THE 2024-25 BALLET SEASON
The Bayerisches Staatsballett opens the 2024-25 ballet season on September 21 with Roots and Leaves as part of the UniCredit Septemberfest. The multi-part evening includes a work from the Spheres.02 series as well as other ballets that are yet to be announced. It will also feature the world premiere of a new ballet for kids: Sakuntala's Ring.
At the end of November 2024, the curtain will rise on the first premiere of the season: Laurent Hilaire brings an absolute ballet classic to Munich with La Sylphide. Set in the Scottish Highlands, the plot revolves around the unhappy love of a young shepherd for a "sylph", a winged forest mythical creature. In dance history, the leading female role is inextricably linked with prima ballerina Marie Taglioni, who thus set the course for the success of pointe dancing. The choreography shown in Munich was created by Pierre Lacotte.
This time, the Ballet Festival Week in April 2025 is all about the multi-part evening Wings of Memory. Six performances are on the program and can only be seen this season as part of this special ballet festival week. The three-part ballet evening opens with Bella Figura by Jiří Kylián. Since its Munich premiere in 2002, the work, set to music from various baroque compositions, has captivated audiences with its beautiful choreographic forms and figures. The centerpiece, however, is The Rite of Spring by Wuppertal dance theater legend Pina Bausch. Premiered in 1975, the choreography is now being performed for the first time by the Bayerisches Staatsballett. The third work of the evening comes from the director of the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who is staging Faun, his 2009 realization of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, with the ensemble of the Bayerisches Staatsballett. The Bayerisches Staatsorchester interprets the well-known scores by Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy.
The series of performances of Wings of Memory will be interrupted in the middle of the Ballet Festival week for another Munich highlight: the former Principal Lucia Lacarra returns to the Nationaltheater with her partner Matthew Golding and her company, the Lucia Lacarra Ballet. The guest company will perform Lost Letters to music by Sergei Rachmaninov and Max Richter.
The festival season in summer brings another edition of Spheres at the Prinzregententheater. The third edition of the series is curated this year by the popular choregraphic duo Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, who recently celebrated a huge success with Schmetterling in Munich. In June 2025, a work by León / Lightfoot will be on the program as well as further works by other choreographers, which the duo will select together with ballet director Laurent Hilaire.
John Neumeier's llusions - like Swan Lake and the classic Giselle by Peter Wright - will be revived in the coming season. The repertoire also includes Romeo and Juliet, Onegin, Schmetterling, Duato/Skeels/Eyal, Le Parc and the children's dance theater piece How the Fish Found the Sea as well as a premiere of Sakuntala`s Ring. In the Ballett extra series, you can once again look forward to numerous interesting insights behind the scenes.
