Orgel­Passion

Omelas (WP)
Inspired by a dystopian fictional short story from the 1970s, Belgian choreographer Stina Quagebeur, in her first work with the Ballett am Rhein, poses the question: Is it acceptable for the happiness of many depends on the suffering of one individual? In the utopian place of Omelas—conceivable anywhere—the choreographer tells the parable-like episode of an excessively happy city that accepts that one of its own must be socially excluded, left alone and unloved, in order to preserve this happiness. Yet one person approaches the outcast and refuses to accept the given reality. What will she do? What would we do?
To the richly colored music specially composed for the piece by the British composer Jeremy Birchall, Quagebeur brings the paradisiacal Omelas and its hidden abysses to life in a playful neoclassical dance language.

Voluntaries (1973)
In 1973, American choreographer Glen Tetley, who would have turned 100 in 2026, created the ballet “Voluntaries” for the Stuttgart Ballet. He dedicated the technically demanding piece – which challenges both dancers and audience – to the director of the Stuttgart company, John Cranko, who had died suddenly shortly before. For “Voluntaries”, based on “Voluntary”, a form of musical improvisation for organ pieces in church services, Tetley chose Francis Poulenc's late-Romantic, expressive “concerto for organ, strings and timpani” (1938). In his unique style combining modern dance and classical movement vocabulary, he created a requiem – like Poulenc’s music, and as performed by Cranko’s company – presents a panorama of life between grief and joy, despair and courage, and expresses the unconditional desire for a new beginning...

Aurea (WP)
With “Aurea”, the Spanish choreographer Goyo Montero is making his debut with the Ballett am Rhein. His abstract and physically demanding creation revolves around the principle of proportion of the Golden Ratio and its perfect yet unattainable beauty. Montero drew musical inspiration from the harmonically perfect music of J. S. Bach. To Bach's Passacaglia and a prologue with motifs from Bach's composition – composed by Canadian composer Owen Belton – he uses the dancers' movements, a stage set consisting of movable frames, reflective gold foil and light to create living architectural forms that simultaneously reflect their creators. For a moment, the dancers come together to form a single organism, a golden spiral, rows, lines and circles, only to dissolve again immediately in the next moment.