Cologne was once a proud, powerful and influential dance metropolis: laboratory of modernity, scene of the legendary summer academies, home of the dance forum. Then the frenzy set in and left little more than a finely curated series of guest performances. Attempts to establish a permanent municipal division came to nothing. By 2019 the choreographer Richard Siegal appeared and his young Ballet of Difference (BoD) docked at the spectacle.
The Cologne commitment became the mainstay, the Munich Muffathalle the mainstay of the twelve-strong ensemble. An arrangement from which all sides on the Rhine benefited: the enthusiastic audience, the company, the art and especially the community. Because she got a unique selling point with Siegal’s flamboyant aesthetics and his virtuoso dancers and only had to raise a minimal sum from the acting budget thanks to state, foundation and cross-subsidization. But the grant model is being phased out, and Cologne has to show its colors financially. What connoisseurs of local cultural politics prophesied happened immediately: the city backed down, played for time and endangered the future of its own figurehead.
Could Siegal’s troupe be set up as a new, independent dance division in Cologne?
In the summer of 2024, the renovation of the Cologne stages should be completed. Then the city wants to add an independent dance section alongside opera and straight theatre. The fact that Richard Siegal and the BoD have long been perceived as such and that they gild the reputation of the Rhein-City internationally with dance does not seem to have gotten around to the Cologne administration. The culture department prefers an open process and buys expert opinions from the consulting firm Actori, which provides figures but no concepts. Accordingly, a permanent dance department would cost around four million euros per year, another million should flow into the (undoubtedly useful) continuation of the dance guest performances and the promotion of the independent scene. There is no room for parallel structures. So you can only process the BoD or transfer it to divisional operations.
Which makes sense because the squad has a unique profile. In and around Cologne there is already modern dance and classical ballet of all kinds (e.g. in Dortmund, Düsseldorf/Duisburg and Essen), as well as the finest dance theater (in Wuppertal). An experimental scene is also thriving locally, led by choreographers such as Stephanie Thiersch. Additional impulses are provided by courses with a dance orientation, the theater collection in Wahn Castle and – a gem – the only dance museum in Germany. The BoD and the radically contemporary dance vision of its director Richard Siegal reflect this diversity.
Of course, a BoD with a doctorate on divisional autonomy would have to present different choreographic signatures and be padded with administrative know-how. What could be solved, for example, within the framework of a dual leadership – Siegal + XY. At the moment, however, it looks more like the BoD will have to close by the end of 2023. Then the funding runs out and it threatens: the next full embarrassment in the annals of Cologne dance.