP – Choreography In the Upper Room Since graduating from Barnard College in 1963, Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred sixty works including television specials, Hollywood movies, Broadway shows and figure skating routines.

She received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the Golden Lion for her Lifetime Achievement at the 2025 Venice Dance Biennale.

In 1965, Tharp founded her dance company, Twyla Tharp Dance. In addition to choreographing for her own ensemble, she has created dances for Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet London, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Australian Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Today, ballet and dance companies around the world continue to perform Tharp’s works.

Tharp’s work first appeared on Broadway in 1980 with When We Were Very Young, followed by her collaboration with musician David Byrne on The Catherine Wheel and later by Singin’ in the Rain. In 2002, Tharp’s dance musical Movin’ Out, set to the music and lyrics of Billy Joel, premiered. Tharp later worked with Bob Dylan’s music and lyrics in The Times they are a-changin’ and Come fly away, set to songs sung by Frank Sinatra. In film, Tharp has collaborated with director Milos Forman on Hair, Ragtime and Amadeus. She has also worked with Taylor Hackford on White Nights and James Brooks on I’ll do Anything.

Her television credits include choreographing Sue’s Leg for the inaugural episode of PBS’ Dance in America in 1976, co-producing and directing Making Television Dance, and directing The Catherine Wheel for BBC Television. Tharp co-directed the television special Baryshnikov

by Tharp.

In 1992, Tharp published her autobiography Push comes to Shove.

She went on to write The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, followed by The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together.

In 2019, her fourth book was published, Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life.

The Vienna State Ballet performed Twyla Tharp’s The Brahms-Haydn Variations in 2010.

BIOGRAPHIES

44

GAVIN SUTHERLAND– Musical Direction Heatscape & Yugen Gavin Sutherland is an Olivier Award-nominated conductor and arranger/orchestrator. Born in Durham, UK, he studied conducting, piano and orchestration at Huddersfield University and graduated with first-class honours, gaining the Kruczynski Prize for Piano and the Davidson Prize for Distinction Brought to the Institution. In July 2019 Sutherland was conferred with a Doctorate of Huddersfield University honoris causa for distinguished services to music.

Sutherland was appointed as pianist and staff conductor for Northern Ballet Theatre from 1992 to 1998. On the basis of his first CD, he began working with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia on the concert platform and with the orchestra of Birmingham Royal Ballet. In a career of over thirty years, he has conducted many of the major international ballet companies.

From 2008 to 2022 he was Music Director and Principal Conductor of English National Ballet and conducted the company on both national and international tours. He also contributed orchestrations to the company including Tamara Rojo’s Raymonda, Akram Khan’s Giselle, Le Corsaire, Men Y Men, No Man’s Land, and many galas. He stepped down as Music Director in 2022 and was appointed Principal Guest Conductor.

Gavin Sutherland has made over a hundred recordings in the UK and abroad, predominantly with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the City of Prague Philharmonic, and has also conducted numerous film and television scores. He appears regularly in concert with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2016 conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra and has conducted and arranged for several Last Night of the Proms.

In addition to his work as a conductor, Sutherland works frequently as a composer/arranger, and supplies arrangements and orchestrations performed worldwide. His work also features the reconstructions of works whose materials have been lost or destroyed, encompassing TV and film scores to classical ballet and symphonic orchestral works. As a speaker and broadcaster, he has frequently spoken on BBC Radio and Television.

In 2019 he was nominated for the first Criticsʼ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution, winning the award the following year. 2024 saw a collaboration with composer Asaf Zohar to conduct, orchestrate and provide dance arrangements for the Royal National Theatreʼs production of Ballet Shoes – work that saw him receive an Olivier Award nomination for Outstanding Musical Contribution. In December 2024 Gavin Sutherland was appointed a Freeman of the City of London.

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BIOGRAPHIES

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Legal/Technical Information: Energy consumption for the Lexus RZ 550e with electric motor 300 kW (408 PS), combined: 17.9 kWh/100 km; combined CO2 emissions: 0 g/km; CO2 class: A; combined electric range (EAER): 462 km and urban electric range (EAER City): 607 km. Values determined according to the WLTP test procedure. Image is for illustrative purposes.

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imprint Visionary Dances Justin Peck / Wayne McGregor / Twyla Tharp Season 2025/26 PUBLISHER Vienna State Opera GmbH, Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna General Director: Dr. Bogdan Roščić Administrative Director: Dr. Petra Bohuslav Director Vienna State Ballet: Alessandra Ferri Managing Director Vienna State Ballet: Mag.a Simone Wohinz Editorial Team: Nastasja Fischer MA, Mag.a Iris Frey Design & Concept: Fons Hickmann M23, Berlin Layout & Type Setting: Miwa Meusburger Producer: Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau PERFORMING RIGHTS For Bohuslav Martinů’s Piano Concerto No. 1 © Boosey & Hawkes, London For Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms © Boosey & Hawkes, London. Bote & Bock GmbH, Berlin für Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. For Philip Glass’ In the Upper Room © Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. Used by Permission.

Philip Glass is managed and published by Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc.; Music Material: WISE Music Group TEXT REFERENCES About today’s performance, the text “Every work I write is really theatre music…” from Nastasja Fischer (English translation for both David Tushingham) as well as the texts A Vision for the Whole from Sarah Crompton and A Hybrid of Dance Styles from Iris Frey (English translation David Tushingham) are original contributions for this programme booklet. / The interview with Justin Peck was an original contribution for Vienna State Opera’s season brochure 2025/26 / The text In the Pulse of Form (English Translation David Tushingham) is a revised and extended text from the programme booklet Promethean Fire (Volksoper Wien, Season 2021/22) / p. 17: Justin Peck quoted after www.miamicityballet.org / p. 19: Bohuslav Martinů quoted after https://blog.staatsoper-berlin.de / p. 24f: © Edmund de Waal / Telegraph Media Group Holdings Limited 2025 / p. 27: Wayne McGregor quoted after https://waynemcgregor.com / p. 29: Leonard Bernstein quoted after Nigel Simeone (Ed.): The Bernstein Letters. New Haven, London 2014.

Reproduction only with the permission of the Vienna State Ballet/Dramaturgy.

produced according to the Austrian Ecolabel criteria for printed matter (Uz24), Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, UW-NR 715

PHOTO CREDITS Cover: Ewa Bathelier, Blue, from the private collection of Kathryn and Stephen Mee, Sydney / The photos have been taken by Ashley Taylor at the stage rehearsal on 21 March 2026 at the Vienna State Opera / p. 42: © Ryan Pfluger / p. 43: © Pål Hansen / p. 44: © Greg Gorman / p. 45: © ASH Right Owners who could not be reached are requested to contact the editorial team for the purpose of subsequent legal reconciliation.

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