STAATSOPER.TV: 30 YEARS BSB & BLACK CAKE

The evening includes three parts and is entirely dedicated to the celebrations of "30 years of Bayerisches Staatsballett". Thanks to Konstanze Vernon's commitment, the ballet of the Bayerische Staatsoper officially became the Bayerisches Staatsballett in the season 1990/91. After her management, Ivan Liška took over the position as ballet director in 1998. In cooperation with his artistic team of Bettina Wagner-Bergelt and Wolfgang Oberender, he created a highly successful program with which the Bayerisches Staatsballett added significant productions to its repertoire. In 2016, Igor Zelensky commenced his term as director. Not only he has continued on with the path set by his predecessors but also set his own accents with artistic teams that had never been seen in Munich before. 

Together with BR TV producer Gaby Weber, the Staatsballett has produced theshort film Pirouettes, Passions, Platzl 7, which looks back on the ensemble's last three decades. It presents artists as well as important personalities in the history of the Staatsballett. The filming took place between October 2020 and April 2021 and was made considerably more difficult by the Covid 19 pandemic: not only did the filming schedule have to be overturned and adjusted several times as performance dates changed; also, due to the travel restrictions, not every desired candidate could be interviewed and filmed. The film therefore does not claim to be complete with all the influential dancers. The film will be available to re-watch for another 30 days starting 1 May 2021 on www.staatsballett.de 

After the 30-minute film, dramaturg Serge Honegger and producer Gaby Weber will talk to three of the film's protagonists about the making of, their experiences as dancers with the Bayerisches Staatsballett and of course many, many anecdotes. This panel discussion will be pre-recorded and broadcast after the film.

The third part of the evening is the screening of Black Cake, a work from the time of Konstanze Vernon's directorship and that choreographer Hans van Manen had created in 1989 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Nederlands Dans Theaters. Van Manen's career is closely linked to the NDT. He created most of his works for this company. In Black Cake we look at a high society, beautifully dressed people attending a standing party in couple formations. In virtuoso pas de deux, van Manen confronts the conventions of social dance with the individuality of the characters and their relationships to each other – his topic, if his ballets have one at all, is the portrayal of subtle power struggles between men and women hidden underneath love relationships. He varies these in the three middle parts of his altogether five-part work, sometimes grotesquely, sometimes poetically, sometimes in a cheeky provocative manner. Until at the end, under the soulful sounds of the Mediation from Massenet's opera Thais, the fine evening party, with tears in their eyes, finally surrenders to their tearful mood, striving more and more for form and beat and also bringing tears to the eyes of the audience – however, from laughter. Humor is the hardest thing to choreograph – the Dutch choreographer has succeeded here in creating a ravishing, sadly beautiful and comical masterpiece that showcases his artistic refinement and profundity to the finest.
The Bayerische Rundfunk recorded Black Cake together with Concertante for television in 1997.