VIEW FROM VIENNA.

VIEW FROM VIENNA FESTIVAL WEEKS VIENNA, AUSTRIA JUNE, 2000

A container, the sort used to ship cargo across oceans and aboard trains, became Vienna's emblem last summer. Strategically situated at one of the city's busiest corners--in front of the State Opera House--this dull metallic object was the setting for a happening instigated by stage director Christoph Schlingensief and sponsored, initially, by Vienna's annual arts celebration, the Festival Weeks.

The goods inside the container were people, and Schlingensief designated them as ILLEGAL PEOPLE. No one knew for sure whether they were real refugees or actors, but they existed, suggestive of desperate Asian refugees being smuggled to uncertain futures. But it was evocative, too, of the sadistic European television show Big Brother (which hit the American market shortly thereafter). In it, a group of recruits living together round the clock is video monitored for a mega-audience and the viewers vote on the order of their release--which can stretch out for days and weeks.

By itself, Vienna's container, with the shadowy images of its inhabitants that appeared on an outside screen and on TVs throughout the land, was mundane and boring. As symbol, though, or more properly as enigma--because it meant very different things to different people--it stuck in the imagination of Vienna's residents and visitors alike. There wasn't a day during my stay when events that involved the container didn't make the front pages of the newspapers, whether it served merely as a gathering place for the curious, or as the podium for speeches, or when it was stormed by a crowd. Inside the newspapers, too, in lengthy editorials and terse letters to the editor, the container became a catalyst for outpourings on the nature of art, the terms for political debate and the meaning of life.

Context for all this excitement, of course, were the last Austrian elections that resulted in a rightist majority that included the outspoken Jorg Haider and his Freedom Party, with its obstinate anti-immigrant stance and other Fascist overtones. The European Union quickly imposed sanctions on Austria, and numerous private organizations and individuals began to boycott the country. Haider then resigned from the leadership of the Freedom Party, but the party itself remained in the ruling coalition and ostracism of Austria continued. Within Austria, protest against the Haiderites and their "respectable" rightist partners has been healthy. There's none of the oppressive inaction that accompanied the Nazi assumption of power in 1938. Austria remains a democracy, and the ruling party cannot object to protests--as long as they are political.

The "Container Action," however, belonged to the Festival Weeks and, presumably, had governmental arts funding. This the ruling coalition could object to and did. Schlingensief then removed the sign that linked the container to the Festival, incurring the wrath of some former supporters. He posted a replacement that read "Our honor is called loyalty"--a slogan that had been used by the Nazi SS troopers. Although his intent behind using these words was ironic, rightists threatened Schlingensief with legal action for reviving Nazi practices. Not long thereafter, the "Container Action" was terminated. While that commonplace object stood, however, refugee writer and political activist Hannah Arendt's comment on Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and "the ordinariness of institutionalized evil" kept coming to mind.

Other than prompting the creation of protest art, has Austria's political situation affected the arts and, in particular, dance? Edith Wolf Perez, editor and publisher of Austria's dance magazine, tanzAffiche, says yes. As in most places, foreigners have been part of the country's dance scene forever, even in times when the profession was nominally restricted to citizens (and such honorary Austrians as the Lipizzaner Stallions and The Spanish Riding School). Currently, foreigners, who have helped make this nation's cities and towns into a hotbed of international dance instruction, and whose numbers in Austrian dance companies have increased, are feeling threatened. Wolf Perez has opened the pages of her publication to give them a voice. Moreover, she is meticulous in monitoring the effect of budgetary restrictions--which have always had more impact on experimental, alternative and socially critical work than on traditional productions and conventional pieces.

The dance portion of the Festival Weeks hadn't yet begun in June, but there was no lack of things to see. The premiere of The Flood at the Volksoper, Vienna's second lyric theater, showed different animals in Noah's ark locked into separate cages, not living peaceably side by side. Noah himself is caged for a while. Did this imagery refer to the container? In other respects, this piece by Verena Weiss, with assistance from Ingo Diehl (both German choreographers), was simpleminded and predictable despite strong production values and intriguing music from three composers: one American, one a Luxembourger, one Italian; i.e., all foreigners. Of choreographic interest in Flood were three solos--Noah's, in which he sizes planks of wood to build the ark, and the Raven's and the Dove's--the birds sent out to scout for dry land. These passages started strongly but petered out in typical tanztheater fashion. Despite the generally skimpy choreography, Eugene van den Boom as Noah gave the character dignity, and everyone was well rehearsed. There's no doubt that the Volksoper ballet has come up a step from American showbiz choreographer Kim Duddy's regime. In charge now is postmodernist Liz King, who sometimes integrates her own Dancetheater Vienna into the Volksoper's ballet ensemble. Yet I preferred the all-balletic days under Susanne Kirnbauer, and before her, Gerhard Senft, who succeeded Dia Luca. From that line, Ivan Jakus remains as ballet master, and one still finds a few of the old waltzy numbers in the Volksoper's operetta productions.

