ZURICH BALLET UPDATE.

ZURICH--Now in his third year as director of the Zurich Ballet, Heinz Spoerli is contemplating three more years in the gracious opera house on the shores of Lake Zurich. Spoerli's policies have pleased most factions. Traditionalists appreciate his insistence that the repertory utilize the dancers' training in classical technique. The reform-minded concede that the use of classicism is, on occasion, progressive. Opera management seems satisfied by Spoerli's musical taste that spans old and new, his collaborations with modernist designers, and his skilled programming and casting policies that keep seats filled.

Not everything presented is by the director: he programmed works by Hans van Manen and William Forsythe in the past season. (See Reviews International, December 1998). Spoerli's choreography, always well crafted, has in recent years become intriguingly intricate and boldly textured, traits which are well served by his dancers' pliancy and speed.

The company, numbering thirty-six, is kept in form by three ballet masters--Peter Appel, Chris Jensen, and Frederic Olivieri--as well as by Spoerli. The troupe includes such eye-catchers as tall, spidery Ilja Louwen from the Netherlands. New this season are the Kirichenko twins, Oleksander and Seriy, a pair of eighteen-year-olds who look nearly alike and move so similarly that van Manen cast them as mirror images in his Metaphors.

New works Spoerli is planning to choreograph include Cinderella (Prokofiev) and a program of ballets to Mozart. (Last year he used Brahms.) He says that he'd also like to acquire a work by Merce Cunningham, perhaps Summerspace, because there is a version once made for New York City Ballet that uses not just pointe work but classically trained bodies.