Thirty five years of the Vienna Festival Ballet

Through those years, he has brought the classical ballets to both big cities and small towns, passionate in his belief that he should do both.

“A lot of the bigger companies cannot perform in smaller venues, but we’ve tailored our productions so that we’re able to adjust the ballet to fit all different sizes of stage,” says the Austrian artistic director.

“This means we can bring ballet as close to home for our audiences as possible, so they don’t have extra travel costs and long journeys. To see ballet in London is very expensive, but with us, they can see a very high standard of ballet at an affordable price, right on their doorstep.”

Vienna Festival Ballet’s latest visit to the Grand Opera House on April 24 and 25 will have three strands to it, beginning with the 35th Anniversary Gala at 7.30pm on the first night, incorporating highlights from Tchaikovsky ballets that have featured in the company’s repertoire.

Highlights will include the Rose Adagio and the Bluebird pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty, Clara’s journey to the glittering land of snow in The Nutcracker and Gershwin’s ground-breaking Rhapsody In Blue.

The lakeside scene from Swan Lake, including the Dance Of The Cygnets, will open the second act, followed by the Hip Hop scene from Snow White and the Dance Of The Mirlitons and the Trepak Dance from The Nutcracker. The gala will close with the beautiful Corn pas de deux from Coppélia and a grand finale.

Next Saturday, Mallek’s company will present An Introduction To Ballet workshop in a 2pm matinee. The day will conclude with a 5pm performance of Sleeping Beauty, with its sumptuous score by Tchaikovsky for the story of a fairy kingdom where the King and Queen are celebrating the birth of their daughter, Princess Aurora, but the Lilac Fairy casts a spell that Aurora and the kingdom will fall asleep for 100 years until a handsome Prince awakens her with a kiss.

The three shows provide a microcosm of Peter Mallek’s admirable endeavours over more than three decades. “We found a niche and we’ve been doing it for 35 years,” he says. “I called it Vienna Festival because I am from Vienna, but nothing else is from Vienna, but that’s like Manchester United: their players don’t come from Manchester!”

Peter has a simple explanation for why Tchaikovsky’s ballets have endured and why his productions have done likewise. “They are so popular because of the music, which is music that people can understand,” he says. “You have all these tunes that everyone loves, and we only present the highlights of the ballets, so that you don’t have to sit there for three and a half hours.

“If you have children there for all that time, they become restless so, instead, we do one hour for the first half, one hour for the second. That’s all you can expect them to stay there for – and the parents too!”

How does Peter trim the ballets? “Very often, the music is repeated five times, so you just play it once but you must still present the full ballet,” he says, keen to retain the richness of classical ballet, whereas he has no enthusiasm for contemporary ballet. “If you present modern ballet, no-one will come,” he quips.

He draws on his experience as a young dancer as the reason behind his practice of putting burgeoning ballet talent in the spotlight. “When I started in Vienna, I had to wait for someone to retire or die before I got a role. The custom was you had to wait for a position to be free, and with that bureaucracy, you either had to wait or creep up on them, which is not fair!” says Peter.

“In Vienna Festival Ballet, I want to give young people a chance. They have the strength for the roles and the audiences like to see young dancers on stage when the curtain open. How long can dancers go on for? Maybe till they’re 36 to 38 maximum, except for Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, but they were going on as legends, not for their strength.”

Peter assembles a company of 20 to 22 dancers. “Everyone has principal roles and company roles, which they change every three days, so it’s pushing everyone and it’s like the dancers have a carrot in front of their noses,” he says.

The Introduction To Ballet workshops is another route to encouraging young talent. “When we came into theatres, we found there were people asking if they could come and watch the company at work and they also wanted to learn more about each dance as they didn’t know much,” says Peter.

“So we thought, ‘why don’t we have workshops where we show what the company does?’. It’s a chance to find out more about a ballet, talk to the dancers and watch them rehearse. If there are children there, they can be lifted up by a dancer to see how that feels.”

Looking back over 35 years, Peter summarises what has given him the most pleasure: “Firstly, to have dancers looking fantastic and moving beautifully is wonderful,” he says. “Secondly, to give young people the chance to dance in these ballets has been a joy.”

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