Three dancers – classical, hip hop, and contemporary – combine, confront, and intertwine their movements with four musicians. This gives birth to a choreography imbued with the spirit of the waltz, with energy flowing between the arts and aesthetics, between sounds and movements. In this flamboyant ballet, the seven artists tell us how the waltz and polka, originally popular dances, spread to all the courts of Europe and beyond, propelling Strauss to the status of a superstar. They thus question the audience on the permeability of genres and explore how shifts occur from the streets to concert halls.
We know his waltzes, his polkas, his operettas, but what has Johann Strauss left behind from his creativity besides his works? What has he transmitted? Initiated? Many of his contemporaries and successors were fascinated by this exceptional melodist, admired him, and were inspired by him: Brahms, Verdi, Richard Strauss, but also Webern and Berg. Let’s attempt to connect them, also interpreting Lehàr, Helmessberger, Lumbye, and bring forth from all these aesthetics the imprint of Strauss. A creation by Charles-David Wajnberg will create breaches in the concert’s time, adding the now electronic sounds of the clarinet to the melodic writing of the late 19th century.
