Enrique Gasa Valga was just on the slopes and you can reach him in a hotel in the Stubai Alps. As part of the Innsbruck Winter Dance Festival, which has just ended, ski fans interested in dance or ski-loving ballet fans were able to spend a day in the snow with the choreographer. Gasa Valga is no stranger to Tyrol. When there was a change of director at the Tiroler Landestheater (TLT) last year, and the Spaniard was to leave his position as director of the dance theater division after 14 years, the audience campaigned for him to stay with a petition, which was signed by over 9,000 people. Vain.
The fact that Enrique Gasa Valga and his company have remained with the people of Innsbruck is primarily due to entrepreneurs like Christian Steinmayr. The sponsor persuaded the native Catalan to found his own, independent company with his dancers Lemonada Dance Company. Gasa Valga took the risk: “I felt like I had to give something back to my audience.”
Two productions by the 15-member troupe can now be experienced in Munich. First, “The Great Gatsby”, the Munich premiere at the Deutsches Theater is on February 23rd, then in June the company Gasa Valgas, which is still based in Innsbruck, will present a homage to Frida Kahlo. And if you long for her dance art in between: a piece about Richard Wagner’s adventurous life can be seen at the Festspielhaus in Erl from April 18th to 20th.
Enrique Gasa Valga headed the dance department at the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck for 14 years, and now he tours with his own company.
(Photo: Birgit Gufler)
But first “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic book (1925) about the mysterious millionaire who wants to win back his childhood love with luxury, money and lavish parties. But in the end the party is over, love is as cold as jewels and Gatsby is a dead body in the pool. Enrique Gasa Valga, who has traveled a lot around the world as a dancer and learned from the great choreographers and ballet impresarios such as Maurice Béjart, Jiří Kylián and Reid Anderson, sees strong parallels in the material to the 1920s in which we live. Politically fragile, fast, loud times in which materialism and superficiality reign, and yet none of this really has any meaning. “In the end it’s about love,” says the choreographer.
The Bolzano singer and actress Greta Marcolongo, here with her band, is committed to women’s rights. She founded the “ELLA – Women on Stage” festival in her hometown.
(Photo: Birgit Gufler)
Music plays a major role in his production: Gasa Valga’s dancers interpret Gatsby’s story to the sound that was pop 100 years ago; feverish swing, airy jazz. Everything performed live by singer Greta Marcolongo and her band. This is how classical ballet meets the wild, free movement language of the Roaring Twenties.
And anyone who feels inspired by Enrique Gasa Valga’s dancing skills should pull The Great Gatsby out of the bookshelf again. There you can find one of the greatest novel endings in literature: “So we continue rowing against the current, incessantly towards the past.”
The Great Gatsby, February 23rd to March 3rd, evening and afternoon performances, Deutsches Theater, information and tickets at www.deutsches-theater.de