Human Striving

“Homage to Uwe Scholz”
Leipzig Ballet
Forum Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg, Germany
February 15, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The Stuttgart-bred Uwe Scholz was in his early thirties when he became the Leipzig Ballet’s artistic director and chief choreographer in 1991. Scholz’s ballets were substantial and had depth, but the extent of his choreographic talent has been undiscovered due to his premature death in 2004. Last weekend, the Leipzig Ballet toured Homage to Uwe Scholz at the Forum Ludwigsburg. The double bill comprised two of Scholz’s symphonic pieces, Seventh Symphony, set to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (1811-1812), and Second Symphony, set to Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 (1847).

For the first time, Leipzig Ballet isn’t led by a choreographer, but by artistic director Rémy Fichet. Fichet, who took the reins from Mario Schröder just this season, danced in Leipzig under Scholz and intends to keep his ballets in the repertory. However, he’s realistic. The company’s standard does not yet meet the requirements of every Scholz piece, he admitted, and the dancers will need time to hone their technique. Perhaps, Fichet can prevent Scholz’s work from sinking deeper into oblivion.

In Stuttgart, near Ludwigsburg, Scholz still has a name. There, he took his first steps as a choreographer under Marcia Haydée in 1977, and Stuttgart Ballet has kept some of his pieces in the repertory, such as Seventh Symphony, which premiered in Stuttgart in 1991. I saw a first-rate performance of the piece by Stuttgart Ballet in 2016. The same couldn’t be said for Leipzig Ballet last weekend, but their day may come.

The music’s temperament colors the choreography of each of the four movements of Seventh Symphony, which has a bright, optimistic energy overall. It is directed toward higher realms and generated by people whose humanity has reached a refined level. Even if the music soared triumphantly and the dancers stretched their arms and chests toward heaven like jubilant doves, there was a sense of modesty and order. Togetherness was a key feature as well. The thirty-two dancers performed in various formations and often as male-female couples, but no one was ever left alone. Like Beethoven’s composition, Scholz repeated some patterns and motifs. The dancers stepped out of a spotlight as if newly born in the first movement, stood around and gazed searchingly at the spotlight in the third movement, and soon assembled in rows of three around the spotlight as if they had detected what they were looking for.
For the set design, Scholz took inspiration from the painting Beta Kappa by Morris Louis (1912-1962). The colorful stripes in yellow, blue, and shades of brown and green that fill the lower edges of the painting run on stage from two steep, white hillsides like separate rivulets. Single stripes of color also ran over the white tricots and tops.

Second Symphony, a 1990 creation for Zurich Ballet, is less transcendent but focuses on human interactions and individual emotions. Perhaps its choreography fits the company better (fewer tours en l’air, for example) or they warmed up to Ludwigsburg’s stage. In any case, they delivered a fine performance.
The atmosphere of Second Symphony sometimes felt dense, as if strong emotions had been squeezed into a small, windowless room. A rectangle of red and blue brushstrokes on the backdrop surrounded the dancers like a picture frame. Their simple, light-blue tricots and tops were high-necked (set and costume design by Scholz). The frame’s colors changed with every movement, and in the third movement, the red had turned brownish like dried blood, and a trickle ran down. Of the two couples that opened this movement, one stood motionless in an embrace. The sadness later evaporated, and windmill-like lifts and turns reminiscent of musical clock figures indicated that the two couples regained their zest for life.

Schumann’s composition is said to represent the opposite characters of his two fantasy figures, Florestan and Eusebius, who he invented in his career as a music critic. That’s presumably why the themes and moods of the music—and hence the choreography—were altered. There were melancholic and pensive scenes but also elated and dynamic ones. The onstage equivalent to Florestan and Eusebius was a female couple (Madoka Ishikawa and Diana van Godtsenhoven), at times as close as Siamese twins.
Second Symphony ended with a couple’s humble bow—perhaps toward the audience or Schumann.

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