Tchaikovsky Overtures

Alexei Ratmansky is known for his intense exploration of the traditional repertoire of classical ballet and his creative approach to traditional forms. After Paquita and Pictures at an Exhibition, he’s now working on a world premiere to music by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky in the 2022-2023 season. Born in St. Petersburg in 1968, he completed his ballet training at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow. He danced as Principal with the Ukrainian National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. While still an active dancer he began a sensational career as a choreographer. For his creation in Munich, he collaborated with set and costume designer Jean-Marc Puissant. A Frenchman with his studio in London, Puissant graduated from the Motley Theatre Design Course in London and studied art history at the Sorbonne. Prior to his career as a costume and set designer, he trained as a dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet School. As a professional dancer he was engaged by the Stuttgart Ballet from 1990 to 1998 and later by the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Alexei Ratmansky's creation for the company takes several of Tchaikovsky's overtures as a starting point to reflect in choreographic-playful form on the historicity of classical ballet. The core of Ratmansky's new work for the Bayerisches Staatsballett is how the traditional step material and body expression change over time and what dance play can be derived from this for the present. The stage design by Jean-Marc Puissant works with various veils and space-dividing elements. These translate the progressive unveiling and build-up of expectations, inherent in the overture with its announcement character, into visual images. The stage space is designed with transparent veils, moving surfaces and sculptural forms. Ratmansky is not primarily concerned with telling a specific story. In the foreground is the joy of an event that lives from the diverse emotional moods of the music, the technical skill of the dancers, and the play with contrasting figures. The Bayerisches Staatsorchester interprets, among others, the concert overtures to Hamlet, The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky.