John Neumeier: A Creative Life

John Neumeier is known throughout the world of ballet as a visionary choreographer and director.

His life is defined by creativity.

his success is recognized by some of the highest artistic and humanitarian honors around the world.

An American, he was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1939.

His spectacular rise came as a visionary choreographer.

As Hamburg celebrates his 51st and final year as ballet director, we explore his genius.

As he prepares to step away from his lifelong artistic home to find the answer to the essential question Who is John Neumeier?

I feel very privileged that I'm doing this.

And, of course, I guess I'm doing it because I do it pretty well.

And you know, people like it.

but that makes me happy that people like it.

But I don't believe I know how to do it the next time.

And that makes me very doubtful.

Like when you ask about this new work and then I think about what I did, and then I have moments when I think, oh, I think that's good.

It touches me.

Then I look at it again and I think I don't feel anything looking at this.

So there is this conflict in me.

Dance is such a precious medium because it is the most direct transposition of the human being to other human beings, as we use the same instrument.

So our communication can be so direct.

I think that I have with age become still high energy, still looking towards a mission, but a little more patient and a little more understanding of how to bring people along with me and more open to their doubts or their insecurities.

I... And that's a good thing about becoming older, I think, is that you do you have to admit you do have more experience and you have gone through more situations that are that are tense or difficult.

I it takes longer for me to explode, but I still do sometimes.

But I think I think I'm I'm okay because I love my work so much that there's nothing more pleasing for me than to be in the studio.

And particularly if the work is flowing.

I guess that's how I would define myself.

There was a young director who used to dance, And he said, you know in Hamburg its so strange its like a cult.

And I said, So it's bad to be You call us a cult because nobody hates the director.

Nobody is going to the directors office demanding a role.

We don't do because it's not human ethics to behave like that.

And if that is your priority, then maybe you're in the wrong company.

I think it's like what we're talking about the dance ethics, the priorities.

And I think if that makes us that cult to have the correct priorities of dance, then I'm happy to be part of a cult.

I think that all the time that I worked with the company, I, I, I felt that I enjoyed having my instrument, my human orchestra.

Um, I think that it's gone very well.

I think that the company as it is now, is the best it's ever been.

When I went to Stuttgart as a dancer, I want to just really concentrate on myself as a dancer, as a performer.

So when I went to Stuttgart, I tried to forget all thoughts about choreography.

And this went on for a time until a dancer called Truman Finney, who had been at New York City Ballet.

He decided to come to Europe and he joined the Stuttgart Ballet.

And He said, What new ballets have you done?

And I said, I haven't done any.

And he said why?

And and then I thought, Why?

And I did a couple of works and one of them was received very, very positively.

a lot of things were going on, and Frankfurt contacted me to come to Frankfurt to discuss.

So I went and I thought they wanted to have a ballet.

This was in 1969, and they said, Well, you may think we want a ballet, but we don't.

We want you.

We want you to be director.

And I was quite shocked at that thought.

And I went back and said, I will think about it.

And then I decided, I think this is a good idea, because I think I felt that that was where my life was going towards choreography.

And I was young enough that I thought, if it doesn't work, I'll just continue being a dancer.

So I in Frankfurt I had a smaller company.

They were we had 36 dancers.

We worked all the time in one studio and I started to do the things that were probably the essence of my work, looking at even the classical works like Nutcracker and trying to think, what are they really about?

What is that?

What is the essence of this piece and how can I keep a style?

But at the same time give a reference to today or give you a dramaturgical logic Neumeier is hardly known in North America.

For the last year I have heard so much ecstatic praise of him from my European colleagues.

I've now seen he has all the makings of a major choreographer, and his young, cool, well trained company is almost certainly one of Germany's best.

Neumeier is virtually everything the German and English critics say he is.

Clive Barnes.

He was the designated director of the opera house in Hamburg, and he said he wanted to have me in Hamburg and I was quite young, and I said I would only consider it if it could be done consequently.

He said, 'what do you mean consequently?

And I said that I have worked with a lot of dancers that I would like to continue working with.

I have worked in a certain way, discovering a form of ballet theater that I want to continue developing with a... here with a larger company, and he was interested.

So we we started working together, and that's how I got to Hamburg.

And of course, when I came to Hamburg, I had no direct predecessor because the company was a bit desolate there.

There was.

It was the time when several directors had tried, didn't really work.

There was a kind of committee who was running the company.

So I when I saw the company and I tried to look at it fairly, I did, not renew the contract of 16 dancers.

Giving them the absolute normal, legal time.

But it caused a scandal.

So there was a huge publicity scandal against me before I even started.

And I had doubted at some time, if I would even come, because the time in Frankfurt had been so.

It was the beginning.

So it was so intense.

And actually successful.

So I, ... it was a difficult decision.

But I did come, and I remember that, the first thing I said is we need more performances.

