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John Sebastian Bachs Matthew Passion has deeply moved me. Bachs musical incarnation of the Passion in both its general and personal aspects created the need in me to find a choreographic equivalent. I am both Christ and a dancer. My whole life, all my thought and feeling are the dance, and choreography is my real language. That is why I have attempted to express my own religious convictions and experiences in choreographic terms and to organize them in artistic form. In my entire career as a choreographer, I have never known a period in which I enjoyed such complete harmony with the dancers, as I have enjoyed throughout the creation of the St. Matthew Passion. It was a period of learning from one another, of experiencing instinctively together the emotion of text and music, of positive cooperation and concentration. Even if this ballet had never got beyond rehearsals and had never been performed, the process of its creation will remain the most profound experience of my working life. John Neumeier
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'One's imagination can feast on this ballet and its implications, one can become personally involved, but it is difficult if not impossible to imagine any other company performing it. It is the unique expression of this man and this company he has forged.'' --Dance Magazine
Neumeier,who bows out here as Christ-like dancer,sees this a his finest achievement.Balletomanes may agree. Perfomance *** Picture &Sound **** --BBC Music Magazine,Mar'11
Neumeier,who bows out here as Christ-like dancer,sees this a his finest achievement.Balletomanes may agree. Perfomance *** Picture &Sound **** --BBC Music Magazine,Mar'11
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Verified Purchase
Another review of this substantial work strikes a note of heavy scorn. It made me wonder: 'great score ... great artists, a great ballet company ... great dancers', even Neumeier himself is admitted to be pretty good at other times - so how come this ballet is such a disaster? In a kind of fractious reaction to the tone of the review I went ahead and bought the 3 DVDs. I am therefore deeply grateful to the reviewer for so arousing my curiosity.
True, this work is not as immediately accessible to the indolent mind as, say, Disney's Snow White, but then, neither is Hamlet. To really feast on Hamlet you must become at least passingly familiar with Elizabethan English. In other words, you must make a bit of effort. The more you put in, the more you get out; the higher you climb, the better the view.
The music is of course sublime. The story, largely from the gospel of St Matthew, is compelling in the Picander (Henrici) libretto. In Bach's Passion, the music and the sung story are inseparable. Neumeier marries the dancing to music and story in a complex whole. I don't think you need to be a Christian to appreciate this beautiful and profoundly moving work; you just need to have the attitude that the best art may need a little initial effort on your part.
In my case I needed to study the libretto (free on the net in German and English) to help my meagre German. Any ballet gains when you know the story. For this one it is an advantage know the detail of the story. There are no subtitles, but that may not be a bad thing; the motivation to study the libretto in advance is greater, and subtitles can be distracting. So yes, perhaps you need to work a little beforehand. The higher you climb, the better the view. Oh, and you need not to have had your attention span permanently damaged by too many hours in front of popular TV. (I know, I too can be scornful.)
As to picture quality: I have certainly seen better quality DVDs, but as when watching stuff filmed with antediluvian technology, if the stuff is good one soon forgets that it is not blu-ray.
So: Worth the money? Worth some effort? Yes and yes!
I almost gave it 5 stars, but well, it could have been blu-ray.
Oh, and God preserve us from artists who work to please the audience!
True, this work is not as immediately accessible to the indolent mind as, say, Disney's Snow White, but then, neither is Hamlet. To really feast on Hamlet you must become at least passingly familiar with Elizabethan English. In other words, you must make a bit of effort. The more you put in, the more you get out; the higher you climb, the better the view.
The music is of course sublime. The story, largely from the gospel of St Matthew, is compelling in the Picander (Henrici) libretto. In Bach's Passion, the music and the sung story are inseparable. Neumeier marries the dancing to music and story in a complex whole. I don't think you need to be a Christian to appreciate this beautiful and profoundly moving work; you just need to have the attitude that the best art may need a little initial effort on your part.
In my case I needed to study the libretto (free on the net in German and English) to help my meagre German. Any ballet gains when you know the story. For this one it is an advantage know the detail of the story. There are no subtitles, but that may not be a bad thing; the motivation to study the libretto in advance is greater, and subtitles can be distracting. So yes, perhaps you need to work a little beforehand. The higher you climb, the better the view. Oh, and you need not to have had your attention span permanently damaged by too many hours in front of popular TV. (I know, I too can be scornful.)
As to picture quality: I have certainly seen better quality DVDs, but as when watching stuff filmed with antediluvian technology, if the stuff is good one soon forgets that it is not blu-ray.
So: Worth the money? Worth some effort? Yes and yes!
I almost gave it 5 stars, but well, it could have been blu-ray.
Oh, and God preserve us from artists who work to please the audience!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
John Neumeier has produced some very fine ballets, so, when this came out the expectations were high. Unfortunately, this is not up to his usual standards. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a worse example of a ballet than this. Neumeier has taken a great score performed by great artists, a great ballet company consisting of great dancers, and great theatrical resources and managed to completely squander them. What we have here is mostly a bunch of walking, staring longingly, escorting, positioning, and some twitching. Neumeier, himself, plays Jesus Christ. We see that he can still walk, sit and pose in a partial fetal position with his feet well pointed. Congratulations, John, you can still point your feet very well! Yes, there are moments when we are reminded that the people on stage are actually talented dancers. There actually are some fleeting, brief moments of movements we may call dancing, but they are brief and punctuated by very, very, long periods of very, very boring stretches of walking, staring(longingly!), and carrying. One of the more interesting moments is a pas de deux of a man and woman each wearing one pointe shoe with the other foot bare. Is this brilliance, or just a gimmick? In any case, it is, of course, brief, since Neumeier doesn't want to divert too much of our attention away from the staring(longingly!)
To make matters worse, Neumeier has the nerve to comment that this is the most perfect possible choreographic approach to this subject! Could he be just a bit too self-absorbed with this?
Well, this is a very long ballet consisting of three discs, so we might think we are getting our money's worth. But is more of less more, or is it less? Hmmm, I think the latter.
Neumeier evidently feels very strongly toward the topic of this ballet. That is understandable. But if his emotions are so great that they prevent him from thinking clearly about the practical matters to bring it to the stage, then he should have let someone else tackle it.
Fortunately, we see from his subsequent work that this ballet is an aberration. John Neumeier is not washed up.
There are two types of artists: the kind that feels they work to please the audience, and the kind that feels the audience is there to please them. Hopefully, John will try to be more of the former and not the latter.
To make matters worse, Neumeier has the nerve to comment that this is the most perfect possible choreographic approach to this subject! Could he be just a bit too self-absorbed with this?
Well, this is a very long ballet consisting of three discs, so we might think we are getting our money's worth. But is more of less more, or is it less? Hmmm, I think the latter.
Neumeier evidently feels very strongly toward the topic of this ballet. That is understandable. But if his emotions are so great that they prevent him from thinking clearly about the practical matters to bring it to the stage, then he should have let someone else tackle it.
Fortunately, we see from his subsequent work that this ballet is an aberration. John Neumeier is not washed up.
There are two types of artists: the kind that feels they work to please the audience, and the kind that feels the audience is there to please them. Hopefully, John will try to be more of the former and not the latter.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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3 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Much more than just a choreography
22 Oct 2010
This work is absolutely amazing, astounding and unbelievable. I am German and have been a professional dancer myself, so the very high Quality of John Neumeiers ballets is not exactly new to me. Even so I was simply thunderstruck. I could talk about intelligent, surprising choreographie or perfect dance technique, but after watching the ballet things like that somehow don't seem to be important anymore. For the first time in decades ballet has become again what it was meant for: just a means to transport something much bigger and greater than humanity itself. The mystery. Holyness. I am not even Christian and can feel now what it means to really sense his spirit inside oneself. I put the first CD in and simply couldn't stop watching, following this profound mystery that unwrapped itself right in front of my eyes and also deeply perceptible in every one of my cells. This definitely is what art was made for. And I for myself was very content with Neumeiers decision to dance the part of Jesus, because it needs more than the life experience of a 25-year-old dancer to transport what Neumeier expresses here. He shows us a myth that is 100 percent christian but at the same time much, much older than Christianity - a truth that emcompasses not only the story of one man who lived 2000 years ago, but also of humanity itself and of every single person (and especially man) who watches this ballet today. You can't get better, deeper and more encompassing than this.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Forgive John, for he knows not what he does.
