“Tribute to Tetley”
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
April 25, 2026
by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2026 by Ilona Landgraf
In 1972, no one foresaw how fateful Glen Tetley’s (1926-2007) invitation to stage his 1965 piece, The Mythical Hunter, for Stuttgart’s junior company would be. He and the artistic director, John Cranko, got along, and Tetley was commissioned to create a new ballet for the main company. It was June 1973, and Voluntaries wasn’t yet finished when news of Cranko’s sudden death on a transatlantic flight reached Stuttgart. At the request of Marcia Haydée and Cranko’s heir, the late Dieter Graefe, Tetley subsequently took over as the company’s artistic director. But administrative work burdened him. After two seasons, he passed the reins to Haydée, relieved to renew his focus on choreography. Yet fate had something else in store. In 1986, just as Tetley agreed to become Erik Bruhn’s artistic associate at the National Ballet of Canada, Bruhn died. Tetley kept his word, took up the post, and stayed for five years.
On his centennial anniversary, Stuttgart Ballet premiered a triple bill, including two creations from his Stuttgart time (Voluntaries and Le Sacre du Printemps) and his 1966 Ricercare.
I don’t know to what extent Cranko’s death influenced the creation of Voluntaries, but as the piece was already in the making, its music, Francis Poulenc’s Organ Concerto (FP93), must have already been set. Was it a coincidence or providence that it provided the sacred atmosphere of a service? Voluntaries was to become an outlet for the company’s grief. “We were all mourning,” remembered Reid Anderson, who succeeded Haydée as artistic director in 1996 and danced in the 1973 premiere of Voluntaries. But the piece is by no means thoroughly gloomy. Rather, it transcends grief into spiritual aspiration.
Sunday’s revival was led by Elisa Badenes and Martí Paixà, who embraced in silence at the center of the rear stage in the opening scene. Withdrawn into herself, Badenes took some steps, bent forward as if downcast, slowly straightened, and, lifted by Paixà, arched her chest back above his head as if to surrender to higher realms. At that moment, the organ began to play. Delicate blue dots on a gray background created a sense of haziness against which the dancers looked like well-defined sculptures. Later expanding to an orbit of red, blue, green, and yellow, the dots shone depending on the soft or sunny lighting. Bright dots in similar colors decorated the dancers’ white leotards.
An abundance of lifts defined the piece. Again and again, Paixà, Badenes, and the rest of the corps repeated the initial lift. Women hardly ever walked on stage but were instead carried while pointing one leg straight up. On other occasions, they were lifted into a 
diagonal, their arms stretched yearningly. Women towered on their partners’ shoulders like figureheads or were carried vertically and horizontally like planks. Supported by alternating men, the feet of Diana Ionescu did not touch the floor for an entire scene.
Paixà was Badenes’s calm pillar (among others, he swung her like a seesaw or held her in a downward diagonal while her outstretched arm drew a circle that seemed to encompass the universe) and his arms her protective frame, but his solo revealed the struggle that he fought alone. Ponderous sounds turned the couple’s subsequent pas de deux frantic, but, as Badenes wriggled herself around Paixà’s chest and then snuggled on his lap, both calmed. The agitation quieted a second time after Badenes jumped into Paixà’s arms. Her arms hanging sideways made her appear to be suffering as she began a solo that seemed like an explanation for Paixà. As the lighting turned into a transfigured blue, the corps joined them for a brief moment, repeating the initial lifts. Left alone, Badenes and Paixà lay together and then, as if awaking from a dream, abruptly rose and repeated their opening pas de deux.
The gentle cello opening of Mordecai Seter’s Ricercare accompanied Anna Osadcenko and Friedemann Vogel, who were languidly lying on either side of a white, bowl-shaped rectangle. Tetley compared it to a shell, synonymous with a love nest. Made from very thin material it looked like a stylish museum sculpture. During the roughly fifteen minutes of his 1966 Ricercare, each lover retreated into the shell to sleep (or rather to be alone).
