What is utter routine in Paris, namely to integrate the opera’s ballet school with the city’s festival, should – as much as Goethe’s description of Leipzig as little Paris might be inappropriate – be also possible in our city. After a tremendous increase in performance quality about one year ago, Oper Leipzig’s ballet school can now be mentioned in one breath with ballet schools in Berlin, Hamburg, München and Stuttgart. That is why it was invited for the first time to perform for euro-scene Leipzig.

Presented will be exclusively contemporary choreographies that as their artistic trademark display originality and diversion. Amongst the shorter productions of the first part’s various choreographies is also a first showing by Heinz Manniegel, the well-known pedagogue from the Heinz BosI foundation in München. The second part brings the great choreography »Fein’s Liebchens leiser Schrei« (»Fine’s Sweetheart muted cry«) by Dietmar Seyffert, the former chief choreographer of the Oper Leipzig and present director of the University of Performing Arts »Ernst Busch«, choreography department. Contemporary and stylised alienation as the result of war and violence on young people set to a powerful music by Gustav Mahler makes this choreography one of the most important dance creations of recent times; it will also be rehearsed by the San Francisco ballet.

The ballet school, under the name of »Art College for dance«, was established in 1966. Hans-Georg Uhlmann, a solo dancer of many years’ standing at the Oper Leipzig, manages the school since 1989. The ballet school fought hard for its existence after Germany’s political chance before it was finally attached in 1993 to the Oper Leipzig.