Goldberg

In the organizer's words:

Goldberg is a highly virtuosic and profoundly poetic dance piece - inspired by a musical marvel: Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations. For the opening of his first season as director of the Staatsballett Hannover, Goyo Montero not only brings an entire compendium of his dance artistry to the stage with his Goldberg, which premiered in Nuremberg in 2022, but also a portrait of the fascinating personalities of his newly formed company, which is presenting itself as an ensemble for the first time with this premiere.
We owe the composition of the Goldberg Variations to the ailing Count Keyserlingk, who ordered a cycle of variations from Bach as a remedy for his insomnia. What he then delivered, however, is anything but sleep music. Rather, the work, which was simply called "Clavier-Übung" in the first print in 1741, unfolds as an instrumental world theater. It is music in which the whole of human life is reflected and which in Goldberg becomes the starting point for dancing variations on the theme of dreams. Cheerful and profound, playful and powerful, formal and sensual, Goyo Montero uses the language of movement to penetrate the beauties and abysses of the night. Supported by a composition by Canadian Owen Belton, who counterpoints and sheds new light on Bach's variations with his own sound worlds - live and electronic - Goyo Montero stages a play and counterplay of dreams and nightmares.