Zurich’s Cosmopolitan Choreography
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Crossposted from Haaretz
Many dance troupes are closely identified with the choreographer and artistic director leading them. But in the case of the Zurich Ballet, it seems that Heinz Spoerli has taken this tendency a step too far. His name appears together with the name of the troupe wherever possible, whether on billboards and in various notices at the troupe’s home base, on the vest he wears, or on the Ballet’s truck in the car park. Spoerli is everywhere, he can’t be missed. Even on the home page of the troupe’s website, among the changing photographs of dancers, his huge portrait suddenly appears.
Spoerli’s troupe, slated to appear in Israel this month, is part of the Zurich Opera House. The Opera’s neoclassical building, a beautiful, elegant edifice of relatively humble dimensions befitting Swiss good taste, graces the banks of Lake Zurich. In the afternoon hours, the building’s lively halls were filled with dancers dressed in athletic outfits and communicating mostly in English, suggesting a cosmopolitan atmosphere.
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