The Seagull

About the Ballet

The acclaimed American-born, German-based John Neumeier is a choreographer who conceives his ballets as first and foremost theatrical experiences, as vehicles for the exploration of ideas and dramatic interactions.

Whether narrative or pure dance works, there is always an abiding concern for the theatrical context in which the works are experienced and understood, an approach that gives them all not just their riveting sense of immediacy and presence but their emotional intensity.

Mr. Neumeier's 2002 ballet The Seagull is an especially powerful example of this tendency. Based on Anton Chekhov's play dealing with intergenerational conflict and the role of the artist, The Seagull maintains Chekhov's setting and thematic focus, while changing the occupations of the main characters from those of actresses and writers to dancers and choreographers. Employing a richly evocative score by such disparate composers as Shostakovich, Evelyn Glennie, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin, the work traverses a broad range of emotional terrain while remaining always unified by some of the most compelling and expressive choreography by one of contemporary ballet's most important voices.

"Chekhov, like Shakespeare, is an author who creates characters so complex, so true that they live in the imagination outside and independent of the text. It is the emotional life behind Chekhov's words that I transform into dance. For me, the central theme and conflict of The Seagull is the development of the relationship between love and art - art and love."

- John Neumeier

"Nothing much, only an idea that occurred to me. An idea for a short story. A young girl grows up on the shores of a lake, as you have. She loves the lake as the gulls do, and is as happy and free as they. But a man sees her who chances to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness, as this gull here has been destroyed."

The Seagull, Anton Chekhov

presents The Seagull

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