The dancers have to be on the stage.

And so, Mr.

Everding, one idea was, well, could you do a kind of lecture demonstration?

And I said, yes, that would be good.

That would give us an opportunity to be on the stage again to show things.

And of course, with all the bad publicity and everything to... the idea to step onto the stage and start speaking to this audience who, you know, may all just scream boo was kind of,... intimidating.

And so I when I give this kind of thing, I do speak without any papers.

And I was speaking and the theme was myth and sweat ballet as myth and sweat.

And I was trying to explain about the translation of classical ballet into, into choreography.

And I forgot everything.

And I said, I'm very sorry, I, I can't think of anything to say.

I've forgotten everything.

I need my text.

And I turned my back and the audience applauded.

And that was really the breaking of the ice.

And I think that was something typical of Hamburg, the the acceptance of honesty, this sense of being direct with your audience.

And, and I think that probably has been, has something to do with the success of the company.

I've spoken much too long now, The beginning of my education.

Even before I started to study dance, I studied drawing and and painting.

In fact, quite meticulously, because it was with, in a nuns convent in Milwaukee.

I went every Saturday and we did a very a clear course of line drawing, charcoal drawing, pastel, watercolor.

Then finally years later, oil painting.

So I have that part.

Then my great interest in theater and as I say, I worked at Marquette University with a wonderful man called Father Walsh, who is standing right there.

He was a Jesuit priest who understood a lot about theater, a lot about the connection of movement to theater.

And it was he who had us all, taking dance.

He brought good teachers, twice a week to quite professional, teaching and all of these things, came together and then there was, my, Encounter with a modern dancer called Sybil Shearer.

Sybil.

Shearer.

Americans in the modern dance know this name because, in the... I believe it was the late 40s and 50s... I'm not sure.

I think it was about this time she was in New York.

And as they all did, they did solo concerts.

And apparently there was one great concert that she did at Carnegie Hall that everyone mentions.

It was just mind blowing.

As she.

As a performer.

And then she she didn't like the attention and the sort of struggle of New York and came to Northbrook, which is a small town between Chicago and Milwaukee.

And there she built a studio and had a small group of dancers that she worked with.

And I was fortunate, to be able to work with her because she, she was pure movement invention.

And I became impatient because, of course, I was young and I. wanted to be out in the world and do something and and and she was, she was content to create without the sense of even performing or when we would perform or what we would perform.

And I became impatient and.

Didn't stay.

But years later, I understood how important her influence was for me.

Not that I. I sometimes use... some of her movements do occur in my work.

but it was It was the spark of movement invention that she had.

So I think it is all it is, all of these things that that came together.

I think that I tried.

To to train my body in a sense.

As a classical dancer, because I still think that it is the most... I think it is the most universal training for a body to be able to, to, to understand other movement forms.

I am a choreographer.

I think the nucleus of everything is creation.

Creation demands the instruments.

I need.

I need the people to work with.

I need good people to work with.

I need people who who think not, not like me, necessarily, but who who have the same sense of what it means to be an artist.

And I realized in many auditions that there were so many young people who who hadn't been advised correctly and had spent so many years trying to do something to to achieve a dream that that they're not equipped to as human beings.

So I decided we needed a school.

So that was the first thing.

At the time, Irina Jacobson was the artistc advisor to the school she has now passed but That Syllabus she has set up is still in place because I find it, for our school a valid one.

It's based on the Vaganova syllabus, but it doesn't follow it letter by letter.

It's really she really put it together for what would work for our students.

Magic.

John is the director of the school, so the vision of the school was always his vision.

And we work in the same building as the Company and the Junior Company.

So it is a little, as he calls it, a microcosmos, where the young ones can learn from the older ones.

And I think that's just such a beautiful balance and it's what makes our school unique.

Its not something that you choose.

It's something that chooses you.

And these students really have to dance.

At this point in their lives they feel there is no other choice.

We try to, in school, get at that in a sense.

We believe that the more technique I have means, the more possibilities I have to articulate a particular idea or emotion.

And that is what technique is for, actually, even if it's just the joy I feel of hearing this music, which I want to project and I can project through the technique that I've learned.

[Percussive music beat] Prix de Lausanne is a competitio that that has been for young aspiring dancers.

But now they added this.

And so it's also giving giving a platform to young aspiring choreographers and creative artists.

It's for our school.

It's exactly.

Of the values that are so important to us.

So our students really jump at the chance every year to be able to create a solo that is seen on this platform.

And what would a gift to a young choreographer that they can, first of all, spend time in the studio creating solo and if they're chosen to go to produce and show it in front of a large audience and perhaps get the chance to actually explain their thoughts about it to other young dancers who have chosen their piece and coach them.

And the ability to coach is a different, different one than the ability to choreograph.

And they get both those opportunities.

This is what I think we should try to achieve in dance.

