Ballet Düsseldorf: Demis Volpis dance drama “Closed Games” – Culture

In Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” ​​there is a scene that reveals everything that defines the essence of cinema. A barely adolescent guy peers through a peephole at the dance studies of a beautiful girl who turns up all the more because it knows about the presence of the voyeur. Later the boy buys a cream cake for the loved one. But he cannot resist the temptation and eats almost all of the candy himself. Düsseldorf’s ballet director Demis Volpi has both scenes in his first full-length stage premiere “Closed Games” built-in: as a musical and figurative quote. As this reference system can be interpreted, the evening wants to drill into the core of the art of dance – just as Sergio Leone once exposed and glorified cinema as a voyeuristic event. But because Volpi operates with more ingenuity than urgency, his choreography unfolds kaleidoscopic qualities instead of deeper insights.

The template comes from Julio Cortázar, one of the great Argentine storytellers of magical realism

However, the 35-year-old must be credited with following in big footsteps with the Ballet am Rhein. For more than a decade, Martin Schläpfer has pampered and challenged the region’s audience with a mixture of classical modern and contemporary ballet. This is one of the reasons why Volpi, who was born in Argentina, decided not to equip the first live event after the corona-hailed start of the season with puristic dance. Instead, he has transformed a play from Argentina, Julio Cortázar’s play “Closed Games”, into dance theater, which of course is not a trap-free endeavor. Because the author, who died in 1984, belongs together with Jorge Luis Borges to the great storytellers of magical realism: Remnants of reality are spun into fantastic cocoons. The choreographic translation leads to a surrealistic tightrope walk that brings the concept of narrative ballet to crash.

Fate washes fifteen characters onto the scene, a rather wrecked bar in Buenos Aires. Heike Scheele built a triangular stage that tapered towards the rear and placed furniture from the 1950s on it. At the beginning, a white-clad guest and a counter-worker are bored here, while Julio Cortázar’s likeness stares into the audience from the wall. Soon, however, mustaches and coiffures à la Rudolph Moshammer are teetering on tango-dancing waiters, a decapitated chicken makes a dying swan, and a chewing gum ballerina in a Dolly Parton look unwraps pointe shoes. The super blonde puts the same “Amapola” number on the bar floor that Sergio Leone once staged for his America epic. Only here Cortázar’s secret main character acts as a voyeur: the judge who has just pronounced a death sentence and – regardless of the military dictatorship – is also just a little man plagued by neuroses. A pseudo giant of power that the more or less happy revelers systematically drive into a corner.

Volpi’s gripping dance language finds the right tonality for every character, from the sweet ballerinas to the diabolical rhetoric of the opaque master in white. Nevertheless, these “closed games” seem strangely aseptic and out of date. As if the mildew of a past lay over them, in which Düsseldorf’s Königsallee was still a real luxury mile and prosperity an elitist privilege. So slightly patinated dance theater that leaves room for improvement. Hopefully Demis Volpi will be able to use them.