About the work
"SLOW BURN" is a mixed bill by Hamburg Ballet with works by Aszure Barton and William Forsythe. The title piece, "Slow Burn" by the Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton, was premiered at Hamburg Ballet on 8 December 2024, to music by the jazz composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. The evening is completed by William Forsythe's "Blake Works V". Thus Barton's emotional, group-dynamic signature meets Forsythe's analytical, virtuosic deconstruction of the classical vocabulary.
Plot
In "Slow Burn", Aszure Barton places two women at the centre – in the premiere Silvia Azzoni and Madoka Sugai as "wise women" – and contrasts them with large group scenes. The piece explores the broad spectrum of human emotion, particularly joy and its counterpart, pain, carried by Akinmusire's music. William Forsythe's "Blake Works V" belongs to his celebrated "Blake Works" series, which fuses classical ballet vocabulary with contemporary energy and musical precision. The double bill thus interweaves two very different approaches to contemporary ballet.
Cultural significance
The evening unites two formative voices of international dance: Aszure Barton, one of the most sought-after contemporary choreographers, and William Forsythe, who has renewed classical ballet like almost no other choreographer of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For Hamburg Ballet, which is broadening its repertoire under new leadership after John Neumeier's decades-long era, "Slow Burn" stands for an opening towards current international signatures. The premiere was closely followed by critics.