Not to... have less technique, but to have technique plus the human element of it.

What... what can this technique express for us?

Students in level six start with modern class.

It continues through level seven and eight and in seven, a composition class is added.

Graduating student is is required to do a choreography on their fellow students.

Performed in the Ernst Deutsch Theater which is a small theater in Hamburg, and they open their doors to us for a week and a half period.

Performance of their piece.

Is there a final grade that is evaluated and that becomes their grade?

And it's a again, a wonderful opportunity also for those who don't think they want to be choreographers.

But how valuable that is.

Because you.

Learn so much in guiding your fellow students and organizing their time, and choosing the costumes and setting the lights.

It's a really invaluable opportunity for them.

Your works are very different.

And I think that, But but I think we should.

We should send them all in.

Because I think it gives a, a, a palette of what the school does and how different the school is.

You do work in a school which is connected to a company which is connected to a choreographer.

But the thing is that your choreography doesn't look like the choreographer of the place here, which is great.

Which is really good.

That that it's it's so individual.

And I made some notes and we could speak about each work, you know, a lot.

And the most important thing is that I feel that all of them are alive.

That I was not - I didn't feel I was looking at something I had seen before.

Some of them, let's say, more abstracted, more, translated into into a very special movement quality, some of them more raw.

Emotionally, which is.

All right.

For me.

And the important thing was that, as I say, that they were alive.

John has developed through the years also.

You know, the way he does things is better.

The the way he looks at his work has, has developed.

And so when, when the man on top is continually developing and searching for something more, it takes that momentum through everyone In beginning to choreograph, my most immediate and strongest partner was music that whatever I thought about, whatever ideas I might construct beforehand in a libretto or in a thought process that in the actual moment of being alone in a room.

My partner was the music, and more and more, I mean, when you are a young choreographer, you you get the least time, actually, which is always a funny thing.

You get the least time, so you have to prepare yourself a lot.

I found that as I continued to work, it was more interesting to to prepare myself, but at the same time coming into the studio to try to forget all that preparation, to to just experience the moment, the presence of the other dancers.

They're looking at you ...wait, waiting to to have something.

To do... some... What will we do?

What's he going to ask us to do?

What could we do?

What would we like to do?

And that tension is somehow very important.

I feel that it's that you're really a you're against the wall, and now you've got to open.

And the opening for me comes really hearing the, the the music as if for the first time.

and then at the end of the rest of the, you know, this is more So I wanted to think of this season to do something which is absolutely not ambitious, and as it is surely the last work to do with a company that I could call my own, I wanted it to be in a sense, uncomplicated.

And I thought, What would I really like to do?

What have I never done?

Yeah.

Okay.

decided to do the evening, particularly with a friend, a wonderful pianist called The Tapestry, a great pianist, and even the songs will be done with piano and voice.

And as David is a great interpreter of Schubert and I love Schubert, we a great part of the program will be Schubert.

I'm also a great fan of Simon and Garfunkel.

I feel their music is so extraordinary in the sense of the poetry of the lyrics, the sense of how actual it was to the time that was written, but how it somehow also fits our time.

with you again.

Hello Darkness, my old friend.

What does that mean?

You certainly don't explain to the dancer what I think it means.

I've just gone blind.

there.

I think intuition is so important.

But these are things that we're really approaching a kind of conversation that is nearly impossible because generally in the definition of these things, we are limiting them and therefore we have to stay away from that.

if you define it, that means that's what it is and not something else.

And I think it's maybe that and something else, to ...catch the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw 10,000 people.

Maybe more people, talking without speaking.

People hearing without listening.

People writing songs that voices never share.

No one dared disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said: I, do not know ... Silence like a cancer grows.

Hear my words that I might teach you.

Take my arms that I might reach you.

But my words like silent raindrops fell.

And echoed in the well of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made.

And the sign flashed out its warning.

In the words that it was forming.

And the signs said 'The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the Sounds of Silence.

And my choreography.

I mean, even now I don't move as much, I don't I used to throw myself around, you know, all over the place.

I still do a little bit, but I can't do it quite as well.

I, ... but still, I do believe that in order to make a specific language in, in dance, it has to come from your movement.

I don't think you can complete.

I don't believe you can dictate choreography.

I believe it's something that comes out of an impulse in you, which will be transferred to someone else in, in a sense of a dialog.

And that person will will do it better than you do, or they will change it or they will they will do something almost like it.

And it that might be better than what you did or you might not like that.

You stay in control.

At the same time, it's it's like a controlled dialog where you, in a sense are always giving you're giving this subject matter.

They are answering you and it's, it's wonderful.

I'm there to support.

I think that's maybe the right ... word would be.

And, and, And I do this with love because it's, you know, he's he's my teacher.

You try to do it so fast that we almost lose the movement.

You were a little better... A few times before that you feel because because it's it's it's very it's very strong.