"Dance in Exile," a series about dancers who fled from the Nazis or were interned by them, focuses on the work of a diverse but distinguished group of choreographers active here mostly between the two world wars. Curated with persistence and daring by critic Andrea Amort, the series was conceived prior to the current political situation but, obviously, there is a resonance. In reviving choreography by Gertrud Bodenwieser, Gertrud Kraus, Andrei Jerschik, Cilly Wang, Pola Nirenska, the recently discovered Hanna Berger and others, Austrians are being shown what liveliness was lost when those in power insisted on racial purity and political conformity. Still performing is one of the then-exiled Viennese dancers--Wera Goldman, now of Tel Aviv. For a solo program at the Old Smithy, Goldman, whose features seem as powerful as a classic actor's mask, danced Witch of Endor and reminisced with brio about the Viennese teachers of her childhood.

One of three dance exhibits at the Theater Museum in Palais Lobkowitz was on the exiles of sixty years ago. Another, conceived by contemporary choreographer Willi Dorner and photographed by Lisa Rastl, was on dancers' feet. The third, objects made from toe shoes, was by American artist Louis von Bunt, who resides in Zurich. Because these shows opened simultaneously, a masterly maneuver by the museum's dance curator Jarmila Weissenbock, Vienna's dance personalities of all persuasions came out in force.

At the Staatsoper, as ever, the big ballet ensemble continues to be opera's stepchild. The dancers were busy rehearsing experimental pieces for their upcoming "off" season at the Odeon Theater while performing Nureyev's 1964 version of Swan Lake on their home stage. Supervised by Richard Nowotny and set in Jordi Roig's airy designs (which have replaced Nicholas Georgiadis's dark, weighty ones), Nureyev's Lake seems almost traditional compared to some recent stagings of this classic. Corps and soloists were particularly fine in the beginning, celebrating Siegfried's birthday. The women brought precision to the swan passages of Acts II and IV, but did not demonstrate the same ease as in Act I. Gregor Hatala, a handsome Siegfried despite heavy legs, is most sympathetic due to his dancing and manner. Romanian ballerina Simona Noja, as Odette/Odile, didn't perform with the same panache I've seen in the past. Her husband, Renato Zanella, heads the Staatsopernballett and is its principal choreographer. He had a romance with Vienna, particularly with the opera administration and the critics when he first came from Stuttgart, but this affair has cooled. The critics, who praised his early short ballets, haven't cared for his recent long ones. (Not so the public, for Zanella's latest, Cinderella to the Johann Strauss score, always sells out.) That he has tried to make the ballet troupe independent surely doesn't please his boss Ioan Holender, director of the Staatsoper. Holender is now putting out trial balloons about fewer dancers, not as many performances, eliminating the ballet school (where the Bolshoi ballerina emerita Ludmila Semenyaka has been engaged to teach) and, as next ballet director, the Russian dancer Vienna has taken to its heart more than any other since Nureyev--Vladimir Malakhov. Last year, Holender invited Malakhov to stage La Bayadere for the Staatsoper. For next year, he's asked him to choreograph an original two-acter based on Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera.

Check off the Dance House on Vienna's list for the future. An idea for a long time, it is now actually being built in the Museumsquarter as part of a new arts complex that's mushrooming up from old stables and courtyards where the Hapsburg emperors' cavalries once made their home. The Dance House will at last give this city a place where performance dancing comes first. The search for a director, a municipal position, proceeded without incident, and Sigrid Gareis, a festival planner from Germany, is to be in charge of what will probably be called the Vienna Center for Contemporary Dance and Performance. Not without incident was the search for a national dance curator. Wolf Perez's antennae were up when the application period for this job was Suddenly curtailed, and she objected to the irregularity in an editorial. Curiously, it was the socialist government that took the action that would cut down on the number of potential applicants, particularly those traveling or residing outside Austria at the time. When the rightist government came in, it decided to abolish this federal position altogether.

That Vienna is looking both to the past and future is a healthy sign, as are the city's building boom, human diversity and alert press. New structures are rising all over town, and on sidewalks and in the subway there are head shawls and skin tones one wouldn't have seen in significant numbers just a while ago. These new facets can exist in harmony with the old houses and their painted plaster facades, with waitresses whose blond curls and white collars contrast pleasingly with their deep-colored smocks and, too, with traditional attitudes when these are humane. But a question: If all Vienna's dancers who are not pure Austrians were declared illegal by the Haiderites, how many containers would it take to export them?

Zanella has not (yet) been replaced as head of the Staatsopernballet; at season's end he was offered a three-year renewal, which he signed. Holender, though, terminated the appointment of the ballet school's well-regarded director, Michael Birkmeyer, former principal with the company and descended from a long line of Viennese dancers, appointing Zanella to this job as well, thus saving the Opera one top dance salary. Sanctions by ECU countries were lifted in September.