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By vanrozenheim
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John Neumeier's "free adaptation" of Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice for the marvelous dancers of the Hamburg Ballet walks a fine line between astute theatricality and melodrama, between brilliant passages of movement and banal gestures. The primary message is that the life of an artist - even a famous, successful one - can be hell unless he's in creative touch with his inner child; i.e., his emotions. Because Neumeier has transformed Mann's tragic hero from a writer into a choreographer, Gustav von Aschenbach's infatuation with the beautiful young Tadzio seems more about envying the spontaneity he doesn't find in the ballet studio than about craving gorgeous male flesh; there's plenty of that around.
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