CANZONE PER ORNELLA
Raimund Hoghe used to write portraits, both of famous and unknown people, which were published in Die Zeit. That habit remains at the heart of his work as a choreographer, under the guise of solos addressed to famous figures—Joseph Schmidt, Judy Garland, Maria Callas—or to some of his favourite performers—Songs for Takashi or Musiques et mots pour Emmanuel. They always take the form of a “musical offering,” where his performers express their art through a presence deeply aware of the effects of music and of time, of the imaginary resonance of a voice and a melody. Ornella Balestra — widely recognized for her work with Maurice Béjart—is one of those dancers able to best embody this mixture of intensity and reverie that characterizes Raimund Hoghe’s dance (see his Swan Lake, 4 Acts , Boléro Variations, Quartet, or La Valse). In Canzone per Ornella, the choreographer brings together for his dancer music and texts by Pier Paolo Pasolini, both those that have already been explored and those that are still to be experienced, playing with her ability to strike the perfect balance between virtuosity and entertainment, between enigmatic presence and movie-like figure.
Raimund Hoghe was born in Wuppertal and began his career by writing portraits of outsiders and celebrities for the German weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”. From 1980 to 1990 he worked as dramaturge for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. Since 1989 he has been working on his own theatre pieces for various dancers and actors. 1992 started his collaboration with the artist Luca Giacomo Schulte, who is till now his artistic collaborator. In 1994 he produced his first solo for himself, Meinwärts, which together with the subsequent Chambre séparée (1997) and Another Dream (2000) made up a trilogy on the 20th century.
Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Concept, choreography and scenography: Raimund Hoghe
Artistic collaboration: Luca Giacomo Schulte
Performance: Ornella Balestra, Raimund Hoghe, Luca Giacomo Schulte
Light design: Raimund Hoghe, Amaury Seval
Photo: Rosa Frank
Administration, production: Mathieu Hillereau, Les Indépendances
Production: Raimund Hoghe – Hoghe & Schulte GbR (Düsseldorf).
Coproduction: Theatre im Pumpenhaus Münster.
WIth support: Ministry of culture and enterpreneurship Nordrhein-Westfalenu, Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt u Düsseldorfu, La ménagerie de verre de Paris dans le cadre de Studiolab.
Special thanks to agnès b. Pariz (FR)