Abstract
The Junior Ballett’s biennial productions, which began in 2012, have become an enthusiastically received tradition for Zurich audiences. It is always a special challenge for the young dancers of Ballett Zürich to perform in the current repertoire and be directly involved in the creation of new pieces simultaneously. For this production, Samantha Lynch and Shaked Heller will collaborate with the Junior Ballett. Both are still active as dancers, but have been successfully pursuing choreography for several years. Shaked Heller is from Israel and was a member of the Junior Ballett himself during the 2015/16 season. Since then, he’s danced with the Stuttgart Ballet, and has already created several choreographies for that company. The musical core of his first collaboration with the Junior Ballett is a composition by German sound pioneer Oskar Sala, who developed the trautonium, a precursor of the later synthesizer, with the engineer Friedrich Trautwein in the late 1920s. This electronic music instrument, with its unmistakable synthetic sound, was wildly popular, especially in film and radio productions. Alongside composers such as Paul Hindemith, Oskar Sala created and interpreted many pieces for the instrument. Now, Shaked Heller uses its surreal, exotic world of sound for inspiration. Samantha Lynch is Principal Dancer with the Norwegian National Ballet. Originally from Australia, Lynch started her career with the Houston Ballet, before moving to Oslo, where she has developed into a successful and charismatic dancer. She has led a renowned choreography workshop at Oslo’s opera house for many years, from which many of her works emerged. This marks her first collaboration with the Junior Ballett.