This this this thing.

Yeah.

Maybe it's it's the fastness is good.

But if you if you just think like, like in, in the moment of the gesture, if you hold it as.

Yeah.

By his side.

Three years as a dancer.

They say I been always, as open as I .. I'm now in the studio.

The...You should not be stingy.

da da de da da da deeee da da da deee....da da daa de da da da, da da da da da da...Are you listening to me?

I'm doing a huge demonstration.

And youre not even watching me.

You're not even paying attention.

Yes.

Because he has a music issue, There are so many steps Is he does the 10,... he doesnt know... But I don't care the amount of steps.

I just care about the rhythm... I said before that music was my most important partner.

Why?

Not because I've studied any instrument.

I do not play any instrument, but because music, it works like a kind of, acupuncture, you know, acupuncture.

That it touches, an emotion in me.

It releases this emotion.

The sound of this music.

Gives me an impulse.

And this, impulse.

I don't think about.

I move through this impulse.

Later on... I can look at what I do or think about what I do.

I can try to make it better.

And I usually.

And sometimes you don't actually make it better.

The first impulse is more important.

But I think that that there is I think it is that, for me as a choreographer, that's the way I work.

I start out maybe.

No, I start out intuitively.

I want to do a ballet to this third symphony of Mahler.

Two.

I research the work, I research the composer, I research the story, I research whatever that that isn't that is the second is a is an intellectual or rational process.

But then comes the most important, which is the instinctive doing of the thing where we we try to we have taken in just as we have maybe had a good dinner the night before.

So that's become a part of us and made us stronger.

We've taken in this knowledge, it's become a part of us, so we don't have to.

We don't have to show it.

We don't have to say how smart we are, how much we know about Tennessee Williams or anybody else.

We have to forget that.

And what we know about Tennessee Williams might inspire us in, in the impulse if, if I could if I'm being clear.

But I feel that it is that moment of intellectual blindness that is so important in the beginning of creation.

In this scene of the third act pas de deux... Final paa de deux between Marguerite and Armand.

Marguerite has left Armand because she has been told.

That she.

she has to leave him because of Armands dad... has asked her to go away in order to give his son a better life.

And so even though they do love each other, it's something that, you know, Marguerite has respectfully, done so.

And.

Armand is conflicted, I think, because they... he has told her that no matter what she's feeling.

And what is happening in her life, including her her illness.

He is going to be.

beside her.

And so when she leaves him, I think he thinks of it as, you know, a little bit of a betrayal.

So in this.

pas de deux you can see a very conflicting.

Emotions.

From both dancers and from both people.

It's between this love that they really want to.

embody, but also Armand cannot forget what she has done to him.. I had the opportunity to to work with John and that really enriched my dancing and my life and how, I approach the rest of roles in my career for him.

It's about pausing time.

I think that it's the connectivity between two dancers on stage and looking, really looking in each other's eyes and taking the time to do so.

So it doesn't become just a fireworks of lifts and, and piro-technicality it becomes about the connection between these two dancers.

And I think that most of all is that he wanted us to be human.

Now in the company there's a lot of young, beautiful dancers coming up.

I've always found that because of John, the company has been always working hard and we're always working for.

one goal, you know?

And, it's also quite rare, I find that this company is not, competitive, let's say, in a, in a bad way, like.

We try to find in ourselves the best.

And I think it absolutely comes from John, the way he works with us and the way we trust him and he trusts us.

That is the important part.

It's not your ego.

It's there's more than that.

You have to really be on your toes to.

Keep up with the company... like where it is now.

When I joined the company what I noticed is that the the creative aspect of the dancers is really... encouraged You go through.

Anna Karenina... which was created in me and, it was, it was wonderful because it was through the whole season.

So I had a lot of time to be in studio with John.

And the the process of creating is absolutely beautiful.

I think sometimes when we....when we start, I notice that John is a little bit reserved and careful.

I think sometimes he gets a little bit nervous, even though we always wonder why.

But I guess it's, unavoidable.

But during the whole work process is actually quite... we we laugh a lot.

It's... as I say, it's a certain freedom that you that you have to explore to then frame it into the, into the direction of where he thinks the, the ballet or the character should go, because it's ... it's always a discovering.

It's always something new to to get to the point of, of, what he wants to achieve.

But I think that the most important thing is that we do not preconceive the emotion.

We we do not try to transfer our feelings of Anna Karenina, which we've read in Tolstoy's pages, onto Anna Laudere.

We have to have a concept of an essence of what is Anna Karenina?

Look at Anna Laudere and say, do this, do this.

look at him.

Take a cigarette.

Let him light it.

Look at him.

Look again.

Look away.

And in the action of doing something, piece by piece, create an Anna Karenina that could not exist without Tolstoy.

But is not a copy of Tolstoy.

