GERMAN CHOREOGRAPHER UWE SCHOLZ DEAD AT 45
___ "I would happily like to be considered as something of Cranko plus a little of Balanchine spat out a quarter of a century later." ___
___ Uwe Scholz ___
Uwe Scholz. Photo: Andreas Birkigt, Oper Leipzig
___ The German choreographer Uwe Scholz, who died on 21 November at the age of 45 after many years of poor health, was the last protégé of John Cranko* whom he met at the age of 13 and revered for the rest of his life. His ballets, well over a hundred of them, were all marked by his extraordinary musicality, and owe much, not only to Balanchine and Cranko, but to his own very great innate gifts. He made no secret of his favourite composers; Mozart and Stravinsky. ___
___ BY PATRICIA BOCCADORO ___
___ Scholz
was born in Hesse on 31 December 1958. He began studying the piano,
the guitar and singing at the Conservatoire of Darmstadt, although
I remember him telling me with a smile that from the beginning, his
parents thought he was destined to be a second Nijinsky as each time
he heard music on their radio, he would start to dance and jump from
arm-chair to arm-chair in the living-room. ___
___ Albeit,
it seemed as if the shy adolescent was headed for the career of an
orchestra conductor, fascinated as he was by their ability to choose
how each score of music should be played, but he found himself instead
in Cranko's school, and inspired by the latter's Romeo and Juliet,
created his first choreography at the age of seventeen. ___
___ In 1977 he spent five months at Balanchine's School of American Ballet, entranced by the luminosity and clarity of the Russian's work, before returning to Stuttgart to complete his studies and join the German company, but he abandoned his career as a dancer to concentrate on his choreography barely three years later. When he was 23, Marcia Haydée, Cranko's muse, now director of the Stuttgart company, offered him the post of resident choreographer there. ___
Kiyoko Kimura & Christoph Böhm in
Bruckner Symphony No. 8, Adagio
Photo: Andreas Birkigt, Oper Leipzig
___ After
his successful directorship of Zurich Ballet (1986-91), he was appointed
artistic director of Leipzig Ballet in 1991. Not only did he revitalise
their repertory, but he transformed them into a troupe of international
standing. ___
___ One of his first ballets to be shown in France was set to Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, music which is slow and formal, and, one would have thought, impossible to choreograph, but he created a fascinating work, where sound actually became visible. Two principal dancers of the company, Kiyoko Kimura and Christoph Böhm, internalising the score, were at the centre of the creation, which served and added something extra to what one had heard before, giving the spectators the feeling they were actually experiencing the music for the first time. It was brought to France in 1999 by Pierre Moutarde, director of the Théatre of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines at the time. ___
___ Moutarde
recalled his amazement when Scholz insisted upon having the recording
of Sergiu Celidibache, with the Orchestra of Munich, for the programme
because it had exactly the tempo and fullness he needed. ___
Bruckner Symphony No. 8
Photo: Andreas Birkigt, Oper Leipzig
___ "Scholz
was a man so closely associated to music that I always thought he was
the conductor of an orchestra who had temporarily taken another path.
He read and instinctively understood every score, and I remember numerous
occasions when we'd be listening to some recording, which he always
played very loudly, where he'd interrupt to say, oh no, dear, dear,
they are playing the music all wrongly, it should be played like this.
And he'd get that particular score out and slap the paper with his hand
to demonstrate his point." ___
___ Moutarde, who went to see over twenty ballets of Scholz in Leipzig, recalled some of them. "I was fascinated by the central figure in his version of The Miraculous Mandarin. In the ballet he kept to Bartok's story where three ruffians force a young girl to seduce the passers-by while they rob them, but when his mandarin arrived on stage, he was all dressed in white. Everything in the tale is sordid yet the mandarin was so pure, he seemed like an angel. Scholz was a pessimist yet a great humanist at the same time. In his darkest works there was always a ray of light, no matter how faint. He always gave us hope." ___
___ "I
loved his ballet on America", Moutarde added, "so full of
invention, and with an extraordinary choice of music; he portrayed the
United States as he saw it. I also saw his Swan Lake, transposed to
the court of Saint Petersburg, and his version of Sleeping Beauty, when,
in each case, he complained that he didn't have enough dancers". ___
Sleeping Beauty
Photo: Andreas Birkigt, Oper Leipzig
___ In
Sleeping Beauty, while respecting Petipa, Scholz cleverly adapted the
choreography to suit his dancers. He created a very contemporary pas
de deux. Another innovative touch was to add a mouse in the mouth of
the cat in the (in)famous pussy-cat duet! Adored by the German audiences!
___
___ "It was his work on movement which fascinated me most", Moutarde told me. "It was at one with the music which itself dictated the shape of the ballet, as can be clearly seen in Bach Kreationen, where there is a step for every note. It was of breathtaking beauty. And unlike the majority of choreographers today who work with maybe eight or nine interpreters at most, he staged pieces for a minimum of forty dancers." ___
___ Indeed,
each time we'd meet, Scholz would speak proudly of the fact that he
had a company of fifty dancers, and wanted more, even though he possibly
was not that interested in running a company. He needed them for his
choreography. But each year, instead of hiring new dancers, cuts in
subsidies obliged him to reduce the numbers of his troupe, from fifty
to forty-six, and again down to forty, a fact which distressed him enormously,
and involved him in lengthy arguments, disastrous for his general well-being
and health, always fragile from childhood. ___
Sibylle
Naundorf and Leipzig Ballet in
"Bach Kreationen"
Photo: Andreas Birkigt, Oper Leipzig
___ The
first time I met him, in 1999, he was so thin he was almost transparent,
with huge, dark, intense eyes in a pale face. His clothes always seemed
too big for him and his hands, slender and delicate were half hidden
by a jacket two sizes too large, and although he'd give the impression
that he wasn't interested by what people said, he'd come to see me after
a programme and the most important thing in the world to him was to
know that his ballet had made me happy. "Hug me, then", he'd
say. And I would. He was one of the most touching and engaging dance
personalities I have met. A man whose personality as well as his work
went straight to your heart. ___
___ For Pierre Moutarde, the image that he will retain of the frail German choreographer is that of a star fallen from the heavens, a man who was probably the last in the line of the great Romantic 19th century figures. ___
___ "The
last time he came to Saint-Quentin," he recalled, "he insisted
in bringing La Grande Messe, set to Mozart's unfinished Mass in c minor,
with added music from Thomas John, Gyorgy Kurtag and Arvo Pärt,
and with his own decor, lighting and costumes. I think he regarded it
as his testament, the black side with its images of war portraying the
chaos and suffering of mankind contrasting with movements of great purity,
the music ending as abruptly as did his own life. I always had a premonition
that he wasn't meant to live long." ___
___ "He
was very human, yet at the same time, not of this world", Moutarde
continued. "It was as if he'd arrived where he was without realising
how and he seemed to carry the world's troubles on his shoulders. Life
wasn't easy for him, and you can see the echo of that in his ballets.
He was all alone with his music and his sublime ballets, ill at ease
outside of his work. I had the impression that he was not really happy,
because he was searching for an absolute which he knew could never be
reached, a perfection he knew he'd never find. Well, if there's an elsewhere
after death, he's now in company with the poets, with Mozart, with Balanchine,
and with his god, John Cranko." ___
___ And
the world of dance is a less beautiful place. ___
* John Cranko died just one month after their meeting.
** Scholz' ballets have almost all been written down and recorded on film.
Uwe Scholz, born 31 December 1958, died 21 November 2004.
http://www.culturekiosque.com, Paris, 23 December 2004