John Neumeier is fired over ‘racist’ Othello
NewsThe veteran German-American choreographer has attacked the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen for dismissing him without discussion after complaints by dancers that his new Othello was racist.
Neumeier, 83, says that ballet director Nikolaj Hübbe and theatre director Kasper Holten refused him any right of explanation.
The dancers said they were being asked to perform warrior dances.
This was Neumaier’s original Othello in Hamburg, with music by Arvo Pärt.
It’s ONE dancer who performs this tribal dance, in the bad dreams of some of the characters – and he is the racial stereotype against whom we see the real, sensitive person Othello. Neumeier is not racist, he wants to show the difference. How sad that the dancers do not understand him. How long until they don’t want to be Carabosse or Rothbart in Swan Lake because they are baddies?
Thanks for explaining. I could not understand the original post at all.
When you infantilize the people you turn them into hammers who view everything as a nail. A hefty rise in collective IQ should fix the problem.
Black stud, white virgin, So cliché and tiresome, when are white artists going to move on to something else? And don’t use “classic” or “Shakespeare” as a crutch for your lack of imagination. If you want to comment of race relations, come up with your own, original, archetypes.
It wouldn’t be an “archetype” if it were original.
Delicious oxymoron!!
Cambridge Dictionary:
“archetype
-noun
-the original model of something from which others are copied
-usage: ‘The United States is the archetype of a federal society.’ ”
My dears, if English is not your native language, at least try consulting a dictionary.
Based on the YouTube video included in the article, I was very impressed by the choreography and dancing (in particular, the instances where Desdemona ‘flops’ when ‘manhandled’ are frighteningly effective, and look like they must have required a lot of effort to put together), although I found the shouting to be crude and unconvincing, but *not* racist… maybe that facet was under-rehearsed, but it sounded more like some dancers “letting off steam” in rehearsal than a “tribal dance”.
So, some artistically unconvincing facets to the choreography, but nothing so egregious as to warrant summary dismissal (or is this the point where a union representative says that speaking or shouting are not in the scope of a dancer’s contract, and the choreographer failed persistently to respect that limitation?). The management should have had a discussion with Neumeier, which should have resulted in the theatre engaging a singing teacher or vocal coach to help choreographer and dancers alike with devising and rehearsing that particular facet of the choreography.
When art is not free, it will slowly die. That is, unless you have some exceptional talent like Shostakovich or Prokofiev who can adapt to anything.
But the these dancers with their big stack of racist card but oh!, so little knowledge… the future is bleak.
how did Celi call the Danes? “Some great talents, but a lot of dilletants, aggressive in their ignorance.”
when and why did this idiocy start, that you can’t show “bad/evil” anymore on stage, because it might hurt some ignorant’s feelings?
Infantilization, grievance, resentment and hate? How’s that for starters? There’s more in the main course.
Celi was the biggest gasbag ever.The biggest moron i´ve ever played under….Full of himself,arrogant,rude…delivering a soporific performance.At least i didn´t have to practice,because everything was at half tempo practice speed
Some people are so influenced by woke culture which that they re just ready to be offended . Sense of nuance is getting lost…
The excerpts shown in the video are beautiful dancing and movement. I wish I could see the entire ballet. What a creative genius!
Shakespeare based his plays on real events (even if he changed them a bit) and Othello was no exception.
So much rubbish is spoken about so-called wokism these days. It is insulting to people who are black who are virtually being told: You cannot possibly see the point of all this but, be assured, we are doing it for your benefit.
I have a friend, British born but of Jamaican parents, who becomes -or used to, when her children were at school – apoplectic when there was talk of a chalk-board, as opposed to a black-board. Her reaction had to be seen to be believed when she realised that, in the film The Dambusters, the name of Guy Gibson’s dog was changed from its original to ‘Blackie.’ One wonders whether even Blackie would be deemed acceptable now.
On the evidence of television adverts, now, one would think it against the law, not to have one spouse white and the other black.
How should I react, by the way, to my friend (above), whom I love, dearly, who says she could never marry a white man? We have coined a phrase to explain the aversion. It is Pink Willie Syndrome.
Neumeier has been a wonderful choreographer for so many decades, the way he has been treated is disgraceful. His ‘RBME’ choreographed for his famous quartet of stars in Stuttgart to the music of the Brahms Second Piano Concerto was superb, his setting of ‘Swan Lake’ for Hamburg with Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II featuring prominently had Bavarian ballet goers desperate to see it, his ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and various works focusing on Nijinsky are just a few if his wonderful creations. That he should have been fired by that miserable former ROH director of opera should not, alas, be a surprise. Holten is the one who should have been fired! After all, he gladly permitted graphic scenes of rape and other abuses at the ROH. This is a travesty!
“Initials R.B.M.E.” is a choreography by John Cranko, not John Neumeier
My apologies to Cranko!
Western liberalism has always had an appetite. It’s going to eat itself now.