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NUANCES & NOCTURNE
the Stuttgart Ballet as seen by Alwin Maigler
published November 2024 by Kerber Verlag, Berlin.
In ballet, elegant aesthetics and grace meet the limits of the human body's capabilities. Elegance and rigor, discipline and passion – where those extremes meet, they transcend us from human to art. Photographer Alwin Maigler (b. 1996) has been working closely with the internationally renowned Stuttgart Ballet for many years and the double publication Nuancen and Nocturne is his personal declaration of love for classical dance.
published by Kerber Verlag, Berlin.
texts among others by: Marcia Haydée, Simone Klein, Tamas Detrich, Dr. Matthias Harder.
measurements both books: 23 x 33 cm, each approx. 176 pp. & approx. 140 ills. I Hardcover I half-cloth bound I Fall 2024
Graphic design: Studio Tillack Knöll, Stuttgart
with the generous support of: The Stuttgart Ballet, Leica Camera AG, John Cranko Society, Freundeskreis der Staatstheater.
NUANCES is Maigler's first photographic work on the subject of ballet; it is a sensitive study of the body and movement, focusing on the exploration of those fleeting spaces that are hidden in movement. The nuances, the contrast between the fluidity of dance and photographic fixation reveals ballet's aesthetic depth of field with a precision that all too often remains hidden.
The total of 110 photographs or so-called "Nuances" of 16 dancers of the Stuttgart Ballet are enriched by texts by the Director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, Dr. Matthias Harder & the Artistic Director of the Stuttgart Ballet, Tamas Detrich.
Starting in 2020 during the pandemic Maigler started working with the dancers of the Stuttgart Ballet for the first time. Some of the earliest Nuances were shot during lockdown in his living room, because it was not possible to access the ballet or photo studios. After working on the series for almost 3 years, Nuances was introduced to the public for the first time in a solo exhibition at the Leica Gallery Stuttgart. In collaboration with the laboratory technician Mario Rodrigues, Maigler presented a selection of 25 Nuances produced using the historic printing technique called Carbon Print.
NOCTURNE is Maigler's most recent photo series. Therefore the photographer invited the dancers of the Stuttgart Ballet to leave their customary theater setting and instead staged them in urban spaces at night. Here, freed from the constraints of their profession, they break with all convention and demand freedom: they jump into fountains, fight in parks, and climb statues.
Nocturne translates to "the music of the night". The entire series was shot on hot summer nights in urban spaces and creates a different, subversive and new narrative about ballet in the disruptive global discourse. Maigler chooses a collaborative approach and acknowledges the dancers as artists themselves. Their aim was not to find any rights or wrongs, nor solutions, but to ask questions and open up a dialog which takes the audience along through the night with a lighthearted spirit and joy.
The 140 photographs of 16 dancers of the Stuttgart Ballet, are complemented by texts of Marcia Haydée (b.1937), a living legend & one of the most important ballet dancers of the twentieth century. In the 1960s she was the prima ballerina of John Cranko and from 1976-1996 the Artistic Director of The Stuttgart Ballett. The photography perspective on Nocturne is conducted by Simone Klein, an independent curator, expert & appraiser for photography, previously Director of the photography department at Southerby's Europe & International Director for Print sales at MAGNUM Photos in Paris.
