For its Venetian debut, WINNDance featured nine dancers from all over the world, and what a pleasure it was to admire them again onstage. The Italian Silvia Azzoni and Ukrainian Oleksandr Ryabko, wife and husband off stage and Neumeier’s longtime dancers; Mara Galeazzi, an Italian graduate at La Scala with a career as principal dancer at the Royal Ballet; Diana Vishneva, a world-class prima ballerina among the finest of her generation at the Mariinsky Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. Also present were the Frenchman Gil Romain, pupil and successor to Béjart; Marijn Rademaker himself, a Dutch principal dancer trained with the Stuttgart Ballett; Igone de Jongh, linked as well to the Dutch National Ballet. Furthermore, the handsome Norwegian Silas Henriksen and the versatile Japanese-American Kayoko Everhart.

After five months of rehearsals in Stuttgart, and the final touches at the Arsenale, Venice shaped the company’s history, born at Teatro Malibran, where WINNDance presented a double bill program: “Scirocco (Sirocco),” a title evoking the Venetian atmosphere, both literary and meteorological, given the extreme heat of those days.

The program opened with“Death in Venice,” a work by Imre & Marne van Opstal, Omar Román de Jesús and Rainer Behr with videos by Javier de Frutos framing the dance sequences. No compromise on contemporary technique, the work opted for a tight yet fluid dynamic for the nine performers. Thomas Mann’s novel evokes an expressive attitude: denied to protagonist Aschenbach by conventions in the fictional narrative, yet fully released by the artists now on stage.

The mental landscape of the city suspended over the water became the artistic inspiration for “Bridge of Sighs,” a new creation by John Neumeier. The Ponte dei sospiri (Bridge of sighs)—the first or last lookout point over the city depending on arriving or departing, also a favourite place for lovers and an icon for tourists—is merely suggested by a ladder, silhouetted against a backdrop shifting from blue to dark and then back to serene. What interests the choreographer is not a chronicle of encounters, but rather the stories etched into the bodies and the faces of his rediscovered dancers.

Diana Vishneva is among these artists: her presence on stage always shines brightly. We met her during rehearsals, and she told us that Neumeier has known her since she was fifteen, and she has danced in his ballets both narrative and concertante. The Maestro found her a few years later, now the mother of a young boy, and noticed how she had changed, both in personal and artistic depth.

Leaving the theatre and in the following days wandering around Venice, we reflected on the final scene of “Bridge of Sighs:” a joyful yet moving moment set to the notes of September Song. Rudolf, aged eight, appears on stage running, in a diagonal entrée that seems choreographed. While the adults watch him with nostalgia, the little boy quickly climbs onto the bridge of sighs, waves as if he was about to leave alone, but then he turns back, hugs and kisses his mum Diana, taking her by the hand and runs off, dragging her with him. The past behind us is a treasure; the present throws us into the whirlwind of life; the future becomes a hope.