»The man dares avant-garde. Also speed. And that of all places in staid Weimar, a town where one managed for years to tame and to court artists, so that the provincial tranquillity won’t be disturbed« (Ralph Gambihler, Leipziger Volkszeitung, 30.05.1995).

Joachim Schlömer is presently German choreography’s greatest hope. With him lasts »Orestie« the three-part masterpiece of ancient Greece by Aischylos dating back to 458 BC, whole 65 minutes. The music comes from the Greek composer lannis Xenakis and was written in 1965 for a production of the Aischylos play. The in 1962 born Schlömer studied dance and composition technique at Essen’s Folkwang school. In 1991 he became ballet director at Ulm’s theatre and since 1994 he is employed at the Deutsche Nationaltheater Weimar. »Orestie« had its first showing in Ulm in 1993 and in 1995 it was reproduced in Weimar. Schlömer also choreographed in the USA for the world-famous star Michail Baryschnikow.

A human tragedy in slow motion speed, just like a woodcut, full of symbolism, decadent, filled with burning passion and colours. A strange mixture of Europe’s, Asia’s and Egypt’s cultures, stimulated by Greek reliefs, the performance exerts such a strong suggestion in the symbiosis of stylised and at the same time highly theatrical moments, that one believes in the end, this was only its beginning.

Agamemnon returns home victorious from the war and his mistress Cassandra is amongst his entourage. He and Cassandra are killed by his wife Klytämnestra who, during Agamemnon’s absence, took Aegisth as her lover. Orest, Agamemnon’s son and Electra’s brother, revenges his father by killing his mother and her lover. The guilt that he placed upon himself by killing his mother, drives him to insanity. It comes to a judgement between murder of one’s spouse and murder of one’s mother. The goddes Athena, Athens’s patroness, casts her decisive vote against the will of the Erinyes – avenging furies towards Orest’s acquittal.