DUISBURG The final ballet premiere of the season of the Ballet am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg is a ‘fireworks display’ of music and dance which opens on Saturday 7 June.  The evening Soirée Ravel brings together four world premiere dance pieces to the Duisburg Theater to celebrate the 150^th birthday of composer Maurice Ravel.

Choreographers Bridget Breiner and Richard Siegal have created a dynamic programme that includes the world famous musical work "Bolero", and also displays different facets of Ravel's diverse ouvre. With their own distinct choreographic styles, they translate the essence of Ravel's four distinct compositions into four independent pieces. Throughout the programme the pieces enter a dialogue with each other and are musically connected through soundscapes created by Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch.

Rarely used as ballet music, the curtain rises on an intriguing piece of music – the piece “Concerto for the Left Hand” played by virtuoso pianist Alina Bercu, and choreographed by Bridget Breiner. Ravel wrote this work of music for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm as a result of a war injury in the First World War. Figures and allegories appear in Breiner’s choreography, which she further develops in her second premiere work of this programme, the touching love story from ancient Greece brought to life on stage through dance, "Daphnis et Chloé". Before this, we experience Richard Siegal turning his choreographic focus to a completely different composition: Ravel's "La Valse" is shown as a dream-like vision of a Viennese waltz, before it is brutally overrun by war. Richard Siegal created this piece for ten dancers. For "Bolero," his second premiere and the final piece of the programme, Siegal brings a new dimension of movement to the stage with a treadmill-like dynamic.  Dancing on a moving walkway, the dancers constantly push against the lateral movement, physically showing a paradox. While they move continuously to Ravel's driving and circular rhythms, they remain spatially stationary.

Under the musical direction of Kapellmeisterin Katharina Müllner, the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra presents this multi-faceted Ravel evening.

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