Is not the illustration in the book of Tolstoy, but is rather a person.

Now they're becoming this character who has the attributes, motivations, desires of Anna Karenina.

I've used Tchaikovsky a few times - Notably in finding pieces for Anna Karenina.

I think that the work with Alfred Schnittke was also extremely important.

If we are starting a work like Anna Karenina and we have a novel, you know... what, a thousand pages... which you have studied, you have tried to find yourself in it.

You've tried to find an essence in it.

You have made decisions - what lines you're going to go on, how you feel about these characters..., which leads you to decide which dancers you might choose.

And generally, when I start a work, I don't know what dancer I will choose.

I generally start with 3 or 4 and start to work with them and and try to learn from what I see.

What are the possibilities?

One day at a time.

We can learn to look past.

and how it comes together, like, step by step.

introduction to, let's say, art or Beauty also came in a strange way through my mother, because she had first of all, she could sew really well, I mean extraordinarily well and was very serious about it and could make things very beautiful.

So I, I always remember when I was a boy, when I was bored, I always said, I want to make something.

And my mother loved flowers and had this very special feeling about the preciousness of a living flower and the joy of just to see a flower growing and or to pick it or to have it to take care of it, this was in a in a strange way, I think the roots of of an artistic direction for me.

they encouraged they never discouraged this this yearning I had to become a part of that world.

It was interesting because my father was a ship's captain on the Great Lakes.

he wasn't always a captain.

He was a very simple man.

He started out as a deckhand and worked his way up, But it meant that he was gone a lot of the time on the Great Lakes.

And it didn't bother me so much, his being gone, because it was always the wonderful feeling that, you know, Daddy's coming home now and we were so happy.

You know, he spent a few days then and then have to go away again.

My mother was a very big influence on me, I think.

And I think that she had a great intuition to understand because I. I saw ballet, I saw dance through films, basically through the musical films, and just was interested in in people moving.

One time, I saw an ad about, I think it was Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo or something coming to Milwaukee, and I said, I really would like to see this.

And somehow my my mother understood, and we went to see it.

And it was, for me, absolutely unforgettable moment.

Well, I think I was kind of always living in another world, to tell you the truth.

I think that I, I was not.

generally very extroverted, I think.

I think that I, I saw my things where I felt, I think I can do this well.

And then I spent a lot of time doing it.

I, I would take a school project then home.

So that in the private.

I could do it really carefully.

I wanted to study dance first.

I was able to study tap dancing because my parents didn't really understand what I wanted to do and then I did acrobatic a little, and then finally I could take ballet.

And that was an amazing moment for me.

Because the ... I remember the the feeling of the first moment of touching the bar and doing a plie that I felt this is - I feel like I'm home.

This is where I believe I belong.

I had to stop at a certain point because I was having dizzy spells.

I mean, was.

I don't know, part of growing up, I guess.

But there was a physician who advised my mother very poorly, that I had, problem with my spine.

And of course, it scared my mother to death.

I mean, it would I guess anybody.

But of course, it's absolutely not true.

It was bad.

And so I had I spent a time not dancing.

And then I I went to a kind of, amateur theater group in Milwaukee, very young.

And then I was confused about...could I dance?

Could I, Should I be a painter?

And I, I went to the university.

Thinking I was relatively young, actually entering university.

And.

And there I met Father Walsh and he looked at me and said, what... What are you doing here?

You're a dancer.

And so from that moment, it became clear - the road was suddenly clear.

Father Walsh was a great, great inspiration for him.

And he was a Jesuit priest.

And I met him.

I was I was still in the company when he would come.

And to have this.

And it's not religious.

It's it's it's humanistic.

I, came from a Catholic background.

I. I think I would consider myself religious, not in the sense that I, and I have probably, of all the choreographers in the world have done the most works which which deal with religious subjects the Saint Matthew Passion, the Magnificat, the Messiah, the Divine Acts, the Christmas Oratorio, a lot of works, because I believe it's a part of me.

Not in the sense - I don't feel that I am a choreographic missionary.

I feel that I have a great, conflict also in me about religion and trying to to really find my place and try to define... I certainly, I certainly would follow Christ.

In, in in the teaching of love as the most important, our most important, duty and aspect.

I still... try too differentiate between... what hiuman beings have made of religion and, and the... and the essence of the religion I believe that there is a calling for an artist and that this calling is not just happiness.

It's responsibility.

And it means you've got to prepare yourself to be this instrument.

And, and I think at this, I have to say, goes back also to a religious belief, because in the beginning, I, I remember when I left, when I might have never said this before.

I've never told anyone this before.

But in the diary that I kept on the airplane going across the Atlantic, I sort of dedicated my life to God.

And this quest to to try to realize myself as an artist.

Umm, Yeah.

I've never said that before, but it's true.

So I think that.

I think that this spiritual part is a part of all of us.

