She did everything right. Like so many times before. It is the 300th anniversary of the premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion, which was presented to an astonished and shocked Leipzig citizenry in the Nicolaikirche on Good Friday, April 7, 1724. And Sasha Waltz took on exactly this, not exactly small, two-hour, but popular work without a break, in order to make it a prestige dance piece. Just as she achieved it most successfully in 2004 with “Dido & Aeneas” based on Henry Purcell, which is still touring worldwide today from Luxembourg.
A prestige project that should finally solidify their resurgence. After failures and burnout in the mid-1900s – manifested with symphonic works such as “In C”, “Beethoven 9” or “SYM-PHONIE MMXX”, the remnants of her disastrous time as Berlin State Ballet Director. The 61-year-old has secured herself a prominent partner for this.
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With the Cappella Mediterranea, which is as agile as it is rich in sound and sensual, under its adventurous leader Leonardo García Alarcón. With equally playful, individually timbred singers.
The famously moaning Pilatus by Georg Nigl (already in 2014, in her last opera “Orfeo ed Euridice”), Christian Immler’s sonorous Jesus, the simple evangelist Valerio Contaldo, the soprano Sophie Junger, the alto Benno Schachtner and the tenor Mark Milhofer. She could also use them in dance. They, like the participating choirs from the co-producing Opéra de Dijon and Namur, have great fun with this moving and sonorous social sculpture.
Sasha Waltz has little to add to Bach’s Easter Passion story and his Christian message. She illustrates and inspires the magnificent, dreamily gripping score with her usual arrangements, possibilities and ideas. This creates a highly decorative, contemplative, pleasantly touching evening for the culture-loving, Bach-caressed atheist. Honored by the premiere in the iconic room of the Salzburg Felsenreitschule.
Designed for touring
Despite the magnificent lighting by David Finn, which is crucial to the performance, you quickly see that this premiere was not designed for this widescreen area and its unused arcades. The Salzburg Easter Festival, where dance has been included since last year, probably secured the right to the spectacular first night relatively late and not at all in keeping with the actual focus on Italy.
The work, positioned frontally in the middle, is clearly intended for changing tour locations. The head of the Leipzig Bach Festival, Michael Maul, who was present at the premiere, has already planned it for 2026.
Where John Neumeier was much more radical in his St. Matthew Passion, which premiered in 1980, because he really wanted to simply retell the story of Jesus’ suffering as a naively devout American Catholic, Sasha Waltz remains cloudier and woker. The narrative and the symbolic alternate, the concrete and the affirmative. To do this, she cleverly mixes choristers and dance collectives (she has to, she only managed to do it for eleven dancers), and lets the choir from Dijon sing from the audience.
»John Passion« – Dance PREMIERE PERFORMANCE SASHA WALTZ JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH »John Passion«, Johann Sebastian Bach, Sasha Waltz © Bernd Uhlig
Source: Bernd Uhlig
This has long been a commonplace: to involve the audience, to make them think as an angry mob of Jews. Of course, this leads to a disconcertingly muddy sound in the opening chorus “Lord, our ruler”; Fortunately, she otherwise only uses slower chorales and short turba choirs for this spatial sound experimentation, which Bach also tried out in his Leipzig churches.
In Sasha Waltz, the people/dancers as passion actors are once again naked at the beginning. They sit down at a communion table with sewing machines and make their white play costumes. The first moment of irritation is the swelling of the rattling noises into the soundscape. This happens even more often, for example when, before the second part, the aggressive knocking on wooden blocks evokes the hammering in of the nails on the cross, or when when the curtain is torn in the temple, all the lights go out and the music continues in the darkness.
In general, this St. John Passion plays largely in chiaroscuro, with sharp light-dark contrasts reminiscent of Caravaggio. And her clusters of figures in Bernd Skodzig’s sophisticated robes are always reminiscent of high baroque images of saints such as Grunewald’s Isenheim Altar. Lance sticks lengthen the lines, thorns roughen them up. At one point the bustling people clump together in three empty frames as an altar triptych; Something similar is already known from “Körper”, Sasha Waltz’s Schaubühne opening piece from 2000. Grunewald angels hidden on the ceiling are reproduced using mirrors.
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Jesus is woman and man, often naked and vulnerable, of course also reminding us of creation and expulsion from paradise. Violin and gamba play their solo parts in the ariosi – placed very decoratively on the scene – while two flutes and two oboes move in the quartet. And in the end, as much Catholic kitsch as there has to be in the Protestant rite, to “Oh Lord, let your dear little angel” be heard, those same angels climb a ladder to heaven from the hardware store.
It didn’t work out at the Schaubühne in the long run. The operas were over after the Berlin “Tannhäuser” flop in 2014. In 30 years of existence, she has never received her own budget position in Berlin for her company, which has long since shrunk again. The fatal engagement at the State Ballet ended in horror as soon as it began in 2022. And Sasha Waltz, who once created creations for Lyon and St. Petersburg, Paris and Rome, no longer seems to be in demand internationally as a guest choreographer. Her husband Jochen Sandig, a clever networker who played a key role in her success, is leaving this summer as the not particularly lucky director of the long-insignificant Ludwigsburg Castle Festival.
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So the producer couple, who are also slowly approaching retirement age, are concentrating on their core business, which always worked best with famous vocal works mixed with dance. Sandig was even able to present the film adaptation of his long-seller “Human Requiem” from 2012 based on the Brahms Requiem as an immersive concert experience.
And Waltz, with Beethoven and Bach, can guarantee uplifting viewing experiences for the educated middle class. Modern but classic, a little mysterious but always comprehensible. And there are still plenty of festivals and venues with money where these spectacles have never been seen before and work perfectly in their tried and tested design; This Salzburg premiere was once again a model case.
But please don’t confuse such beautiful finished parts with the chorographic originality of an alleged “dance icon”.