Detail

The opening of the 67th Vienna Opera Ball on 27 February 2025 will be enchanted by a special highlight: Ballet Director Martin Schläpfer has created a new choreography to the famous Kaiserwalzer by Johann Strauß (Son) especially for this occasion. Twenty members of the Vienna State Ballet and four students from the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera will be dancing. The costumes are by Swiss designer Ida Gut. The Vienna State Opera Orchestra will play under the direction of Cornelius Meister.

As a tribute to one of the city's most famous sons, you let the Vienna State Ballet and students from the Ballet Academy dance to Johann Strauß' Kaiserwalzer op. 437.

The music world is celebrating the 200th anniversary of this composer’s birth this year and I am always fascinated by his music: its special inclination, its orgiastic, liberating quality, but also this escapism into a dance music, which at the time of its creation was not an integral part of high culture, but revolutionary and even taboo in some circles. It reflects an attitude to life that is still associated with Vienna to this day: on top of the world down in the dumps. I find a lot of inspiration in the variety of emotions, the motor skills and this rhythmic-bouncy and at the same time mysterious style of the Kaiserwalzer.

How interested are you in waltz dancing?

As an artist who makes ballets, I am less interested in the standardised steps. I am more interested in the essence, which I first extract for myself and then deal with in my own way. The spinning, the turning in the waltz is of course a beautiful motif for a choreographer.

What are the requirements of a choreography for the Opera Ball?

I approach such a creation in the same way as any other ballet – but of course it is important to consider the special occasion and the way in which the dance floor is viewed from all sides of the room, but also through the cameras on television. After creating a rather academic choreography two years ago with Wiener Blut, I want to respond to the Kaiserwalzer in a more sculptural way, working less with classical lines and more freely, but without losing the noblesse that belongs to a ball. Ida Gut’s costume design provides me with wonderful support in this endeavour. I would like to explore the space that Johann Strauß (Son) is still able to create today between a frozen, clichéd image of the Viennese waltz and the artistic and social modernity of its past. Accordingly, I have chosen four students from the Ballet Academy who are classical dancers as well as good “movers” to join the twenty dancers from the Vienna State Ballet. I am delighted that we once again have been given the opportunity to create a festive opening to the ball with a world premiere by the Vienna State Ballet and the new costume design by Ida Gut, but also to reflect on it through our art and touch the people of today.

Viennese Attitude to Life in a Waltz