I think we can deny it for a certain time, but I think that there, there always comes a moment when we reach out in some way, in prayer, in desire.

Ah...to, to to reach for something.

I mean, if you look at the diversity of the ballets hes created, I mean, like Lady of the Camellias going into Streetcar Othello... I mean...Fratres, which for me was something it's a very it was a ballet he did for Marcia four gentlemen I was doing a creation for Marcia Haydee to Arvo Part.

Fratres - and I. I started it when my father passed away and which was in October, and my mother's birthday was the 7th of December, and I had just nearly finished the work.

And I tried to call my mother, and she was in a, a nursing home and a different nursing home because I had moved her to a more comfortable one, one which was a little more pleasant in every way.

And I was so.

Pleased to do that.

And she didn't answer.

And, then I realized that she had had a heart attack, and I went to America, and, I stayed in that apartment that I had arranged for her, and the boxes of her life were still unpacked, and she was in a coma and was in a coma for three weeks.

And I stayed.

And then I went back to Stuttgart and finished the work.

So.

And it was strange because the work was one woman.

with four men.

Which is like my family.

One woman with four men.

So it's always had a very, very special place in my heart.

I have two brothers., plus me and my father.

Who are your brothers?

Are they still alive?

No, ... ah no ... that's also, very sad story.

Umm...no the terrible thing is that my youngest brother died first.

I can't really talk about it, actually.

I know he lost one of his parents at the beginning of the process, and his other parent at the end.

So it was a. A very emotional time, for John.

It's abstract, but not not in his mind.

And that's what's fascinating about his work.

It's an inner depth - the soul - It tears at you, tears at me and I. I begged him, if I can bring this ballet back.

And he said, but he doesn't have time.

But he trusts me and he'll come and see.

And he was in the box with me watching, and he was crying, and he held my hand.

And that for me too, just meant everything.

But that's John Neumeier, a choreographer?

I think whatever he does, it comes from so deep.

And you see that.

I do believe my calling was to be a choreographer.

So eventually I found myself always thinking the choreography could be different than what it is.

And in a sense I from dancing in in Crankos, Romeo and Juliet, for example, I already was conceiving how I would do it, how I would do it so different to how I felt that there was so many aspects and layers of the drama of Shakespeare that could have been, expressed through movement in another way and so on.

I've always been interested in acting or the technique of acting.

How can you actually portray someone else?

Not one time, but do it seven times a week?

So which is a very different thing than just improvization.

That's fascinated me that that the there must be a technique to it.

Just as we learn through doing simple exercises, how to do more complex combinations of steps.

Is there a way of being sure that the young people who will dance Romeo tonight, have ... are at least giving the same performance that they did yesterday when we worked on it in in rehearsal?

I think that, you know, for the first step, that because you take, you take step, step, that going into the into the fourth position on pointe is almost an acceleration of the step because it's like if I'm thinking, you know, I saw this guy and I thought, oh, he was really ... you know, sometime when we, in our thoughts, our thoughts go faster.

Sometimes you we think and we think, yeah, I have to get, butter, eggs and cheese today and that just the thoughts just go like this.

But if you think I saw someone and I, I think he had I think he had brown eyes that it's something there is something in, in that that was exciting.

So although you're moving slowly inside, you're not moving slowly at all, inside something something is, is, is happening to you.

That's making that's making you able to balance.

If you don't feel you can balance, don't try to balance.

Because I don't want to see you trying to balance.

I only want to see you balancing or not balancing because that balance is not about balance.

Keep pushing.

Keep, keep that.

Keep the contact.

Good.

Better.

Good.

Let it happen to you.

Go!

Yes.

Okay.

Stop, stop, stop.

That was good.

It was.

It was a little different.

I don't mind, I don't mind - different is good.

It's just that when you get up.

If we're going again before we get to this, I have the feeling that when something is special, sometimes you don't know what the next step is.

And so you don't know.

Well, what what what should we do now?

So I think that that before this comes, there could be a few more seconds of insecurity, before you say, take my hand, touch my hand again.

You know, let's go - lets do the same place.

Once he looks up, then he's kind of looking all around.

Can you take - when he's going, you don't see him because he's underneath the balcony can you take longer to look for him so that you would be looking, he would be already standing there and you would then turn.

And again there would be the surprise of of of suddenly - how did you get here?

Like how did you do that feeling.

So again we'd have the feeling of you confronted with something that you're not prepared yet to deal with.

And so, the only thing is to go back to the first language, the first words that you that you communicated with each other, which is through your hands.

Because I, you know, I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And when I was a young boy, there was no ballet company there.

There was no major school.

So I felt there was something connecting me to dance, to even the few performances of Ballet Theater who used to come through touring sometimes, or Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, who at that time would tour America a lot.

And I, I started to try to study reading books.

So I, I started to collect books.

