A life's work as a collection

There is a dance that John Neumeier has never shown publicly - although he has been practicing it for around 73 years. This is the dance around the dance, represented by the objects in his collection, which began with the purchase of a first used book on the subject at the age of ten in Cleveland.

This image of dance has long since been taken quite literally, as the 83-year-old Artistic Director of the Hamburg Ballet lives on three floors in a villa in Eppendorf in the midst of a collection of more than 50,000 exhibits. At home, Neumeier dances elegantly around showcases and statues almost every day, between tightly packed paintings, walls full of books, between photographs, porcelain figures and bronzes.

Space is slowly running out. This is one of the reasons why the now 83-year-old choreographer's journey through life is now at the Ballet Institute, a station that he first presented as an idea to the then Senator for Culture, Wolfgang Tarnowski, in the late 1970s. Half a century later, in the summer of 2023, John Neumeier will give up his job as Artistic Director of the Hamburg Ballet.

He will then continue to work as a choreographer and as director of the national youth ballet he founded - and finally found the ballet institute he was considering at the time. The city of Hamburg, eight senators for culture after Tarnowski, acquired a villa at Mittelweg 55 for this purpose. The budget for the purchase, conversion and renovation is 15 million euros. Neumeier's important collection is to find a permanent home here.

The location near the university was not chosen by chance. According to the artistic director, the ballet institute should cooperate with dance research and, as far as possible, make its collection accessible to the public. The artist therefore founded the John Neumeier Foundation in 2006 and has already signed over all objects from the time of origin up to the end of the 19th century.

The artist still keeps the larger part of his dance-historical treasure, which includes everything from the 20th century, including the documents for more than 170 choreographies he created himself, as a private collection. It should one day flow into the foundation as his legacy. "For a long time, when I buy something for myself," says Neumeier in an interview with WELT AM SONNTAG, "I know subliminally and at the same time that it doesn't actually belong to me, but should be there for the general public."

It will probably be a few more years before the collection can move to Mittelweg and the ballet institute opens. Neumeier and the foundation are currently discussing concrete conversion plans for the multi-storey building with architects. In addition to the archive, library, offices and seminar rooms, there will be an area for a permanent exhibition.

"But we deliberately do not speak of a museum," explains Neumeier, "the city has not planned any operating subsidy for it so far and the foundation or I privately could not even finance a security service from our own funds. So the house will mainly be a scientific institute with regular opening hours.”

Should the city one day decide to expand the institute into a museum, Hamburg would be put on the map of important ballet cities with a ballet museum alongside St. Petersburg and Paris simply because of the importance of the Neumeier Collection. This can be seen from the international resonance. Since the year 2000, John Neumeier has repeatedly lent works from his collection for important exhibitions or designed them himself.

It all started with the show "Nijinsky - Legend and modernist, the dancer who changed the world" in the Dansmuseet Stockholm, in the same year the show was held in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg under the title "Nijinsky - Tanzlegende und Visionär" and on display at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris as Nijinsky, 1889–1950. Since then, exhibitions have followed in St. Petersburg, New York, Paris and Vienna, among others.

Even without a museum, the collection, which is constantly being cataloged and restored, contains great treasures that are then accessible. The library, which contains more than 15,000 volumes, is already available to scientists for research projects such as dissertations.

It is dedicated to the entire world of dance and ballet, from ethno-geographical, ancient and sacred dance forms to works on folk and ballroom dances and ballet. There is a focus on expressive dance, modern dance, tap and film dance, ice dance and acrobatics. The archive also includes an extensive photography collection.

The collection on dance from the 17th and 18th centuries contains - in addition to books on developing stage art - paintings and prints on famous personalities, such as the French baroque composer and dancer Jean-Baptiste Lully. There is also a bundle of porcelain figurines, most of which come from the large German manufactories of the 18th century, such as those from Meissen and above all from Ludwigsburg.

The Romantic and late Romantic ballet up to around the middle of the 19th century is represented by collections with lithographs, paintings, sculptures and even the ballet shoes that the Austrian ballerina Fanny Elssler wore in 1843 in a performance of "Giselle" in Hamburg. Artists documented include Marie Taglioni, who was the first professional dancer to dance in pointe shoes, and Marius and Marie Petipa.

The Ballets Russes by Serge Diaghilev are the most important focus of the collection. One of the discoveries of the first season of the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909, which had a significant influence on Diaghilev, was the young Vaslav Nijinsky. The legendary Polish dancer, born in Kiev in what was then tsarist Russia, not only fascinated his contemporaries. In 2000, with his ballet “Nijinsky”, John Neumeier created a “biography of the soul” for the ballet's luminary. Since 1975, every season in Hamburg has ended with the highlight of the Ballet Days, the "Nijinsky Gala".

In the meantime, Neumeier has also compiled the world's most extensive collection on Nijinksky, comprising around two-thirds of the world's holdings. Last year, following the death of Nijinsky's daughter Tamara, the foundation bought what remained of the Nijinsky family collection. For example, it complements the approximately 600 letters from Nijinsky's wife Romola.

As early as 2008, in the first year of its existence, the foundation was able to acquire 72 drawings by Nijinksy in New York, which together with the pictures previously purchased by Neumeier form the world's largest collection of drawings by the dancer. Nijinsky's wigs, choreographies, costumes and ballet slippers are also part of the inventory.

A stroke of luck brought further growth to the John Neumeier Foundation last year. The American collector Tony Clark gave her his entire collection - after the Hamburg Foundation opened a branch in Chicago, which Clark could issue a donation receipt. Clark's collection focuses on the life of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, a contemporary of Nijinsky - and the dancer Tamara Toumanova.

The first object he bought, Neumeier recalls, was a ballet poster at a Sotheby’s auction in London in 1974. Unfortunately, in the 1960s he didn't earn enough to bid on the major sales of the Ballets Russes, "but as I became better known as a choreographer, I also became known as a crazy collector". From the mid-1970s he didn't miss any of the annual ballet auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in London and New York. Since then he has also been collecting the auction catalogues, as reference material.

For several years it has become both easier and more difficult for John Neumeier to collect. On the one hand, the foundation tries to stay up to date with regard to book publications, says the choreographer, and “dealers and larger auction houses know about my collection and offer me exhibits. And my collection is by no means complete.” On the other hand, the internet gives a good overview of the international market for historical ballet objects, “and that's not good for my bank balance,” Neumeier smiles.

The collection remains open because the passionate choreographer and collector was always content-related when he bought something. "I was never concerned with the value of a work of art with a view to a possible increase," says Neumeier, "I could never imagine giving something away again."

Instead, the artist uses the works of art he lives among to this day as inspiration for his choreographies. He does not copy, but lets himself be inspired to new developments. The acclaimed creator of ballets shown around the world describes: "At night, when I can't sleep, or when I come from a performance, for example, I'll sit in front of the portrait wall of Diaghilev and look at him and think, 'How was that with you, 20 To direct a ballet for years, through the war, without a cent from the state?'” The conclusion of the constant examination of his collection is: “I can't live anywhere else than in my collection.” So John Neumeier will be when the ballet institute is finished , move together with his collection to Mittelweg 55.