1 Dec 2011
Amazon Verified Purchase
John Neumeier has produced some very fine ballets, so, when this came out the expectations were high. Unfortunately, this is not up to his usual standards. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a worse example of a ballet than this. Neumeier has taken a great score performed by great artists, a great ballet company consisting of great dancers, and great theatrical resources and managed to completely squander them. What we have here is mostly a bunch of walking, staring longingly, escorting, positioning, and some twitching. Neumeier, himself, plays Jesus Christ. We see that he can still walk, sit and pose in a partial fetal position with his feet well pointed. Congratulations, John, you can still point your feet very well! Yes, there are moments when we are reminded that the people on stage are actually talented dancers. There actually are some fleeting, brief moments of movements we may call dancing, but they are brief and punctuated by very, very, long periods of very, very boring stretches of walking, staring(longingly!), and carrying. One of the more interesting moments is a pas de deux of a man and woman each wearing one pointe shoe with the other foot bare. Is this brilliance, or just a gimmick? In any case, it is, of course, brief, since Neumeier doesn't want to divert too much of our attention away from the staring(longingly!).
To make matters worse, Neumeier has the nerve to comment that this is the most perfect possible choreographic approach to this subject! Could he be just a bit too self-absorbed with this?
Well, this is a very long ballet consisting of three discs, so we might think we are getting our money's worth. But is more of less more, or is it less? Hmmm, I think the latter.
Neumeier evidently feels very strongly toward the topic of this ballet. That is understandable. But if his emotions are so great that they prevent him from thinking clearly about the practical matters to bring it to the stage, then he should have let someone else tackle it.
Fortunately, we see from his subsequent work that this ballet is an aberration. John Neumeier is not washed up.
There are two types of artists: the kind that feels they work to please the audience, and the kind that feels the audience is there to please them. Hopefully, John will try to be more of the former and not the latter.
To make matters worse, Neumeier has the nerve to comment that this is the most perfect possible choreographic approach to this subject! Could he be just a bit too self-absorbed with this?
Well, this is a very long ballet consisting of three discs, so we might think we are getting our money's worth. But is more of less more, or is it less? Hmmm, I think the latter.
Neumeier evidently feels very strongly toward the topic of this ballet. That is understandable. But if his emotions are so great that they prevent him from thinking clearly about the practical matters to bring it to the stage, then he should have let someone else tackle it.
Fortunately, we see from his subsequent work that this ballet is an aberration. John Neumeier is not washed up.
There are two types of artists: the kind that feels they work to please the audience, and the kind that feels the audience is there to please them. Hopefully, John will try to be more of the former and not the latter.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
An opaque and self-important ballet
2 Oct 2010
Choreographer John Neumeier's ST MATTHEW PASSION is a ballet I first saw and admired in Hamburg in 1981 and although memory can be a fickle thing and personal tastes change, I am surprised by just how disappointing I find this filmed performance made in 2005. Neumeier's vocabulary is opaque, its voice mute and in a work of over 200 minutes, few images remain in the mind and even fewer passages make any kind of articulate or expressive impact. And the presence of Neumeier himself in the cast does the ballet a disservice, his generational distance from the rest of the dancers triggering uncomfortable emotional, dramatic and contextual resonances while the ordinariness of his presence and performance make it a casting decision hard to understand. If you're looking for a ballet to a great piece of sacred music, try Uwe Scholze's GREAT MASS for the Leipzig Ballet - by no means a masterpiece but is has a structure and dramatic impetus that the self-important ST MATTHEW PASSION does not begin to achieve.
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