In order to, to understand what is this that fascinates me so much.

And this continued and one of the first books I read was called The Tragedy of Nijinsky by Anatole Bormann, who was a classmate of Nijinsky.

And this was for me an astounding experience because many people ... later critics said, that's not a really good book and a lot of it's not true what he says.

But I think there is something in it that is valuable because he was a classmate of Nijinsky, and I think he talks about things that only a classmate would know and this made ballet, a dancer, human for me.

Because I had sat, you know, in the top of the balcony in Pabst Theater, looking down at a little stage with beautiful blue light.

And I thought this was wonderful, this magical world.

But how do you get in it?

How do I become a part of that?

And reading about Nijinsky, I realized that he was human.

He had problems.

I'm a human, I have problems.

Maybe.

Maybe I can get in there somehow, too.

So this collection kept growing.

It started actually with books and at second hand stores.

Whatever money I had, I would try to find books about ballet.

And, you know, I had a I had the first one I bought on my first plane trip.

My aunt took me to Cleveland, Ohio, and I bought this book of Maurice Seymour portrait ballet portraits, you know, and that was the beginning of the collection, which now has about 16,000 books about dance.

And then when I started to work, I and we toured with the with the Stuttgart Ballet a bit, I started to buy lithographs from the romantic period because you could find them sometimes not too expensive.

So that that started actual objects.

And then when I became ballet director and earned a little more money, I started to follow the auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's and started actually to buy things concerned with the Ballets Russe period.

And now it is, I am sure that the the largest collection of material about Nijinsky because we've been able to to buy the family collection and and other collections have come together.

So it it's it's quite an enormous thing.

So I feel it's like that's another aspect of, of the, the, the, the, the sort of understanding of ballet, of this great art.

When I came to Europe, I came and I studied in London, and at the time you you could not work as a foreigner in London.

And near the end of my school time we did a performance.

Actually, it was interesting because it was a school ballet.

I mean, it was a ballet by Roland Petit, called Ballabile.

And this was like the opening of the evening in which the Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf did, Marguerite and Armand and, Nanette DeValois, did the last rehearsals of it, and she liked me.

And actually called me to, to speak with me and asked where I was going.

And I said, what I was doing.

And I said, you know what?

I can't work in an in England.

I'm going back to America next year.

And she said, where are you going?

And I said, well, I don't know, Ballet Theater or New York City Ballet, I don't know.

And she said, you must go to George.

And I said, well, okay.

And she said, we are going on a tour, and I will speak to George Balanchine about you.

And I thought, wow, that's great.

So then a couple of weeks later, I was in a. folk dance class.

A beautiful lady and man.

came in and watched, and afterwards the teacher said to me, you know, that was Marcia Haydee and Ray Barra, who are the principal dancers in the Stuttgart Ballet, and what are you going to do next season?

And I said, well, Madame spoke..., is going to speak to George Balanchine about me, and I don't know.

They said, well, they would.

They said that they would, ...you could join the Stuttgart Ballet.

You don't have to audition.

They saw you and, And I said, well, I have to wait.

And then, you know, the time went by, Madame De Valois came back did not say anything to me.

Passing her in the hall, she just walked past.

So I, I contacted John Cranko and he wrote really lovely letter to me.

Personal letter from John Cranko saying that he was happy I would join the company.

And so I got the contract, signed it.

And it's a true story that about ten days later.

I met De Valois again in the hallway.

And she said, oh, by the way, I've spoken with Mr.

Balanchine and you can go to the New York City Ballet next year.

And I said, I can't.

I signed a contract.

Now, I was very strict in that way.

And.

So it was a kind of accident that I went, but I was happy to go because I had seen, on a tour of the Royal Ballet.

I had seen a ballet which, Cranko had done called Antigone.

And I thought this was wonderful, and I thought it was very much the kind of work I was interested in doing.

It was a drama, but basically based on the classical technique, but with with another movement language.

And so I thought, great, I will be working with a living choreographer.

And so the beginning was was very interesting.

When I went to Stuttgart as a dancer, I when we go back before that in America, I was educated at a university where I also studied drama, theater history, English literature and and ballet.

There was something called the Noverre Gesellschaft, which is a kind of a organization that sponsors, young choreographers to do works which are then shown in the playhouse there.

But that's also in the DNA, I would say, of the Stuttgart ballet, bringing up choreographers there was Jiri Kylian, John Neumeier, Billy Forsythe, In a sense, we grew apart, and I think that there were certain times when John was having a crisis, a creative crisis at that time.

So I think.

I do feel thankful for the craftsmanship that I learned there because he was a master of pas de deux.

And we how things develop.

And I was I certainly was attentive to that.

And I thank him for that.

At the beginning, I did not miss America so much because I was so, fascinated by the things that I could learn, the things that I could see in Europe.

some people said, oh, you know, say you were an expatriate, but I never thought of it that way because I never, I never thought I was going to stay.