In between, their arms and legs entwined as if trying to melt into one body, and their hands couldn’t stop feeling each other’s skin. While Osadcenko’s palm seemed glued to Vogel’s chest at one point, his fingers wantonly grasped her womb. Exhausted by intimacy, Osadcenko slid from Vogel’s arms onto the floor, soft as a pancake. Her tentative attempt to leave provoked Vogel’s rebellion. His elbows yanked to his hips, and his chest arched in a manly way, but he was merely showing off. Although eager to appear resolute, he was in fact a softened faun. But he achieved what he was after: Osadcenko returned to the shell with him. Before both resumed their lovemaking, they posed with their outer legs decoratively opened sideways, as if to underscore the artificiality of their mating game.
Of the twenty-seven ballets to Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps that the Stuttgart Ballet assembled in the program booklet as the most important, I know only a few. Sadly, except for Sasha Waltz’s failed version for the Mariinsky Ballet, the compilation ignores all non-Western interpretations. Although Tetley deliberately sidelined the pagan Russian roots of Stravinsky’s score and described the music as a mere “physical sensation,” it can’t be helped that its energy is directed toward Mother Earth. Indeed, Tetley’s choreography is not light but rather a physical tour de force, leaving the male dancers in particular dripping with sweat. But its many lifts and some pretty poses felt out of place, especially since the former resembled those from Voluntaries.
Given how the legs wrapped around chests and partners’ embraces obviously paralleled Ricercare, one could only assume that Tetley’s choreographic vocabulary was limited.
His Chosen One was a male martyr (Henrik Erikson) who redeemed humankind by taking all sins and sorrows upon himself. His parents (Anna Osadcenko and Jason Reilly) attended the ritual without interfering. As if unshakable, they stood straddle-legged while a line of men tossed Erikson in the air and let his lifeless body glide to the floor. Reilly rolled and pulled Erikson off stage, making way for Osadcenko’s solo, which (contrary to expectations) expressed no despair but was nondescript ballet-ish. Soon after, Erikson was carried back and laid on the upstretched feet of the other men, where he rested with his arm folded over his head like a sleeping Adonis.
From there, he came to life for his final solo. Inhaling eagerly, he sniffed the ground like an animal. He must have picked up the scent when he broke into a frenzy of jumps, hurled himself to the floor, and flailed his arms as if exercising an evocation. Standing like a Minotaur at the front of the stage, his hand tried to avert something invisible, but there was no escape. Surrounded by a bulk of bodies, he was bound to a flying harness and rose like Jesus on the cross.
The State Orchestra Stuttgart played under the baton of guest conductor Ermanno Florio. Christian Schmitt played the organ in Voluntaries.
| Link: | Website of the Stuttgart Ballet | |
| Photos: | 1. | Ensemble, “Voluntaries” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 |
| 2. | Elisa Badenes and Martí Paixà, “Voluntaries” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 3. | Elisa Badenes and Martí Paixà, “Voluntaries” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 4. | Elisa Badenes and Martí Paixà, “Voluntaries” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 5. | Irene Yang, Joaquin Gaubeca, and ensemble, “Voluntaries” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 6. | Anna Osadcenko and Friedemann Vogel, “Ricercare” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 7. | Friedemann Vogel and Anna Osadcenko, “Ricercare” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 8. | Friedemann Vogel and Anna Osadcenko, “Ricercare” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 9. | Friedemann Vogel, “Ricercare” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 10. | Anna Osadcenko, Jason Reilly, and ensemble, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 11. | Henrik Erikson and ensemble, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 12. | Ensemble, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 13. | Henrik Erikson and ensemble, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| 14. | Henrik Erikson, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Glen Tetley © Glen Tetley Legacy, Stuttgart Ballet 2026 | |
| all photos © Stuttgart Ballet | ||
| Editing: | Kayla Kauffman |
