Parzival – Episodes and Echo
Choreography: John Neumeier
Hamburg Ballet
Palais Garnier, Paris
September 13, 2010

John Neumeier isn’t a man of small ambitions. A prolific choreographer, he has tackled serious, difficult subjects with the Hamburg Ballet, from entire symphonies (in Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler, for instance) to Shakespeare plays. With Parzival – Episodes and Echo, premiered in 2006, he goes even further into uncharted ballet territory. Who else would have taken as inspiration Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s fragmented 12th-century epics? But while his two-part version of the tale, shown in Paris for the first time last week, is a welcome alternative to cautious new versions of The Nutcracker, it also takes its highbrow stance a step too far.

Set to a starkly atmospheric taped score, in which John Adams features heavily alongside Wagner and Arvo Pärt, the Episodes of the first part go by in a haze, like a series of highly symbolic dreams. Almost every element of the production has been meticulously designed by Neumeier himself, and the overall aesthetic experience is clearly the raison d’être of the whole ballet, with many intensely beautiful moments. Dance, however, is the poor relation in Neumeier’s contemplative tableaux: from his trademark convoluted lifts to the Hermit’s religious gestures, every shape is sharply etched yet innately static, weighed down by the heavy spiritual subtext of Parzival’s story of initiation. Caffeine is mandatory if one is to appreciate the very slow second part, Echo, in which the hero discovers the beauty of silence and self-sacrifice. At two hours and 40 minutes, it is a stern evening of theatre, as humourless as ballet can get. (…)

» Read the full review in the Financial Times

Joëlle Boulogne and Edvin Revazov in Parzival © Holger Badekow

The Hamburg Ballet in Parzival © Holger Badekow