When John Cranko invited me to the company, I considered it, and And I thought, I haven't spent enough time in Europe.

I need more time to go to all the museums and see these great works.

And I'll I'll stay in Europe for a year and spend a lot of time traveling in between.

So I never thought I was going to stay.

And I think that.

It was the fact that things developed and changed that that made me stay.

And I think just at the moment when I probably when I, when I felt that, I was doing more choreography and had, invitations.

...to do works that I probably would have gone back to America.

But just at that moment, I was then invited to direct a company at a very young age.

And so I thought, oh, well, that's certainly a development.

I think we should investigate that.

I think we should look into that.

And I've always thought, yes, I've made a contract for three years, but I don't know what, what what I would do after that.

But of course now I have stayed, I have developed this kind of empire of a ballet company, a school, a collection, all these things.

So.

So I am here.

It's our responsibility as stagers to bring the essence, the essence of the piece.

John is has stressed to me, I don't want you just to to, restage something.

I would like you to feel like when you're staging it, it is a creative process that you look at the material every time, every day.

Make sure the material is fresh, make sure the material is not what we've done.

Make sure the material is valid now.

And look at the dancer who's in front of you because they're the the one who are going to be speaking those words.

And they, they need the guidance and the education.

And, more than just the steps in the counts, Midsummer Night's Dream has changed and developed, and even two months ago or three months ago, when I did it again for the Houston Ballet, there were quite important changes that I made in it.

And this is I mean, I did Midsummer Night's Dream in 1977, I think.

So we're speaking about I don't know how many years that is.

but after that, doing, doing really important changes because.

In this world, in our life, I think nothing is perfect.

And we as artists Hope to do the best we can, and we do the best we can at this moment in time.

And if we are lucky, as I've been very fortunate to have this time with an ensemble which has developed, you know, over 50 years, to be able to look back and take a work which maybe was neglected and, and look at it again and, and, and breathe new life into it.

So I think the most important thing is that we realize how, how living and art dance is.

That more important, I think, than the exactness even of the choreography, is the fact that something motivating, that choreography is alive.

I mean, there's things we obviously know - the body is doesn't work the same way that it did.

But if you close your eyes, how old are you?

I think this is interesting because I had this question recently, an interview, and it surprised me.

The man said, how old are you in your self?

And I said, 42.

And I think that's how I think.

Because every person is different.

You have to be quite specific in ... I think in the work of finding out.

And so you're language, your method of expression is slightly different for, for for each person.

Curiosity is really a great word because that's it.

It is curiosity.

But let's go back to this word creation.

Because creation means starting at the beginning.

You don't know.

You never know how to create.

Because that is that against the word itself.

Because creation means something new is born.

And you don't really know how to do that.

I mean, like I said, you know how to put steps together.

But that's not necessarily creation.

That's construction.

So I think that I was able to to ... why I enjoyed, suffered sometimes, struggled sometimes, fought sometimes.

But overall, I, I was thankful for, for the time, to, to be in Hamburg for 50 years because doing all the works meant constantly starting from the beginning, not continuing, not having a sense of having worked through 50 years.

So yeah, curiosity is right.

Curiosity, which results in creation.

John is staying with us, officially, John is not leaving the Bundesjugendballett - The National German Youth Ballet, so hopefully he'll have a little more time.

We're doing a piece now that he did for us years ago.

That is a beautiful work and hopefully he will have time to put his hands in the clay and help mold it.

And when he's no longer officially I, it's hard for me to understand that still.

Not from only an emotional side of oh, what would it be without John?

But not just because the person of John, in the spirit of John and the talent of John, but the man of John, the human being of John, is what has made this building.

And and so what has made this company?

But I thought 50 is a big number.

Historically, No other director has stayed for 50 years.

So I think I thought this at least, mathematically, this seems to be the right answer.

Emotionally, it is a different story.

Tell me.

I, I can't tell you completely because I've not experienced the whole thing.

Maybe if we speak in two years, I can tell you.

Okay.

Oh my goodness... That is a difficult question.

I don't know.

I think maybe my whole life has been working so as not to have to answer that question.

Distracting myself from answering that question.

Constructing complex things.

I mean, from the beginning.

You know, going to the university, doing the theater, going to Sybil, going to Chicago, going to class at 8:30 in the morning to try to learn.

Botany and all these things.

It's like I, I had to do all those things and in a sense, it's never really changed.

I don't know.

I, I, I would say John Neumeier is a person who is very, very thankful for the life, the privilege of the life that he has.

Because this little boy from Lincoln Avenue in Milwaukee.

The places I have been, the people I've known, the privilege to work with them, the privilege to have time to to realize something that you want to do.

This this makes me very humble and makes me, I think, being humble or being makes me want to work even more.

And so I just keep running.

I just keep running.