At its best, the marriage of music and dance acts as a motor to drive the creativity of a new work. Xin Pen Wang’s 2019 piece «Im Wald», which was created for seven men of the company, uses the orchestral score «Vajrayӑna» by the composer Camile Pépin to explore concepts of Eastern philosophy and metaphysics.

Vajrayāna in Sanskrit translates as the “Thunderbolt or Diamond Vehicle”. In Buddhism it marks the transition from speculative thought to the enactment of Buddhistic ideals in one’s personal life. From this point of view, our individual fictions and imposed depictions of chaos come in direct conflict with the absolutely real and indestructible nature of the spiritual world.

In her orchestral composition, Camile Pépin adopts the Tibetan Buddhist principle of the five elements (earth, water, fire, wind and space). Their fundamental and sacred energies are encountered in the psychic dimension of all (human) beings: “The first four are the constituent material of nature, while the fifth contains all the others. The microcosm of the body is thus joined with the macrocosm of the Universe. These cosmic energies are at the origin of the worlds of earthly and spiritual existence: that is the Vajrayāna.”

Xin Peng Wang adopts these same principles in the movement language of his ballet. «Im Wald» explores the “creaturely subconscious” and how its instinctive and impulsive nature always manages to escape our attempts at civilization. Created for the company in 2019, it has been restaged each season since, allowing for subsequent generations of dancers to personally identify and contribute their own qualities to the work’s evolving lifespan. The intentions embedded in Xin Peng Wang and Camile Pépin’s respective works are thus continually renewed through the reinterpretations of subsequent generations.

ABOUT XIN PENG WANG
Xing Peng Wang began his professional dance training and the Beijing Dance Academy before completing his studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. He went on to become a principal dancer at both the Beijing Dance company and the Aalto Ballett in Essen. It was in Essen that he began choreographing, which led him to assume the artistic directorship of the Meiningen Theatre’s ballet company. In 2003, Wang began working at Ballett Dortmund where he now holds the position of Ballettintendant. 

First premiered on 7 April 2019 as part of a matinée by the Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung at the Nationaltheater Munich