Rising Swan

Second Part of the Ballet-Trilogy
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
(from: Alfred Lord Tennyson The Dying Swan, 1830)
Doris Uhlich’s solo Rising Swan takes Michel Fokine’s choreography The Dying Swan as a point of departure. The revolutionary expressive ballet was first premiered in 1907 by Anna Pavlova which made her a world-famous star. The up and down of the swan, the sheer force of its wings and its resistance to sinking, which Pavlova expressed in her solo, take a new form in Rising Swan. Doris Uhlich brings the choreography into the year 2010, combining it with personal memories of breakups and failures.
Anna Pavlova is for me a popfigur at the beginning of the 20th Century. Her „Dying Swan“ lasted only three minutes, it was shown in front of thousands of people in music halls. The swan stands for destruction, but also transition into new worlds, visions. The combination of pop and classical ballet brings me to the question: Which visions and zest for life are in popular songs that accompany me since my youth? Feel the city breakin´, everybody´s shakin,´ we are stayin´ alive! Maybe, maybe not. Doris Uhlich





Credits
Choreography, Performance Doris Uhlich
Dramaturgy Andrea Salzmann, Yoshie Maruoka
Artistic advisor Judith Staudinger
Video luma.launisch
Premiere 29/10/2010 brut Vienna
Coproduction brut Wien and insert (Theaterverein)
Cooperation K3 – Zentrum für Choreographie | Tanzplan Hamburg, with the support of Tanzquartier Wien, Residency in the frame of Re-Imagining Utopia in New York City / New York (Movement Research, Austrian Cultural Forum N.Y., Tanzquartier Wien)
insert (Theaterverein) is funded by the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and the Federal Chancellery of Austria.
Three sketches have been developed before the permiere:
Rising Swan (Sketch) 10/10/2009 Tanznacht Vienna
Lipsi Swan (Sketch) 27/06/2010 play! LEIPZIG
Before Swanrise (Sketch) 09/10/2010 Tanznacht Vienna